Michelle Tea's Mermaid in Chelsea Creek is perfect for McSweeney's because it defies categorization. Much like Neil Gaiman's last book, The Ocean at the End of the Lane, Mermaid has all the trappings of a young adult title but is far more disturbing than what we'd want our young ones reading (at least I think, but in these days of Twilight and such, maybe that red line has shifted as well). We have a young girl as the main character, an ordinary girl who discovers that she actually comes from a secret lineage of magical beings - a pretty common theme from Harry Potter to, um, other stuff like that.
However, the story owes a much larger debt to Neil Gaiman, and through him, to Diana Wynne Jones - indeed, even the main character's name, Sophie, comes straight from Howl's Moving Castle.
Stranger, though, was when I jumped to Michelle Tea's wikipedia page to learn a little more about the author. At first I thought, oh, this must be someone else with the same name because this person "toured with the Sex Worker's Art Show" and "is the co-writer of the weekly astrology column Double Team Psychic Dream." Couldn't possibly be the author of this delightful YA novel, however disturbing it may be at times. But it is the same person. Oh. Interesting.
On an unrelated note, my one gripe with this book - surprising given the publisher's high standards for design - is the horrendous quality of the illustrations. They appear to have been drawn by someone who simply cannot draw - each depiction of Sophie looks rather different from the rest, and his depictions of pigeons are so strained you can see the sweat drips on the page. Illustrator Jason Polan's wikipedia page brags that he has been published in The New Yorker, but that was a single cartoon back in 2006 - something I'm sure his mother was quite proud of, but he's no James Thurber, and that's saying an awful lot.
But back to the book. Mermaid is best suited for adults like you and I who now and then need to put aside Syria and global warming and our tribulations at work and home and indulge in a sweeping, gripping fantasy. It veers off course unexpectedly and ends up galaxies away from where it seemed to be headed. And it starts right on page one. Sophie and her quasi-friend Ella are playing the pass-out game, where they take turns helping each other asphyxiate into unconsciousness. While buzzing back to the world, Sophie sees a mermaid in the horribly polluted creek, and then is struck by a strange desire:
Suddenly, Sophie craved salt. In the dry cave of her mouth, down her throat, which felt strange and thick, into her tumbling tummy, she craved a bag of pretzels, the rocky salt collected at the bottom, tipped straight back into her mouth - the reward, she thought, for polishing off the snack. ... Faster than her best friend could cry out in disgust, Sophie tugged her still-shimmering body to the edge of the water and plunged her face into it, mouth open, inhaling the dirty creek into her, the perfect, necessary salt of it obliterating the darker flavors of things she'd rather not think about. The sharpest taste, salt; she felt it travel through her like a delicious knife, the shock of it cutting through her, making her want more more more. She sucked at the creek hungrily, like a wild animal digging into its kill ...
So right on the first few pages we have several things we wouldn't want our daughters doing, but written in the most captivating manner imaginable. And that's the core of this book - the story truly captures your imagination and leaves you hungering for more; like Sophia and her salt craving, you'll find yourself tipping back the pretzel bag to enjoy the last, sharply stinging bits of this book. Fortunately, Tea has promised this to be the first in a trilogy, so we have those tangy treats to look forward to.
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