The Deeper the Water the Uglier the Fish: A Novel

The Crook’s Corner Book Prize, Longlist

VCU Cabell First Novelist Award, Finalist

It's 16-year-old Edie who finds their mother Marianne dangling in the living room from an old jump rope, puddle of urine on the floor, barely alive. Upstairs, 14-year-old Mae had fallen into one of her trances, often a result of feeling too closely attuned to her mother's dark moods. After Marianne is unwillingly admitted to a mental hospital, Edie & Mae are forced to move from their childhood home in Louisiana to New York to live with their estranged father, Dennis, a former civil rights activist & literary figure on the other side of success.

The girls, grieving & homesick, are at first wary of their father's affection, but soon Mae & Edie's close relationship begins to fall apart―Edie remains fiercely loyal to Marianne, convinced that Dennis is responsible for her mother's downfall, while Mae, suffocated by her striking resemblances to her mother, feels pulled toward their father. The girls move in increasingly opposing & destructive directions as they struggle to cope with outsized pain, & as the history of Dennis and Marianne's romantic past clicks into focus, the family fractures further.

Moving through a selection of first-person accounts & written with a sinister sense of humor, The Deeper the Water the Uglier the Fish powerfully captures the quiet torment of two sisters craving the attention of a parent they can't, & shouldn't, have to themselves. In this captivating debut, Katya Apekina disquietingly crooks the lines between fact & fantasy, between escape & freedom, & between love & obsession.

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Katya Apekina has had stories published in The Iowa Review, Santa Monica Review, West Branch, Joyland, PANK & has appeared on the Notable List of Best American Nonrequired Reading 2013. She translated poetry & prose for Night Wraps the Sky: Writings by & about Mayakovsky.