Water in the Air

by Gwyneth A. Jones

A young girl rescues a seemingly dead salmon and finds that the fish's determination to repay her has far-reaching consequences on her life and that of her brother.

179 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 1977

Reviews

[Capn · Rating 2 out of 5]

Kathy Assheton rescued a dead fish from a dirty river. It was a crazy thing to do; meaningless.
But the fish wasn't dead. In fact if he was a fish at all, he was a very strange one, able to find as much water in the air as in any river or stream. He admitted to being a salmon of ancient lineage and interesting connections, and his determination to repay Kathy for his rescue had far-reaching effects on her life and that of her brother, Brian. It wasn't magic, exactly - the fish seemed, if anything, a trifle contemptuous of magic - but his . . . . influence . . . rippled its way into Kathy's miserable reality and into her happy dreams with equally devastating effect. Brian hoped for Time-travel; Kathy wanted to be left alone. Why should the salmon break down her fragile defences against the cruel world?
Jacket design by Peter Stevenson

"It was ok" is what two stars indicates on Goodreads, according to the hover-over tip I got when I was wavering on the rating... I can't say I liked it. It was weird, and not in a good way.

There's a salmon swimming in mid-air on the cover. That was pretty much all I knew going into this. I knew it was written by Gwyneth Jones (a.k.a. Ann Halam... there's also a "Gwyneth Jones Ann Halam" out there, if a passing librarian wants to correct that!), who wrote King Death's Garden: A Ghost's Story, which was rather good. I'm not usually a sci-fi sort of person, and a flying salmon looked suspiciously like it might trend that way, but I was willing to give it a shot. I really wanted to know what the levatating fish was all about...

This book is primarily about Kathy (and her younger brother, Brian). I hate Kathy. I found Kathy wholly unrelatable, moody in ways I never get (and I have moods - they just tend to track very differently to hers, somehow), and fundamentally unlikeable. The fact that she has the sh*t kicked out of her fairly regularly by school bully Monica and friends didn't even help warm me to her - she's just... unlikeable. And she's got romantic fantasies about some good looking guy from a 17th century portrait that her older sister had up on her wall with various other pictures and posters. She knows nothing about him, he's just a face to cast into various pleasurable daydreams.

So we have a grouchy teenage girl getting bullied at a tough (new) school, a dorky but more likeable younger brother (who still isn't very easy to get attached to), and a dead salmon she finds in a stream, smuggles it home... and then licks.

Turns out, the salmon wasn't really dead. And it's actually Cena, the Salmon (of Knowledge), that Finn McCool/Fionn Mac Cumhaill once ate. I had to look up this a bit on Wikipedia, not being very well-versed in the Fenian cycle of Irish mythology. But I'm not averse to a bit of Celtic myth, and I did already know about the hazel trees around the Well of Wisdom thanks to the Carrigmore Castle series. Didn't realise there was a connection until Wikipedia explained, but nevermind.

So we have a miserable, bullied Kathy, a mythological Irish salmon... but wait! Let's abandon that interesting juxtaposition altogether and bring in the Covenanters of 17th century Scotland, particularly John Grahame of Claverhouse (1648-1689), and the incident at Drumclog and some Walter Scott content for good measure.

Yeah. So . . . . time-slip happens (for personal growth reasons?). The identity of Kathy's sexy-portrait man is revealed. Kathy and Brian go from gross personal danger in the form of mob violence to gross personal danger in the form of mob violence... and I'm not really sure what happens after that. I think it was entirely meant to show that Kathy had grown, personally, as a result of Cena's involvement, but I'm not at all convinced of that. She still sucks at the end of the book, and her bullies are still an issue. I think it was also meant to show, maybe, that history is skewed towards the opinions of the writers who record it. Was John Grahame of Claverhouse a murderer and torturer and a poor choice of man for Kathy to fantasize about? Or maybe he wasn't? Hard times, hard decisions...

There was something about sympathy for people who go insane, too, and how disorienting and frightening it must be to lose a hold on reality, or at least on the shared and agreed upon reality of the people surrounding you. That was a nice thing to reflect upon. It was just a brief paragraph, though.

And our salmon friend? Did he appear in order to guide and lead Kathy towards... yeah, see I don't know? Self-actualization? Maybe? Or maybe just to bugger with her head and hormones over sexy-portrait man? I don't know, and I honestly couldn't really wrap my head around the whole Cena wanting to be eaten, as thanks for their rescuing him from the riverbank, and instead found a way to wear his physical self away serving them as an alternative, since they flatly refused to gobble him up. Maybe I'd have to be better versed in Irish mythology, I don't know.

I don't really get this book. It's possible it's just too deep for me, but it's also possible that it's just a bit of a mess without a very clear purpose or meaning or narrative. I mean, there's that teacher who is also being bullied (two of them, actually), and Kathy's feelings towards them are all over the place as well, and... again, if there was growth or some revelation here, I missed it.

Also, fish can't wink. They don't have eye-lids. There were a few other descriptions that made me think the author didn't do much fishing, or go in for marine biology much.

I have at least another book from this author, and I'm not totally put off. She certainly has imagination. She just needs a heavy-handed editor, though, I think. ;)

(Delay in posting this, because Zeldathon is on now: https://zeldathon.com/ , raising money for St Jude's Children's Hospital, and also because I'm having a completely bonkers August, and have read two rather weird and hard-to-like books recently. Support Zeldathon, though, please, if you're into the intersection of gaming and fundraising!). ;)