My Drowning

by Jim Grimsley

Ever since Ellen Tote can remember, she has dreamed of her mother walking slowly into a river. The mystery of this memory, as it unfolds in her recollections, is the haunting story of MY DROWNING.

Genres: Fiction, Southern, Family, Literary Fiction, Novels, LGBT, Southern Gothic

267 pages, Kindle Edition

First published September 1, 1997

About the author

Jim Grimsley published a new novel in May of 2022, The Dove in the Belly, out from Levine Querido. The book is a look at the past when queer people lived more hidden lives than now. Grimsley was born in rural eastern North Carolina. He has published short stories and essays in various quarterlies, including DoubleTake, New Orleans Review, Carolina Quarterly, New Virginia Review, the LA Times, and the New York Times Book Review. Jim’s first novel Winter Birds, was published in the United States by Algonquin Books in the fall of 1994. Winter Birds won the Sue Kaufman Prize for best first novel from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and was a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award. He has published other novels, including Dream Boy, Kirith Kirin, and My Drowning. His books are available in Hebrew, German, French, Spanish, Dutch, Italian, Japanese, and Portuguese. He has also published a collection of plays and most recently a memoir, How I Shed My Skin. His body of work as a prose writer and playwright was awarded the Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2005. For twenty years he taught writing at Emory University in Atlanta.

Reviews

[Sofia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Writing this a couple of days after finishing the book, the feeling of sadness has mellowed.

Ellen's story is one made up of memories, which are clear, elusive, slippery, truthful, false. Because can one be ever sure of a memory. Our brains work in mysterious ways. I found Grimsley description of the feelings invoked by the blue dress and the fate of the blue dress a perfect analogy of how memories are. The blue dress was perfection to one sister, then represented hurt and fear. It brought pleasure to another sister until it got tight and faded. It was just a torn, faded, play dress for the other sisters. So the same dress (memory) but different for all the different sisters. And it's just like this with memories. Perspectives, feelings they all have their own effect and how we remember the past is through these filters.

Through any which filters you wish to see Ellen's childhood story remains a sad, poor, hungry, unloving and abusive one. The story gets especially poignant when you consider the bits Ellen consciously or unconsciously does not remember. Ellen's being able to break that cycle and make a good life for herself is good to see. It made me think of my Mum, of the hardships she went through in her childhood and how she came through them to create a good life for us and how I being where I am is all partly due to her efforts.

BR with Irina

[Irina · Rating 4 out of 5]

I regret not writing a review while my thoughts and feelings were still fresh, because it's a powerful read - heavy, sad, melancholic. Jim Grimsley is a brilliant writer, he captures the smallest but most significant details, and does it subtly and effortlessly. The 'simple' truth of Ellen Tote's abusive childhood is neither sugarcoated nor exaggerated. It feels so heartbreakingly real as if the author had experienced it all himself. I certainly couldn't help but hurt for little Ellie.

I was just glad to have read about her as a grown up woman beforehand so I could at least rest assured, she's made it through.

Wonderful writing, a very sad tale.

Wouldn't have been able to go through that torture without my girl, though. Thank you, Sofia!

***3.5 stars***

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

Grimsley is one of the best southern writers of this generation. His books are painfully beautiful.

[Erika Nerdypants · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is definitely not a feel good book. The author narrates the life of Ellen, a southern woman growing up in horrific circumstances. It is a testimony that the human spirit is determined to succeed, that even when we are deprived of basic needs, we carry on and move forward. This book will make an impression that stays with the reader for a long time after putting the novel back on the shelf.

[Sherry · Rating 2 out of 5]

I have mixed feelings about this book. The characters are captivating, but not in a good way. There were so many disturbing things in this book that it was very difficult for me to read - just overall upsetting what the characters endured. There were few moments of happiness for the main character, Ellen Tote, snippets of joy but they were always framed by some sort of underlying threat to her survival. The misery of her life is highlighted by her search for the meaning of a dream that she has had all through her life, a dream that she revisits throughout the novel in little snippets of memory until she finally learns the truth from her dying brother.

Ellen's description of her life of misery growing up in a poor family in the deep south pulls you into her home and allows you to witness how it was for her. Her family members are perfectly horrible and kudos to the author for allowing the reader to experience that - very skillful. Grimsley does it so well, however, that you absolutely feel all that Ellen feels, which is all very negative.

The story, in itself, loses something somewhere along the line. I was left with questions at the end of it and felt like it really didn't end in a satisfying way. And so, although the story was lacking, the characters are forever entrenched in my brain, which is maybe not a good thing.

[Geoff · Rating 3 out of 5]

My Recommendation: Jim Grimsley is probably one of the most depressing writers I've ever read, and yet I keep going back to him every 5-10 years. Depressing may not be the correct descriptor, he just writes such desolate books and truly embraces the southern gothic style and maybe that's what draws me to him?

This was my first time reading My Drowning and it was very different from Winter Birds and Dream Boy but at the same time very similar (mostly through that southern gothic style). In addition to the style, he really excels at writing children's voices.

My Response: Grimsley has such a way with writing that he pulls you into the scenes—I don't know if this is because I have the NC connection and some of the things he mentions have such strong ties to my own childhood, or if it's his overall ability as an author. The book overall was well written even if the story and subject matter weren't the easiest to read, but you don't read southern gothic for the joy and humor. Reading this has made me want to go back and revisit Winter Birds and Dream Boy, both of which I read in undergrad and I hope really stand up to time!

Continue reading on my book blog at geoffwhaley.com.

[Adrienne G. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Oh dear this book was sad. If you've read the 12 Tribes of Hattie and not wanted to rip your heart out with sadness and despair, then this one might do it for you.
This book flips around the memories of a woman who recalls, sometimes with accuracy, sometimes with nostalgia, her life growing up in the Deep South in abject poverty. The author managed to capture a female voice rather well, as well as a woman at various ages. The eyes of a child are a fascinating place to look through in any scenario, and this one is no different.

Somehow, our heroine escaped poverty. Was it the aunt who looked after her? A neighbor and friend? Something pushed her into having a different life than the one that Grimsley captures. My grandfather was born dirt poor in Northern Alabama during the Depression-- many of the vignettes of this story remind me of stories of his life. Foraging for food, biscuits out of fatback and rotten flour...these are the tales of the South-- and they are hard to hear in our current era of so much wealth and excess.

This book was hard to read. It was sad. Looking through so many lenses-- racism, feminism, ableism, etc., this book explores a past many of us have forgotten.

[Moira Crone · Rating 5 out of 5]

My Drowning is a wonderful novel in the Southern Gothic tradition. Dark, or darker, even, than Bastard out of Carolina, the novel is also more lyrical and evocative. Grimsley is wonderful in this genre and also in fantasy. He's a genius who understands so much about how to create a story that will keep you engrossed until the very last minute. Beautiful

[Gerry Durisin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Memories and survival are the themes of this grimly descriptive tale of growing up dirt poor in the South. Ellen is the last survivor of her large family, and has no one left with whom she can check the story her brother told her just before he died -- that her own mother tried to drown her -- an event which comes too close to a haunting memory of her mother drowning in a river.

[Bert Tomlin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Love this first person recount of a hopelessly poor girl in a severely dysfunctional family. Loved the fact it was written by a man. Very sad and moving.

[Mary McCarthy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Stark story about a hardscrabble life in the mid twentieth century rural south. This is life cut to the bone, a world of poverty and toil where hunger is a constant, and there is no security for even the most basic of needs..shelter, clothing, water, food, warmth. The expression, and even the existence of love is so rare there is no tender touch...beatings, slaps and blows accompanied by brief threatening phrases or the demand to "shut up" make up the bulk of interactions. A barren sort of life, where a woman spends most of her life pregnant, each child taking more from her body and strength, several will die, the survivors will live hungry and in misery, a burden, as well as more bodies to take on hard work for low wages. This is the kind of desperate scenario seen in places like concentration camps, where the possibilities of humanity are under inconceivable pressure, where the worst is the usual, and acts of love, kindness and mercy become a triumph of rare grace. None of the characters are seen through a softening lens, Ellen's memories are honest and unembellished. And yet it is through these memories she moves toward the possibility of understanding, and in that, in recovering the most elusive, the most painful memory, of her drowning, she comes to reconciliation, becomes a survivor in a way her parents and siblings could not.

[Mayumi · Rating 3 out of 5]

The bleak visions of reality and nightmare alternately appears in the poetic prose, providing the reader a tough yet tender scene of southern poor white family. Mother is typical of underclass women in the rural south who was always pregnant and suffered from incessant newcoming offspring. More children means worsening living condition and exasperating poverty. Mother disappeared from time to time, which left the heroine confused and tried to figured what happened to her. More urgent thing prevailed the impoverished family when the children led a migrant life, scarcely with income to subsist on. The whole story is about how the heroine piece together what she witnessed in her girlhood and devlve in mystery around her mother and disappearing babies.

[Martha Alami · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although the subject matter is grim, I enjoyed this book. The author succeeds in capturing and portraying the bleak, abusive life of Ellen, the main character and one of many children in a truly poor, destitute and dysfunctional home. The story is not new but the author pulled me in to Ellen's life and the despair she survived. I felt as if I understood her and the ignorance of her parents.

[Jill S. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such a beautiful book, full of description and a deep ethereal sense of longing, although it's unclear what for. There's not really a plot, it kind of meanders along through the protagonist's memory, but in a way that is both captivating and curious. I wasn't sure I'd be able to get into this book, but I actually felt fully immersed in it. Very glad I read it.

[Kitty]

definitely felt like grimsley was attempting to reinvigorate his older writing style- but lacking all the charm, tension, and mood of his older novels.
also, racism in the south was handled much better in his earlier works, frankly it made it almost impossible to get through. i really wouldn't recommend this one

[kristen worth · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very moving book. The word that comes to mind is Raw.
The story itself was such an emotional read I will definitely read more books written by Jim Grimsley.
My only negative was the ending was kind of sudden, I didn't realise that it was the end.

[Angela · Rating 2 out of 5]

Nope. Poverty stricken family, hard mean people. The only reason it’s a 2 is because the ending was told from Ellen’s current life. It was only a small part but I liked that part. The rest was just parents taking out their bad luck on their kids

[Diane · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is such a sad and moving book. A young lady has a reoccurring dream. The book is full of emotion. I should have read this when I wasn't so emotional. I might have enjoyed the book more.

[Allie Walters · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was aight

[Beth Hartong · Rating 4 out of 5]

A quiet and thoughtful book.

[David Zubl · Rating 5 out of 5]

In My Drowning, Jim Grimsley’s third novel, we revisit the life of Ellen, Danny’s mother in Grimsley's first novel, Winter Birds. (His second novel, Dream Boy, is a standalone. See my reviews of both books.)

Given the trauma that Ellen and her children suffered at the hands of her husband Bobjoy in Winter Birds, it is with relief that My Drowning opens with Ellen as an old woman; relief that she survives to old age. She is standing in her kitchen, remembering a recurring dream she has had about her mother; the dream is a gateway to remembrances of her childhood. Through the novel’s pages, we go back and forth with her from the present to the past, and back again.

Through periodic glimpses of her present life, readers (especially if they have already read Winter Birds) gain even more comfort that she has endured, even prospered. This was an open question at the conclusion of Winter Birds, and is even more surprising when we learn, in My Drowning, how much poverty and abuse she experienced as a child.

As with Grimsley’s other books, we are witnesses to a realistic portrayal of depressing poverty and abuse in the rural South, though unlike in his other books, Ellen’s childhood experiences are one step removed; they are told at a slight distance, through memories. They are clear and detailed enough to still feel immediate, but we know from the beginning that Ellen gets to a better place, no matter what she had to endure on the journey there. And the journey is compelling.

For anyone who enjoys generational stories - getting to know both ancestors and descendants, tracing their paths over time - Winter Birds and My Drowning, taken as a pair, are really strong examples. (They even continue into the next book, Comfort & Joy, which focuses on Danny, the protagonist in Winter Birds, though Ellen is also present.)

Grimsley is a master of dialect and detail; he evokes the rural South of the mid-to-late 20th century in a powerful way, and fills it with people who are haunted by their past even as they yearn to escape it.

Even though his characters suffer greatly, I have enjoyed getting to know them and seeing how many of them navigate their way to calmer waters.

[Teresa · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book, but the story really didn't end. The family made me glad I didn't grow up like they did, or have such useless parents, but something just didn't go quite right with entire story.

[Ashley · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well, I finished it. This book resembled a Dorothy Allison novel in terms of its dark depiction of Southern poverty through the eyes of a woman looking back on her childhood as an adult, but the writing style is much more reflective and aware of the beauty in even the worst scenes. The title of the book refers to a recurring dream by the protagonist that she sort of resolves at the end. There are many interesting narrative repetitions in the novel as her memories overlap with memories she had in the previous chapters. The story unfolds as a mixture of reality and fiction that occurs in all "memory" stories, but the narrator is self-aware that her memories are not trustworthy. It wasn't a page-turner. I am left feeling a bit despondent about the whole thing, but I would recommend it to fans of Southern Gothic literature.

[Sianeka · Rating 3 out of 5]

Another slice-of-life story from Jim Grimsley, again telling the story of a poor white family in a rural community. This time, the protagonist is Ellen Tote, who overcomes adversity and hardship growing up to become an independent and happy adult. Although it is never explicitely stated, I believe that the main heroine of this story is the same woman who is the mother in the Grimsley novel Winter Birds.

Although her story is compelling, drawing the reader through Ellen's life glimpsed through flashbacks and memories, like many such narratives, there is no real ending, and thus no satisfactory conclusion to the story.

[Lee · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is Ellen Tote's reminiscing about her childhood growing up in extreme poverty with not enough money, a useless father and beaten down mother who is constantly pregnant. There's never enough food or enough heat and a lot of hard physical work to be done. This is a sad tale especially since you know reading it that although this is a work of fiction, there were and are families just like hers all over America and the world. Yet Ellen manages to get by and what little happiness she finds is all the more startling by how little it takes for her to be joyful. It's definitely a thought provoking book.

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

I only read this because it was assigned to a student I work with in class. It really blew me away. It's the story of a woman who describes her upbrinng in a family of white sharecroppers in the early 20th century, told a sshe looks back on her life. I know - it sounds hokey, but as the story unravels, so does your perspctive. Not only does it completely undo any romantic notions one might ever have of rural poverty, and deconstruct notions about the reliability of memory, but it helps to account for some of those basic values that you do hold despite yourself.

[Nathan · Rating 1 out of 5]

Grimsley's first book, Winter Birds is one of my favorite books. It's a stunning piece of fiction. I also thought Dream Boy was impossible to put down. It falls apart at the end, maybe, but even then it's a great read. By comparison this book felt like a tepid regurgitation of his first works. It was bleak, and sad, and hopelessly derivative of his own genius.

[Tiffany · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book is about a woman recalling her childhood and growing up poor in the south. I thought this book looked very interesting and couldn't wait to read it. Then I couldn't wait to not have to read it anymore. I kept waiting for this big "to-do" to happen or she reveals some major crisis she went through, but nothing. Just very boring all the way through.

[Barbara · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'd wake up much too early every morning, before sunrise, just to read this book wanting to find out more of Ellen's tough young life growing up dirt-poor without much nourishing love. For that reason, I must give this gripping story a well deserved 5-star rating.
I will definitely be reading more books by this author!

[Bob · Rating 3 out of 5]

He's a brilliant writer. And I will read everything Grimsley writes. This one is very depressing at at times very hard to read. It was a difficult book but I am always amazed at the insight the author has into children and siblings. I won't read it again.