Georgia Under Water

Rating:
Summary: Incredible range of emotion and imagery
Review: Author Heather Sellers takes you on an awesome ride with her protaganist Georgia Jackson in this wonderful book. From teenage sexuality, an alcoholic father, the complexity of sibling relationships to just finding a way to survive in a dysfunctional family, Sellers paints a vivid picture of the emotion, angst and delight tied up in all this.

In our everyday lives, we tend to surround ourselves with all that is comfortable, known and a bit fluffy. Reading about the hard turns in life, the ugly, the downright uncomfortable is something most of us avoid. But by reading this gem of a book I found such value in exploring the deeper, darker realms of the human condition. Sellers takes you there. I felt a tenderness, almost maternal feeling for Georgia but I also recognized that she is on the same journey we are all on. Trying to figure it out and survive. Granted her circumstances are difficult and most of adults who surround do not offer the mentoring or emotional foundation that she needs. But you feel that she is going to be ok and that you would recognize her on the street (and want to invite her out for coffee.) I have urged friends to read this book, to understand that life isn't all that warm and fuzzy for everyone, to find value in that lesson and discover the bright words of an up and coming writer.

Rating:
Summary: Dreadful--I regretted buying this.
Review: I honestly cannot fathom how this book has such positive reviews. Unfortunately, I was foolish enough to buy this book without reading it first because of all the good reviews. This story consists of a bunch of different mini-plots, in which the author can't seem to keep her facts straight, any attempt at humor is dry, and all the stories are highly predictable. It is basically a book about a girl going through adolescence dealing with her crazy parents, brother (who I'm not sure if he is younger or older), and normal teenage feelings. She has some interesting experiences, but more of the book lags to overrule those. While reading this book, I kept wondering about simple basic facts because they change throughout the different stories. I also grew to dislike the protagonist, Georgia, because she was so whiny! It is not good to hate the protagonist. You can read this book for yourself, because apparently quite a few people think it's great, but I thought it was horrible.

Rating:
Summary: phenomenal
Review: It is 1:54 pm, and it has been almost 11 hours since I finished reading Heather Sellers' new collection of short stories, Georgia Under Water. They are phenomenal. Absolutely phenomenal. I didn't understand what she was doing for about the first half of her first short story, and then my brain finally woke up and I was able to _see_ what was being written. I have read so many hundreds of books about adolescent girls, and I love some of them a lot. Sitting in my suburban backyard on a blanket, I honest to God thought that I and L.M. Montgomery's Emily of New Moon were soul-linked, that I had oh-so-much-in-common with the protagonist of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, and that every single Madeleine L'Engle character was another extension of myself. However, I had never met Georgia. I had never known that she existed. Georgia is real. Not only is her mind sharp and soft and wanting, but her whole being is the impossible paradox of selfishness and altruism that I'm afraid I'm still exhibiting. Her thoughts are so specific and outrageous that I wish I could ignore them and separate them from myself as a reader, but I cannot. Why? Because I've thought them all before myself. They may not be the in the exact same forms, but some of them are so parallel to what was in my own head that it's eery. This book contains the missing bits and pieces of an adolescent girl's mind that I would swear to God never existed, but which, as I am forced to admit time and time again as I grow in love and understanding with Georgia, did. This "character" (though I hesitate to give her such a cold term) is honest and perceptive and blind and self-centered and full of impossible imaginations and biases and completely and utterly true. But this book. This is not a command, but I seriously think you won't be able to just check it out from the library. You won't be able to part with it. You'll want to see how it reads when you're in water (oh the water imagery is just beautiful). You'll have to underline different phrases and descriptions on it with something permanent, and you'll have to keep it on your bookshelf. Why? You'll want to just reassure yourself that a text like this exists.