Chlorine by Jade Song
What's It About?
“Chlorine” blurs the line between a literary coming-of-age narrative and a dark unsettling horror tale, told from an adult perspective on the trials and tribulations of growing up in a society that puts pressure on young women and their bodies… a powerful, relevant novel of immigration, sapphic longing, and fierce, defiant becoming.How far would you go to become who you were always meant to be? What if “who you were meant to be” was something entirely different, something inhuman? Chlorine (William Morrow) by Jade Song is a hilarious, haunting and deeply moving story of transformation and change — from childhood to adulthood, from China to America, from human to mermaid.
Swim Team Star Becomes Mermaid
Ever since Ren Yu was a little girl, she was compelled by stories of mermaids. The creatures that lure men to their deaths and aren’t beholden to human expectations.
Go to school, get good grades, and get into a good college. None of that matters when all Ren wants to do is swim.
The only problem is, she’s never been swimming before. When she looks down into the chlorinated pool, ready to dive in for swim team tryouts, she should be afraid. Instead, she jumps the gun and dives in early, races toward the end of the lane, and finds that her boldness makes an impression on Jim, the swim coach.
And with that, she’s in. Ren can put a sport on her school applications, get recruited for her winning times, and make her Chinese immigrant parents proud — or at least, stay busy enough that they don’t pay too much attention. With swim team comes Ren’s first real friend, a redhead named Cathy, from whom she quickly grows inseparable, though not in the way that typical preteen girls do.
From swim meets, to pasta parties, to grueling training sessions and sore muscles, Ren has found her calling. Until she realizes this calling is stronger than medals, record-breaking times and her coach’s approval. She’s called to the water, constantly, achingly, and being away from it only makes her want to feel the chlorine on her skin even more. She craves it.
Ren’s hunger becomes an obsession to swim faster and better than any human ever could, to outrace all of the mortal troubles that plague her. To do that, she must become the mermaid she knows she is. Then, on the day of the biggest swim meet, she prepares to transform.
Transformative, Obsessive and Beautiful
Chlorine’s progression is so deliciously, horrifyingly gratifying and gut-wrenching that I wish I could read it again for the first time. This story is fiercely queer, with all too realistic moments of pre-teen girl angst, an aching desire to fit in with peers, and encounters with boys and swim coaches that will make you grit your teeth.
Fans of Julia Armfield’s Our Wives Under the Sea and Hulu’s Pen15 will love Jade Song’s raw look at what it means to be the daughter of immigrant parents, enduring the humorous and heartbreaking moments of girlhood and puberty, all while a creeping sense of horror grows.
Chlorine is worth diving into. You just might emerge from this book dripping sweat, blood, and pool water, completely transformed.
About Jade Song:
Jade Song is a writer, art director, and artist. Her debut novel Chlorine was published by William Morrow/HarperCollins (US) and Footnote Press (UK) in 2023 and will be translated into Chinese and French. Chlorine was selected as a New York Times Editor’s Choice, lauded as “visionary and disturbing,” and listed as a must-read book by Buzzfeed, Cosmopolitan,Vanity Fair, and other outlets. Their art direction work has been awarded by and featured in Campaign US, The Shortys, Bustle, and AdAge, among others. She lives in New York City.
