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A review by getinkshedtears
Everything Under by Daisy Johnson
3.0
It's not a bad book. I didn't hate it. I wanted to like it. Ostensibly it has a lot of the things I enjoy in a book. But once I realized it's just Oedipus (there may be indications earlier, but for me it was the first mention of a limp), thoughts of OH I SEE WHAT YOU DID THERE overwhelmed my reading experience ... also the writeups and the book itself really oversell the whole "they speak their own made-up language" thing, which I was hoping would be deeper. This is not incomprehensible twinspeak; this is a handful of made-up words that rises a level or two above what a lot of families and really anybody who spends too much time together ends up with.
Ultimately I wasn't thrilled by the mythic but well-trod twists and turns, and I'm left wanting to know how the narrator went from uneducated, unsocialized, abandoned teenager with presumably no official record of her existence to cottage-owning lexicographer, something that I assume requires at least a college-level degree. Unless you can walk into the dictionary office and floor everyone by saying "harpiedoodle."
Ultimately I wasn't thrilled by the mythic but well-trod twists and turns, and I'm left wanting to know how the narrator went from uneducated, unsocialized, abandoned teenager with presumably no official record of her existence to cottage-owning lexicographer, something that I assume requires at least a college-level degree. Unless you can walk into the dictionary office and floor everyone by saying "harpiedoodle."