Everywhere the Undrowned, Stephanie Clare Smith
Everywhere the Undrowned, Stephanie Clare Smith
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Everywhere the Undrowned
A Memoir of Survival and Imagination

Author: Stephanie Clare Smith

Narrator: Natasha Soudek

Unabridged: 4 hr 21 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 11/19/2024


Synopsis

This is what it is to survive. You find what floats and you hold on. Even if it is smaller than you.

Holding on is all fourteen-year-old Stephanie Clare Smith can do when she's left home alone in New Orleans during the summer of 1973. As she seeks to ease her solitude through her summer school algebra class, her wandering in the city, and her friendship with a streetcar operator, adults—particularly men—fail her again and again, with devastating consequences.

Dreamlike and beautifully paced, this lyrical debut memoir traces the events of one harrowing summer and its repercussions throughout Stephanie's life, including her work with families in crisis and as a caregiver for the mother who abandoned her all those years ago. Through a mosaic of trauma and transcendence, memory and metaphor, scarcity and neglect, Stephanie reveals how she built connections in and to a world that had largely left her behind. Her hard-won survival echoes that of countless other survivors whose stories are never told, and her strength stands as a testament to the power of creativity.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Kathy on June 23, 2024

I read Everywhere the Undrowned earlier in this year. I knew that I had to read it again. A review soon to follow. This is an absolutely exquisite book. The writing is incredible on so many levels. Here is my review: In the summer of 1973, a mother and her boyfriend pack up the silver Honda Z for an......more

Goodreads review by Debbie on November 28, 2023

"Everywhere the Undrowned" by Stephanie Clare Smith is a mesmerizing exploration of a world both hauntingly familiar and exquisitely strange. Smith's prose weaves a tapestry of lyrical beauty and dark mystery, immersing readers in a vivid dreamscape that blurs the lines between reality and fantasy. T......more

Goodreads review by David on April 05, 2024

I thought this book was a wonderful, heart-wrenching read. I don't think I have ever been so affected by words on paper. I saw that someone had compared it to Sylvia Plath, but to me it felt like James Joyce, a combination of the observations of everyday life like in Ulysses, but in minuscule detail......more

Goodreads review by MERRYN on April 25, 2024

this memoir will stay with me forever. incredible writing.......more

Goodreads review by Thomas on February 11, 2024

I would rate this book 3 1/2 stars out of 5. This is a short read told by the author about her time growing up in New Orleans starting around the age of fourteen with a mother you could say at best was flighty and making the author the ultimate latchkey kid to the extreme. At the start of this book,......more