A visceral and startling debut novel by Jade Song, Chlorine is a portrait of ambition, defiance and longing set in the world of competitive swimming. Ren Yu has always been drawn to the water. Her focus becomes single-minded when she gets sucked into the churning orbit of an intense and abusive swim coach. The book opens as teenage Ren organizes her life around swim practices, grueling workouts, punishing diets and the routine of shaving her body free of hair to slip through the water seamlessly. As her body transforms, her best friend and fellow swimmer Cathy is inescapably drawn to Ren, although she cannot predict the lengths Ren will go to in order to re-create herself as the water-bound creature she knows herself to be.
Chlorine is situated fully in Ren's mind, catapulting readers into her spiral of obsession, aesthetic discipline and burning desire from page one. This world is consistently wince-worthy, one built more of pain than pleasure. Yet, in the same way that Cathy finds herself captivated by Ren's intensity, readers become immersed in her undeniable voice.
While the explosive conclusion of Ren's story may at first seem particularly cringeworthy, it's ultimately an unexpectedly peaceful finale, one that seeks finally to find pleasure in the water, instead of pain. After all, it is not the pursuit of water that contorts Ren's mind and body, but the question of whether "womanhood [was] always so violent, raw," marked by "gut-wrenching, gross violence." Song invites readers to enter into Ren's obsessions not with judgment or disgust, but with an understanding that is surprisingly tender in the face of the novel's abrasion. --Alice Martin, freelance writer and editor