My Favourite Section in Breathing Underwater

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It’s very hard to choose just one section from the whole novel as a favourite. I am very attached to the opening, which is based on a real memory, and which I had to write many times until it was exactly right as the beginning of the novel.

I love my final scene, which is a party, and where there are so many hopeful signs of life and love, and my final image of the candles in the little boats, sailing out into the darkness. But the section I have chosen is the one where Freya swims out to sea, alone and at night, in Chapter 24, because this was the hardest one to write of all. It is a pivotal scene.

I wanted it to have a different feel and tone to the other chapters. It’s the point where the ‘real’ world and the ‘other’ world – which might be called the imagination, or a spiritual dimension, or a projection of Freya’s own need and desperation – collide. As we get right inside this place deep in her head – deeper than thought, even, and closer to the subconscious – language itself has to change. The very short or broken sentences and single words, and the way they are set out on the page, are my attempt to convey this. At the point of real extremity, of crisis, when Freya is exhausted far out to sea, she comes closest to understanding what happened to her brother. She’s so close to him, it’s as if she conjures him up in her imagination – or maybe (I allow this interpretation too) she actually does. Maybe he is there beside her in spirit. And the thought of him, feeling so close to him, brings Freya the strength she needs to swim back to shore against the tide. The effect, afterwards, is one of release. At last she can let him go. Or rather, he lets her go. I found this quite moving to write. Some readers have told me how this chapter touched them deeply; especially those who have themselves lost someone they loved.