Review | Under Water by Tara Menon is a compelling portrait of friendship
Tara Menon's debut novel, Under Water, explores the profound grief and emotional complexity of a female friendship. The narrative braids together timelines in Thailand and New York to contrast the protagonist's past happiness with her current, unfulfilled life.
Why it matters
The book addresses a perceived gap in literature regarding the depth of platonic love and the specific grief associated with losing a close friend.
In Tara Menon’s debut novel, Under Water, the primary narrator, Marissa, talks about reading Alfred Tennyson’s In Memoriam , an elegy to his dead friend Arthur Henry Hallam. “I felt like someone finally understood,” she says, pointing out that while our language is overwhelmed by the love and loss of lovers, “there is no place in our language for grief about friends, or love for them.”
The article is a standard literary review with no political or ideological agenda.
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