The Deeper the Water the Uglier the Fish

About the Author Katya Apekina has had stories published in The Iowa Review, Santa Monica Review, Joyland, and appeared on the Notable List of Best American Nonrequired Reading 2013. Her poetry and prose translations appeared in Night Wraps the Sky: Writings by and about Mayakovsky (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2008), which was short-listed for the Best Translated Book Award. Apekina co-wrote the screenplay for the feature film New Orleans, Mon Amour, which premiered at SXSW in 2008 and starred Elisabeth Moss and Christopher Eccleston. Born in Moscow, she currently resides in Los Angeles. Product Description *2018 Los Angeles Times Book Prize Finalist *Longlisted for The Crooks Corner Book Prize *Longlisted for the 2019 VCU Cabell First Novelist Award *Shortlisted for the 2020 William Saroyan International Prize for Writing for Fiction *A Best Book of 2018 Kirkus Reviews, BuzzFeed News, Entropy, LitReactor, LitHub *35 Over 35 Award 2018 *One of the Most Anticipated Books of the Fall Vulture, Harper's BAZAAR, BuzzFeed News, Publishers Weekly, The Millions, Bustle, Fast Company Its 16-year-old Edie who finds their mother Marianne dangling in the living room from an old jump rope, puddle of urine on the floor, barely alive. Upstairs, 14-year-old Mae had fallen into one of her trances, often a result of feeling too closely attuned to her mothers dark moods. After Marianne is unwillingly admitted to a mental hospital, Edie and Mae are forced to move from their childhood home in Louisiana to New York to live with their estranged father, Dennis, a former civil rights activist and literary figure on the other side of success. The girls, grieving and homesick, are at first wary of their fathers affection, but soon Mae and Edies close relationship begins to fall apartEdie remains fiercely loyal to Marianne, convinced that Dennis is responsible for her mothers downfall, while Mae, suffocated by her striking resemblances to her mother, feels pulled toward their father. The girls move in increasingly opposing and destructive directions as they struggle to cope with outsized pain, and as the history of Dennis and Mariannes romantic past clicks into focus, the family fractures further. Moving through a selection of first-person accounts and written with a sinister sense of humor, The Deeper the Water the Uglier the Fish powerfully captures the quiet torment of two sisters craving the attention of a parent they cant, and shouldnt, have to themselves. In this captivating debut, Katya Apekina disquietingly crooks the lines between fact and fantasy, between escape and freedom, and between love and obsession. "The structure, characters and storyline are all refreshingly original, and the writing is nothing short of gorgeous. It's a stunningly accomplished book, and Apekina isn't afraid to grab her readers by the hand and take them to some very dark and very beautiful places." Michael Schaub, NPR Review "The Deeper the Water the Uglier the Fish is brilliantly structured, with multiple characters narrating the events of the novel. It's an unusual technique that Apekina uses to stunning effect, creating a kind of narrative tension that propels the novel forward... The structure, characters and storyline are all refreshingly original, and the writing is nothing short of gorgeous. It's a stunningly accomplished book, and Apekina isn't afraid to grab her readers by the hand and take them to some very dark and very beautiful places." Michael Schaub, NPR "Katya Apekinas The Deeper the Water the Uglier the Fish has a dark sense of humor, and an interest in the soul. A layered account of the truths of a torn family, two sisters depart from their broken mother and return to their literary father. The sisters fall apart from each other, one toward her mother and the other toward her father This impressive debut behaves like a great Russian novel transposed onto an American family. Katya Apekina discusses writing an emotional autobiography