Published by Orbit
Publication date - 25 April 2024
Source - review copy
A beautiful discovery outside the window of her underwater home prompts the reclusive E. to begin a correspondence with renowned scholar Henerey Clel. The letters they share are filled with passion, at first for their mutual interests, and then, inevitably, for each other.
Together, they uncover a mystery from the unknown depths, destined to transform the underwater world they both equally fear and love. But by no mere coincidence, a seaquake destroys E.'s home, and she and Henerey vanish.
A year later, E.'s sister Sophy, and Henerey's brother Vyerin, are left to solve the mystery of their siblings' disappearances with the letters, sketches and field notes left behind. As they uncover the wondrous love their siblings shared, Sophy and Vyerin learn the key to their disappearance - and what it could mean for life as they know it.
E lives alone in the underwater house of her childhood. Designed and built by her deceased mother, a famous scholar, her siblings have moved away, her father is adrift on the seas. One day she writes to scholar Henerey who resides above on a floating university. The pair strike up a friendship that soon develops into more. But then they disappear, believed dead. As E's sister Sophy and Henerey's brother Vyerin share the letters sent by the siblings to each other the story of their relationship and the truth of what happened to them slowly emerges.
I'm a huge fan of epistolary novels. There's something about letters that brings an intimacy to the story, a switch between characters that is smooth and slowly adds layers to them and the narrative. Here we read letters between each sibling, between E and Henerey, and between Vyerin and Sophy. In those letters we learn the history of each, how they met their partners, and the watery world they all inhabit.
And that world is fascinating. A flooded planet, with just one land mass, the focus of the people inhabiting it is learning. Scholars are held in high regard so much so that other occupations and people fade into the background.
The letters also reveal how the characters feel in a subtle way. E has mental health issues which lead her to be a virtual hermit, never venturing from the house and only seeing family who visit her there. Seeing the relationship develop between her and Henerey is bittersweet knowing at the start how they both vanish.
The letters allow the reader to dip into the book or to get caught up in the correspondence, to read longer passages or short missives similar to texts or emails.
The underwater setting is cosy rather than claustrophobic. I could imagine E's house, see the fish swimming by. I could envisage Henerey's floating office and the pitch darkness of Sophy's underwater field study.
This a book to dive into and be enveloped in. Simply lovely.
You can buy a copy of the book here.
(This is an affiliate link. You can also purchase A Letter to the Luminous Deep from your local independent bookshop.)
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