Mermaid in Chelsea Creek

June 17, 2013
Cult memoirist and adult fiction author Tea (Valencia) makes her YA debut with a gripping, though bleakly imagined fantasy. Sophie Swankowski drifts along in the still and depressing backwater of Chelsea, Mass., numbing her pain by holding her breath by the creek until she passes out, along with her friend Ella. This becomes a dangerous but seductive game. In one such reverie, teetering between death and unconsciousness, Sophie awakens to see a mermaid, "unreal but unmistakable." After Sophie's mother learns of her daughter's habits, she forces Sophie to work for her scary, mean grandmother in the local dump. A mysterious cast of characters leads Sophie on a bizarre and enchanting quest to uncover the truth about her identity. Even through the veil of magical realism, the world of Sophie's adolescence remains ugly, hopeless, and suffocating, a mood that's amplified by Polan's b&w line drawings. Still, readers will be impelled to explore this tangled web of human beings and beasts while awaiting Sophie's redemption, whatever form it may take. Ages 12âup.

June 1, 2013

Gr 8-10-Sophie Swankowski is a poor girl living in the slums of Chelsea, Massachusetts, with her single, overworked mother. The summer before ninth grade, she and her best friend, Ella, spend their days playing the "passing-out game," hyperventilating until they faint and achieve a seconds-long, dreamlike state. But one day, Sophie's blackout lasts almost an hour. She has a vision of a grimy, foreign mermaid who tells her that she is special-in fact, she is the child the old stories spoke of, the one who will save humanity from sadness. With the help of pigeons and a few good witches, Chelsea must learn how to tap into and control her power. She must also figure out how to shield herself from the evil witch, who just happens to be her grandmother. This tale of magic and self-discovery is set in a gritty, urban underbelly. The language contains a fair amount of cussing, and the scenes depict a hardscrabble, demoralized existence, yet the protagonist comes across as a naive character who, despite growing up in such tough surroundings, readily accepts the phenomena that begin to occur in her life. Unfortunately, readers may not be as accepting, and the meandering plot will not encourage them to continue with the narrative. This one will have difficulty finding an audience.-Heather E. Miller Cover, Homewood Public Library, AL

Copyright 2013 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

April 1, 2013
An avant-garde author's fantasy debut is exquisitely written but draining in its unrelenting ugliness. Thirteen-year-old Sophie Swankowski dreams of leaving behind working-class poverty in dreary Chelsea, Mass., but for now seeks relief by deliberately inducing fainting spells. When her overstressed single mother finds out, Sophie is exiled for the summer to her grandmother's business, the town dump. That's when things start to get strange: A foulmouthed, hard-nosed mermaid appears in her dreams. A flock of pigeons falls in love with her. And a mysterious glass artist reveals that Sophie is destined to become an empathetic messiah, purifying humanity of hatred and despair. Tea's prose is lush and hallucinatory, occasionally producing scenes of gorgeous wonder and tenderness, but mostly it serves to depict the rotten, filthy, toxic nastiness of Chelsea and its denizens. All the major characters--saintly, villainous or trapped in between--are female; the few men are both repulsive and ineffectual. Nearly half the narrative is a string of episodes in which the third-person perspective switches from character to character rapidly, evoking disgust and contempt rather than horror or pity. (The lumpy pen-and-ink illustrations don't help.) The story only takes flight as Sophie finally learns more about her heritage (with fascinating allusions to Eastern European legends), while growing in compassion and magical strength--but the putrid corruption around her offers no possibilities for cathartic triumph or healing, just the ambiguous hope of escape. The ornate literary style and grim themes make this read more like a story about adolescence for adults than one aimed at actual teens. (Magical realism. 12 & up)

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