Learning Not to Drown by Anna Shinoda
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
An account of a young soul trapped in a tiny world.
I might have built this book up a bit too much for myself in the beginning. I don’t really know why, but the first chapters made me imagine something really horrific happening, and it made me hesitant about taking it down from my bookshelf for a long time… Because of that for the first half of it I was swimming in this ‘is that it?’ confusion, and it made more sense only towards the very end. I think this book gave me an opportunity to remind myself how for a lot of people even things that seem little and insignificant to me can be real nightmares. That there are a lot of people who are trapped in very small worlds, with no one to get them out.
I actually liked that this book focused on not painting things in black and white, even though I personally tend to. Even though I felt like not a single person reacts or relates to things like I would in their place, I can relate to loving people who try to break your life in pieces and learning how to get yourself out.
I also think that the writing is quite good, though I probably would’ve preferred it if some scenes and issues were explore a bit more deeply. I think this is one of those books where it makes a lot of sense to read it once, and re-read it right after, from the new perspective.
Keina Daria 