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Mohrbooks Literary Agency
Sebastian Ritscher
Original language
English
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ONE WOULD THINK THE DEEP

Claire Zorn

A visceral exploration of adolescence and the complex ways in which maternal relationships impact masculine identity.
‘Sam stared at the picture of the boy about to be tipped off the edge of the world: the crushing weight of the water about to pummel him. He knew that moment exactly: the disbelief that what was about to happen could even be possible — the intake of breath before the flood.’

On a summer’s night in 1997, seventeen year old Sam Hudson calls his estranged aunt from the pay phone in the hospital gift shop. His mother has died and at the very time his whole world should be opening up it begins to close in on him. With no other family left, Sam is moved to the South Coast of New South Wales to live with the aunt and cousins he hasn’t seen for seven years.

He remembers his cousin Minty as the kid with the white-blonde bowl cut who used to piss in Nana Hudson’s geraniums. Now Minty is on the edge of a professional surfing career and he is still the same: tightly wound energy and labrador enthusiasm — a glint in his eye like he’d let Sam in on some genius plot to hitchhike to the Amazon or build a nuclear bomb in the garage. Sam allows himself to be absorbed into Minty’s world of adrenaline and heady masculinity, but what at first is Sam’s escape from reality soon unravels his family’s history of violence and the parts of himself he is desperate to forget.

Claire Zorn is one of the rising stars in YA fiction, her previous two books have been highly praised and awarded (see over), they have sold to Taiwan and Germany. She is invited regularly to major festivals, schools and libraries. Claire lives in Australia on the south coast of New South Wales with her husband and young family.
Available products
Book

Published 2016-05-30 by UQP

Book

Published 2016-05-30 by UQP

Comments

Claire Zorn’s previous books were award winners "One Would Think the Deep" has raised the bar even higher.

One Would Think The Deep by Claire Zorn has won the Book of the Year Award for Older Readers in the Children’s Book Council of Australia awards. These are major awards in Australia for children’s and YA literature, so it’s a fantastic win Read more...

Zorn has proven, again, that she is a writer who feels deeply the complex emotional lives of teenagers, and is not afraid to lay them bare.

Claire Zorn: ONE WOULD THINK THE DEEP (UQP 2016) has won the WA Premier’s Literary award for THE PROTECTED (UQP 2015) and has been shortlisted for the Barbara Jefferis award.

Zorn has captured 1997, the year in which the story is set, perfectly. The music references, especially, help to shape and give a strong sense of the characters and their world. Zorn’s portrayal of Aunty Lorraine as the nicotine-ravaged, world-weary single mum to two teenage boys was so real that I’m sure she must exist, and that I’ve met her in my past. It is very clear why, with such talent, Claire Zorn won the Prime Minister’s Literary Award for her previous novel, The Protected.

Zorn’s descriptions of surfing and the sea are sensory, allegorical and charged with adrenalin. Her title and symbolism come from a quote in the biblical Book of Job (known for its suffering protagonist) about the Leviathan monster that leaves a ‘glistening wake; one would think the deep had white hair’. She draws further parallels between Sam, surfing and suffering.

As an exploration of grief, it’s harrowing and heart-breaking. As a character study, Sam is a wonder – a mixture of vulnerability and sensitivity, combined with rage, and physical and psychological displacement.

One Would Think the Deep (UQP, June 2016) was recently shortlisted in the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards. Read more...