The Deeper the Water the Uglier the Fish

By: Katya Apekina

Narrated by: Amy Melissa Bentley, Roger Wayne

Length: 10 hrs and 12 mins

Publisher's summary

It's 16-year-old Edie who finds their mother, Marianne, dangling in the living room from an old jump rope, puddle of urine on the floor, barely alive. Upstairs, 14-year-old Mae had fallen into one of her trances, often a result of feeling too closely attuned to her mother's dark moods.

After Marianne is unwillingly admitted to a mental hospital, Edie and Mae are forced to move from their childhood home in Louisiana to New York to live with their estranged father, Dennis, a former civil rights activist and literary figure on the other side of success. The girls, grieving and homesick, are at first wary of their father's affection, but soon Mae and Edie's close relationship begins to fall apart - Edie remains fiercely loyal to Marianne, convinced that Dennis is responsible for her mother's downfall, while Mae, suffocated by her striking resemblances to her mother, feels pulled toward their father. The girls move in increasingly opposing and destructive directions as they struggle to cope with outsized pain, and as the history of Dennis and Marianne's romantic past clicks into focus, the family fractures further.

Moving through a selection of first-person accounts and with a sinister sense of humor, The Deeper the Water the Uglier the Fish powerfully captures the quiet torment of two sisters craving the attention of a parent they can't, and shouldn't, have to themselves.

©2018 Katya Apekina (P)2018 Tantor

A very enchanting, insightful talented!

Loved the book. This young righter is already having her very distinguish voice and style. Bravo!

dark and sad

but I like dark and sad. I was engaged most of the book, it really faulted at the end for me

Ironically Good

In the book club that I belong to, everyone was replying to the thread on what was the best books we read all year and one of them was "The Deeper the Water the Uglier the Fish."  I never heard this book before and surely never read anything from Katya Apekina.  After a few nudges from my friend who recommended that I should this one a try (we often have the same blizzard interests when it comes to reading materials), I bought it, read it and enjoyed it.   The reason why I like this book so much, it's very different from what I'm used to.  The subject matter is disturbing, but I also found comfort in the entire story.  Don't let the synopsis turn you away.  There are multi-layers in the pages and it's ironically good.

many TWS!

For those who believe children are resilient, and that one need not worry about trauma induced on those children, read this book. For those who believe that children are best with birth families, even when the parents have severe mental illness (bipolar, etc.), read this novel.

TW: child abuse; incest; emotional abuse; attempted suicide.

The structure of the story is outstanding. Author Kaya Apekina uses multiple narrators (my favorite structure) and multi-media (letters etc.). Her writing style is impressive. Even with the amazing structure, I only recommend this to people who are not triggered from the previously stated TWs. Her prose is so realistic, that I corporally felt I was there. I wanted to metaphorically punch a few characters in the face, especially Dennis, the father.

Interestingly, Apekina shows how art is produced to work through trauma. I will pay far more attention to artists work, wondering what heck happened to them for them to produce such an amazing piece of work. I wonder what prompted her to write this story; hopefully it wasn’t her story.

5 Stars to structure, plot and writing
1 star for content.

I listened to the audio, narrated by Amy Melissa Bentley and Roger Wayne. As a note, Bentley portrayed a6-year-old Edie like the character Ruth in the TV series “Ozark” which was the perfect voice for such a spunky and irrepressible character.

5 stars for the audio production

strangest story I’ve read in a while…

This is such a strange story. I was too far in to the story to stop but the father daughter romance gave me the creeps and I didn’t understand why this story was even written at some points. Gave me the heebejeebes tbh