I had the opportunity to see the author speak a few months back and was blown away. Her prose is just as good as I anticipated! ( )

This book was recommended by a memoir writing teacher. I listened more for writing style, it is helpful to read other memoirs that are similar to my own. ( )

I bought this book three years ago. Why the hell did I wait so long to read it?

I was surprised at how much I read after cracking open this book. It was not what I expected. Not a story of racing at swim meets and Olympic victories won or lost, but of swimming, drowning in a life wrecked instead of protected and nurtured. Such raw and emotive power, unapologetically broken humanity transformed, saved, through linguistic narratives. I read the words and understood the subtext, the honest self-destruction that makes no excuse for itself, but is a coping mechanism for things endured. The honesty - at times titillating with remorseless sexuality, frank and fluid - is uncomfortably wrong, not what it's supposed to be, which is exactly the way truth should be.

The writing is like rapids at first, crazy and broken and joined - sentences simultaneously melded and fractured. Grammar and convention are broken in several ways, reflecting the story in other dimensions beyond the words that craft the narrative, reinforcing them. The style settles conventionally, but not artistically, when the story begins to talk about itself. Representative of maturing? Healing? A different mind picking up the story, using memories too oft revisited, altered a little with each glance?

It's an inspirational journey through a life wrenched and recovered, not through redemption, but through wordcraft. Healed? No. Grown beyond in spite of? Certainly. Acceptance is not forgiveness, it is its own power. Her life is one of many passages through a shared hell inflicted, inherited and self-perpetuated, creating the common human coping tropes. Endurance and survival are inspiring themes. Victorious? Definitely, but not because of a Disney ending; it's a human ending, swimmingly complex, defined in water. ( )

Lidia Yuknavitch didn’t have a conventional upbringing. She and her sister suffered from verbal, physical, and sexual abuse from their father and sadly her depressed alcoholic mother chose not to intervene. There were people looking out for her though, her swimming coach worked well with her and she began to become and very competitive swimmer. They moved to Florida, with the intention of helping her with her training, but the tormented early life that she had had, caused her to seek solace in drugs and booze.

She was attracted to both men and women and spent a lot of time pushing the limits of her sexual exploration. She had an abortion and sadly a stillbirth, until one day she met a man called Andy and her life began to stabilise and settle with the birth of their son, Miles and a move to Portland, Oregan.

This is her memoir of a troubled early life and how she overcome abuse, drugs and alcohol to become the person she is now. It is quite amazing that she survived her earlier life. It has an unusual writing style, with short punchy sentences and brief chapters that are focused on one detail or episode of her life. The prose has a relentless energy and intensity that I haven’t come across before. If you’re not broadminded before reading this book, you will be after; it is quite some book. ( )

You're amazed that Yuknavitch survived to tell her story. Amazing memoir - full review on my blog http://annabookbel.net/the-chronology-of-water-by-lidia-yuknavitch ( )