nice feminist take on the little mermaid but sometimes the language was a little simple, too simple. i also found some of the references a little cringe… ( )

A darkly seething novel about women's empowerment and self-love if they can only identify and then break their shackles. It's an unflinching retelling of the fairy tale "The Little Mermaid" and examines the phenomenon of voicelessness well. The ending is not entirely satisfying, though rage can be quite cathartic. There is frank discussion of sexual violence for anyone who needs a warning. ( )

Hmm... There were concepts of this I really enjoyed but overall it was kind of disappointing (loved that last chapter though). ( )

Literary Merit: Great
Characterization: Good
Recommended: Yes
Level: High School

This book was an incredibly heavy read, and one that made me both angry and uncomfortable at times. To the author's credit, this seemed intentional; in fact, every aspect of this book seemed designed to evoke some sort of reaction, as the writing was very direct and heavy-handed in portraying its message. It quite honestly SMACKS YOU IN THE FACE with the fact that the women in this universe are highly oppressed, with their voices literally and figuratively being taken away from them. While I didn't see much feminism in this book until the very end, I still think it and the fairy tale it was based on have the potential to spark many discussions about feminism and the treatment of women in both literature and reality.

The Surface Breaks is essentially a feminist retelling of The Little Mermaid, focusing on a young mermaid who falls in love with a human, and seeks the help of a sea witch against her father's will. Much like the original Hans Christian Anderson fairy tale, this version does not shy away from the grittier aspects, and adding a few new ones to really make the reader squirm with discomfort. The story follows 15 year old Gaia (known to everyone else as Muirgen), a mermaid who dreams of going to the surface to find clues about what happened to her mother years ago. Her father has always insisted that she was captured and murdered by humans, but Muirgen is not so sure. As the youngest and most beautiful of the Sea King's daughters, Muirgen will soon be bonded to her father's general Zale, a man old enough to be her father. When she ventures to the surface and saves the life of a human boy named Oliver, however, Muirgen finds herself pining for him and wishing to escape her dire circumstances. Desperate, she seeks the help of the Sea Witch Ceto, who turns her into a human and gives her a month to earn the human's affections. If she fails, the Sea Witch warns Muirgen that she will die. As the story goes, Muigen is forced to give up her voice and bear excruciating pain while on the land, making her task that much more difficult to achieve.

From the very beginning, I found myself feeling both enraged and uncomfortable as I read this book. In Muirgen's world, mermaids are treated like prized animals, meant only to look pretty, stay silent, and breed. Her father is a manipulative, greedy, narcissistic man, who has banned all of the "undesirables" in his kingdom to the outskirts, where there are little resources and no support from the elite. These undesirables are merfolk who have failed to conform to his rules in some way, whether because they were unable to bear children or simply weren't thin or beautiful enough. Among these condemned merfolk are the Rusalka, what we would think of as sirens. Rusalka are powerful, green-haired mermaids who lure unsuspecting human men to their deaths, seeking eternal revenge for the hardships they faced when they were human women. The king, who is frightened of their power, banished them along with the Sea Witch, and tensions run high between the two groups.

Aside from the king, most of the men in this book (both human and merman) are absolute pieces of work, and I found myself wanting Gaia/Muirgen to murder all of them at the end. Zale, her betrothed, stops short of actually raping her, but sneaks into her room at night to have his way with her and force himself on her like she's his property. Oliver seems sweet at first, but is selfish and entitled, treating his grieving mother like garbage after the loss of his father. While his actions seem understandable at times (he has serious PTSD, and is lashing out due to his guilt and grief), he still does things in this book that make you want to slap some sense into him. Rounding out the group of horrible men are Oliver's friends, who range from kind (George) to complete monsters (Rupert). My reaction to most of this book was similar to the reaction I had when watching the movie Taken; I rooted so strongly for the hero that I wanted to see all of the villains brutally murdered in the worst ways. In this sense, Louise O'Neill succeeded in writing a feminist fairy tale, though it never feels very feminist until the very end.

I found it hard to believe this book was feminist for a majority of the story because the female characters don't really ever win. Gaia and her sisters are treated terribly, and even the human women have trouble earning respect. The only characters who stand out as feminist icons are the Sea Witch and Eleanor (Oliver's mom), two strong women who are scorned by society for daring to be independent. I actually really loved the Sea Witch in this book, as she's a heavyset woman who is extremely positive about her own body, and refuses to bow down to the king's whims and wishes. She warns Gaia at the beginning not to give up her voice and comfort for a man she doesn't know, but the desperate mermaid wants only to escape the pain of having to live the rest of her immortal life with a merman who uses and abuses her. Eleanor, similarly, has taken over a thriving family business, and struggles to get the men in her industry to respect her. Even Oliver, her own son, refuses to take her seriously, wanting nothing to do with the family business. While Eleanor can sometimes seem like a villain, I understood that she only wanted to protect her son from harm, and was wary of anyone intruding upon what's left of their family.

At every turn in this book, women and mermaids alike are being stepped on, from Muirgen to her frail grandmother, forced to sew pearls into her tail, which is ripping apart from years of carrying their weight. Mermaids are given no voice, and expected to shut up and make babies while looking pretty and singing on command. They are essentially trophies for mermen to fight over, which left me wondering, "Where on earth is the feminism in this?" On the contrary, this book made me realize how decidedly UN-feminist the original fairy tale is, as it forces a woman to give up her voice in order to please a man, a man who ends up marrying someone else anyways, thus killing the poor woman vying for his affections.

Every time someone made a sexual advance towards Muirgen (who is, I will remind you, only FIFTEEN), or any time the extent of her sacrifices is mentioned, I felt the need to put the book down for a bit. O'Neill does not play around with the sheer brutality of this story, from the witch cutting out Muirgen's tongue to the way Muirgen wakes up every morning as a human to find that her skin is falling off of the bones on her false legs. On the one hand, I admire O'Neill's commitment to revealing the true horrors of this fairy tale, but on the other I worry that this might be deeply triggering to anyone who has survived sexual assault or similar trauma. Though Muirgen is never raped, two separate men attempt to force themselves onto her, one of which doing so while she has no voice to scream for help. O'Neill, as I said before, does not hold back in describing everything in graphic detail, making it uncomfortable even for readers who have not experienced such trauma. It made me want to put a trigger warning on the front of the book, though as a librarian I completely understand why libraries are against labeling books in any way.

At this point, you might be wondering why I rated this book so highly if I felt there was no feminism in this feminist retelling of a classic fairy tale. My rating is owed entirely to the final chapter, where Muirgen FINALLY gets tired of the way she's been treated and decides to fight back against her abusers. Instead of merely disintegrating into sea foam as in the original fairy tale, Muirgen stands up to her father, empowering her sisters (who have sacrificed everything to try and save her) and forcing him to admit that he was the one who killed their mother for disobeying him and falling in love with a human herself. Realizing that she has powers that have been kept dormant her entire life, Muirgen unleashes them on the Sea King, striking him down and promising to do the same to Zale. She chooses not to kill Oliver for Eleanor's sake, instead vowing to become a Rusalka and seek vengeance against the kingdom that has supressed women for so long. After a long and painful story in which not one woman was able to succeed against a man, it felt SO GOOD to see Muirgen fight back and regain her voice.

After reading the final chapter, I soon realized that elements of feminism had been sprinkled throughout the entire book, from the sea witch's blatant defiance to Muirgen's realization that Oliver was not worthy of her love because of his selfishness and immaturity. There is even a hint of LGBT representation in Muirgen's sister Nia, who prefers mermaids but is forced to repress her very identity in fear of her father's retaliation. In the end, Muirgen explains to her sisters that they are worth FAR more than just their beauty, and that they should be brave and use their voices to fight back. Even though Muirgen must die at the end as in the original fairy tale, the book leaves us with a sequel hook as she promises to become Rusalka and seek revenge on Zale and her entire kingdom. After finishing the chapter, I found myself on an adrenaline high, feeling extremely proud of this character I'd grown attached to and wanting her to burn everyone who'd harmed her to the ground.

In this respect, I think O'Neill succeeded in bringing light to a lot of issues involving misogny, and the sheer shocking nature of her elaborate writing style forces the reader to really pause and think about what's going on in our real world today. This is by no means a perfect book, but I appreciate it for daring to take the reader out of his or her comfort zone, forcing us to look more deeply at issues affecting women.

As I said before, I also admire O'Neill's ability to inject feminism into what is perhaps the LEAST feminist of all of the fairy tales, bringing new life to a story we were all sure we knew already. While I would warn teens who had been through sexual assault that this book might be very upsetting, I also think it has the potential to help them through the healing process, as Muirgen learns to fight back and refuses to be defined by what has happened to her in the past. I think this is a very powerful book that is extremely well written, and also incredibly relevant in the time of #MeToo and #TimesUp. I truly hope O'Neill continues this story, as I would really love to watch Muirgen/Gaia pull a complete Liam Neeson on all of the men who wronged her in this book. ( )

I love this more female empowering take on a classic fairytale. I love how the main character grows and becomes stronger and the choice she makes at the end.

The UK hardback is gorgeous. The dust jacket art is fantastic and the naked cover art is pretty as well. ( )