Everything Under

Author: Daisy Johnson
Publisher: Jonathan Cape 2018

Prior to the Industrial Revolution, the daily life of most humans ran its course within three ancient frames: the nuclear family, the extended family, and the local intimate community.  (Intimate community is a group of people who know one another well and depend on each other for survival.) 

Yuval Noah Harari in “Sapiens—A brief History of Humankind

This is the story of a daughter and her mother. They live in a river—with other similar river people—and their world has very limited contacts with the “real world”.  A person from the “real world” can move into this “river territory”, however, that person may or may not be accepted into the river community.  Even a dog finds it hard to move in.  The people of the river community have their own beliefs (myths), own customs, and a commercial system.  They have to use the “real world money” and some canned food sometimes, but mostly they find their own food from the forest or buy them from other river people.  They do not believe in the “real world justice system” or the “real world police.”

They have added their own words to the “real world language” when they communicate with each other.  A Harpiedoodle is a small annoyance like a dropped plate or mostly shouted to denote anything that hadn’t gone quite to plan.  Something comfortable or enjoyable, often soft or warm, is duvduv.  Anything that came by in the river is a sprung.  People on boats are human-sprungs; carcasses of birds are dead-sprungs.

A man-sprung and a woman-sprung with three children-sprungs spoke of a fourth child-sprung whom they no longer had.  Their grief was bare, like a strong light.

Why didn’t they call someone?

Who would they call?

The police?

No. They wouldn’t have done that.  What would they said to the police?  Would they have told them about the things they’d seen—things everyone else had seen—in the water?  How they know what had taken their child although they couldn’t explain what it was.  

And then when the police said, that is not possible; things like that don’t happen here. Tell us what really happened to your child.  What would they say?

They would say, we saw it.  We know what it was.  You need to catch it.  And the police would say, you ‘re lying to us. What are you trying to hide?  Do you understand?

We don’t call police here.  We don’t call fire engines or ambulances.  It’s always been that way.  They don’t know anything about us and we know all we need to about them.

But what happens when something goes wrong?

We look after it.  There is no more to said.

This novel is a duvduv mystery in that “river world”.