Head Underwater (Breathing Gets Harder)

We think Sara Bareilles is pretty neat. Sure, her favorite word is "love", and she attempts to use it about 45-80 times in each song, which eventually gets old. But she's still a pretty neat act. You might remember her 2007 single "Love Song", which starts with the phrase, "Head underwater, and you tell me to breathe easy for once. Breathing gets harder. Even I know that." What does this have to do with Young Adult literary criticism?

We recently read Alex Flinn's Breathing Underwater. BU tells the story of Nick, a sixteen year old boy whose ex-girlfriend Caitlin places a restraining order on him. At the beginning of the novel, Caitlin tells the judge that places the restraining order that Nick hit her. Nick goes to the stand a vehemently denies this. While he never believes this, he seems to believe that he still deserves to get the girl. The story continues in two paths; one explains what happens after the trial, and one recounts (in the form of a journal) how Nick got where he is in the first place.

The title comes from a discussion in anger management class about being terrifically angry. The class' teacher Mario describes being angry as like breathing underwater. You keep gulping, but you don't get any relief. Being pacifists who are slow to anger, we've never been there, but one might agree with this description.

We didn't dislike BU. We've read worse books. We've mentioned before that authors are taking a risky path when they write using a teen's voice. Flinn does a pretty good job of of emulating Nick's "spoiled kid from Florida/bratty jerk" tone, while displaying some of Nick's motivations too. The thing that kept us from really liking this book is that it's so dark and sad. We have trouble with books where we don't like the main character. Believe us, you won't like the main character. You'll probably hate him.

What we're trying to say is this: if you're okay with reading books about emotionally troubled bratty teens who hit their girlfriends, give this one a look. If you want to see how one attempts to come back from an irreconcilable mistake, read this book. If you're the sort that had (or are having) a troubling childhood and you need to read about someone who's worse off than you, read this book. Otherwise you shouldn't think of this as a must read.