A Study in Drowning

by Ava Reid

“I like how that one sounds the best,” Effy said. “Tell me what it means.” Behind his glasses, Preston’s eyes fixed on her. “‘Love is a fire that cannot burn alone.’”

Perhaps a romance is a story with no end at all; where the end is but a wardrobe with a false back, leading to stranger and more merciful worlds.

Who is C.S. Lewis in this world?

After spending so long at Hiraeth, Effy had almost forgotten what it was like to live in a regular house.

How long, though? It seemed like a week at the most. The author does not make the time elapsing clear.

The papers were very old; she could tell as much right away, without even looking at the dates at the top. Their edges were curling, ink slightly faded, and they seemed overall as if they had been forgotten—as if someone running away had let them slip out of their grasp and lie gathering dust under the bed, or a maid who came in to clean had simply been unable to reach them with her broom.

This is stupid. Maids would have found those papers after cleaning under the bed long ago, and given them to their employer. It's another immersion-breaking, poor plot contrivance thing that we're supposed to believe that those papers really sat under that bed for a generation.

“She’s initially presented purely as a foible for the protagonist—seductive and active where Angharad is submissive and passive. Like your two-headed goddess, Saints Acrasia and Amoret. As Myrddin mentioned in the letter. But eventually Arethusa becomes an ally. It’s a very clever subversion of the trope of the malevolent seductress.”

"Foible"? Author meant "foil".

“He didn’t say who he was writing to.” Effy stared down at the page again, just to be certain. “He said she had a Southern name . . . one of Blackmar’s daughters. Myrddin’s diary mentions that Blackmar’s eldest daughter showed him some of her poetry, remember?”

So she did notice that. Why didn't it ever occur to her to follow up with the clue, then? Because poor plot contrivance 😑

Not friendship or employment—Myrddin had an affair with Blackmar’s daughter, and somehow Angharad was born from it.

Follow the clue to its logical conclusion! Why is this so hard for them to figure out? 😫

“Writers take things from their real lives all the time. It’s not as though the phrase is copyrighted.” Logically Effy understood that. But it still felt wrong; all of it felt so wrong. “I wish we could talk to her. Blackmar’s daughter.”

You can! It’s so obvious that *you can*. 🙈

“That’s not what I mean. You don’t . . . you don’t need to attribute everything to Blackmar, necessarily. Maybe Angharad was a joint effort between the two of them.”

Girl wake up. It’s taking them so long to figure this out. 😬

She looked for Blackmar’s servants now and found them, still and silent, in each of the four corners of the room, like out-of-date family heirlooms you felt guiltily compelled to keep.

Clunky and strange description. Also, very off-putting to liken lower-class human beings to inanimate objects in this type of way. 🤨

Instead, he swirled the gin in his glass and said, in a languid voice, “Blackmar, you scoundrel, I asked for dessert and you brought me a tart draped in silk?”

Seriously, is every man in this universe except for Preston a misogynist?

Myrddin’s hasty scrawl rolling past: My sly and clever girl. My foolish and lovely girl. My beautiful and debauched girl. Call her by her name, Effy wanted to shout, but at no one in particular, because Myrddin was dead. The girl probably was, too. Blackmar’s daughter. Myrddin’s . . . conquest. She had been lost to the ages, just like those drowned churches.

“Myrddin was dead. The girl probably was, too.” Why does she think this? It’s so obvious she is not, and who she actually is. This poor plot contrivance is so warn out by now it's honestly an insult to us as readers.

It was all so absurd. Effy blew her nose on a sleeve. “Why are you being so nice to me?” “Why wouldn’t I be?” She huffed a pitiful laugh. “Because I’ve been awful to you. Pestering you just to pester you, trying to get under your skin, being foolish—” “You don’t see yourself very clearly, Effy.”

WHAT. *Yes she does*. And finally Effy apologized properly – at the 70% fucking point!? – and *this* is how the author has Preston respond? Bullshit! 😤

“Challenging me isn’t pestering. I’m not always right. Sometimes I deserve to be challenged.

Yes sometimes you need to be challenged but not all the times she did it. She was *in fact* just pestering. There was nothing behind her “challenging” besides a hurt and scared ego lashing out.

changing your mind isn’t foolish. It just means you’ve learned something new. Everyone changes their mind sometimes, as they should, or else they’re just, I don’t know, stubborn and ignorant. Moving water is healthy; stagnant water is sickly. Tainted.”

This is a good concept in general, but Effy didn't say changing her mind was what made her foolish. She just said her aggressive behavior towards Preston was foolish—and it was! What is he even talking about? AVA, wtf.

“He survived, but he hit his head hard on the dashboard, and then on the pavement. He wasn’t wearing his seat belt—he was always reckless like that. It drove my mother mad.

Sounds like someone we know. 😐

“And, well, I suppose that’s partly why I don’t have much faith in the notion of permanence. Anything can be taken from you, at any moment. Even the past isn’t guaranteed. You can lose that, too, slowly, like water eating away at stone.”

Did Prseton ever talk about not having faith in permanence? I don't recall him ever saying anything like that.

She thought of the time she had turned over a fallen log in her grandparents’ back garden: the wood had disintegrated right there in her hand, and she’d stared down at the slimy dead leaves, the white mold, the fungi that had sprouted up like flower heads, each one shaped and striated like an oyster shell.

And something else occurred to me. If the pictures were indeed taken on this chair, then it means that Blackmar’s daughter was here at some point, at Hiraeth. Which means that the affair went on for more than just a year. Blackmar said that Myrddin didn’t move here until after Angharad was published.”

One day they'll figure out what’s been looking them in the face for ages. 🐢

She was thinking of the girl in the photographs. Effy had once thought her gaze empty, but now she realized that the girl had simply escaped her own body, her spirit wandering elsewhere while Myrddin’s camera flashed over her naked breasts. Effy knew that trick well. It was almost like magic. If you tried hard enough, you could believe yourself out of the cold and banal world.

Disassociation (2)

Believing Myrddin’s stories had become an escape act, too, her greatest and most enduring one. But it had made her unstable, untrustworthy, a fragile, flighty thing. That was the cruelest irony: the more you did to save yourself, the less you became a person worth saving.

His eyes, once pale brown, had somehow turned dark. “You’re not just one thing. Survival is something you do, not something you are.

“I didn’t mean it like that at all, that you were some fallen woman and I—never mind. But I won’t be another man who uses you. I don’t want you to think of me that way, just a shag on a chaise. I don’t want to be something else that keeps you from sleeping at night.”

“I would never think of you like that. I thought you were . . . cold, frigid, like the stereotypes say. Really. I didn’t know you felt anything at all when you looked at me.”

We’re at 75% and Effy is still saying shitty things like this to Preston?

“I’m sorry,” she said miserably. “I’m so, so stupid.” “Stop it. You’re not.” Preston swallowed,

She is, though. 😆 You *both* are. 🙈

“I wanted you, too. For so long. It was terrible. Sometimes I could barely eat—sorry, I know that sounds like the strangest thing. But for days I didn’t feel hungry at all. I was . . . occupied. You took away all the other wanting from me.”

Are we supposed to think this is romantic? This is gross, but not for the yearning and lust, and whatever else, on it’s own. It’s gross because we’re supposed to believe it’s romantic that a man who was daily verbally assaulted with hate speech from a xenophobic, petty, and immature asshole “wanted her” to the point of not eating.

She had taken her pink pills dutifully this morning.

But did you take them with water, like you should be?!

“I should go back to the house,” he said. “We—” “No,” Effy cut in, heart pounding. “Don’t.” He frowned at her. “We still need to get the letters and the photographs.” “Please,” she said. “Please don’t leave. I think I’ll die if you leave.”

Oh come on. 🙄 He was right but Effy and him need to continue a tradition of stupidity, so here we go.

There was a little bit of pain, but it was like a breath that was tightly held: it gave way to seemingly infinite pleasure upon release. She whimpered quietly into his shoulder, a sound that was half surprise, half surrender. The yielding was easy when the assault was so tender.

This is such a weird way to describe what is supposed to be a positive sexual experience. This author needs sensitivity readers. 💀

“Why should I believe that? You can’t even see two feet in front of you.” Preston laughed. “I’ll put my glasses back on if that gives me more credibility.” “No. I like knowing more than you for once.” “You know plenty of things that I don’t.” He brushed back a damp strand of hair from her forehead. “There’s an Argantian saying about that, too, actually.”

More making fun of him for how he was born and something beyond his control. Cool cool cool 😑 I hate this protagonist. I hate this “romance”.

“You Argantians are a very poetic people after all,” she said. “As much as Llyrian propaganda would have us believe otherwise.” “You told me I was smug.” A smile tugged at her lips. “Well, some stereotypes have a bit of truth to them.” Preston snorted.

This is not funny or cute. One of the worst couples I’ve ever read. 🤢

“The only reason anything matters is because it ends,” he says. “I wouldn’t hold you so tightly now if I thought we could be here forever.”

“Oh, stop it. You’re being so relentlessly you.” She felt his laugh against her back, making them both tremble. “Sorry. I’ll be quiet now. I’m so tired.” “Me too.” Effy yawned. “But please go back to being you when I wake up. Don’t go anywhere.” “You don’t have to worry about that.”

Is the way she treats him supposed to be cute? Does the author actually think that?

Perhaps her classmates would not ask after her, nor her professors. Perhaps even her mother would be glad to finally be done with her. But if she did slip away, through one of those tricky little holes in the foundation of the world, Effy knew that Preston would spend the rest of his life searching for her.

So she just completely forgot about her roomate Rhia, then? She she knew this guy for a few weeks and they’re each other’s whole life now?

“I love you.” Effy pressed her forehead against his. “I love you,” Preston said, voice wavering. “I’m so sorry it’s ruined us both.”

This is just not believable. They knew each other for a few weeks at most.

“Well,” she said after a moment, “I suppose you have quite a lot of questions. Let’s sit.”

What a shittily resolved “mysetry”. She was there the whole time, never tried to talk to them, they never tried to talk to her, and instead of solving it themselves, she saved them in the end and revealed what they should have already known.

“Oh, I’m sure he saw a gap in the market for rote poetry that can teach nine-year-olds about metaphor and simile. The elder Marlowe was very shrewd. I’ve heard no similar praises sung of his son.”

How would she know any of this / “hear” things when she was isolated for decades?

Well—I was a woman when it was convenient to blame me, and a girl when they wanted to use me.

Either way, he recognized that the book could bring him money, fame. Even eternity.” “A place in the Sleeper Museum,” Effy said.

How would he just *know* this, though? Lol This is stupid, I’m sorry.

“I’ll answer them. Eventually. But it’s so much to remember. The weight of a memory is one thing. You get very used to swimming with it dragging you down. Once it’s loosed, you hardly know what to do with your body. You don’t understand its lightness.”

“You have no idea—I’ve read your book a hundred times, maybe more. It was a friend when I didn’t have any. It was the only thing that said I was sane when the whole world was telling me I was mad. It saved me in more ways than I can count. Because I knew no matter how afraid I felt, I wasn’t truly alone.”

“I wish I had fought.” Effy surprised herself by saying it. The words had leaped out of her throat, unbidden. “I know I beat him in the end, but for so many years all I could do was run and hide. I just sat there and let the water pour in around me. I didn’t know that I could fight back. I didn’t know how to do anything but wait to drown.” “Oh no, Effy. That’s not what I meant at all. You don’t have to take up a sword. Survival is bravery, too.”

The cover still bore that dead man’s name, but Effy opened the book to the page that held the first line. I was a girl when he came for me, beautiful and treacherous, and I was a crown of pale gold in his black hair. Effy held it out to her. “Will you sign it for me?” Without words, Angharad took it. She scrawled her name forcefully on the page in black ink. When she was finished, she said in a low voice, almost like a confession, “I’ve waited so long to do that.”

Aw