The Daughter Ship

May 1, 2023
A variety of narrators--including three children who live on a submarine--tell the story of one woman's claustrophobic domestic life. How many points of view narrate the story of Katherine, a mother of two in recovery, depends on how many selves you think the average person contains. Are we a composite of our past selves and our present self? Are we a compendium of all the different facets of our personality? Are we our ancestors, strands of whose DNA chaotically combine to form us as individuals? Are we all, really, several personalities living together on a submarine under the water of a dirty lake in Virginia? This latter forms the premise of Trundle's unruly and experimental debut. The protagonist, Katherine, is entangled in a problematic marriage and feels her mental health rapidly fraying. There is also Katherine's child self, nicknamed Katchie, who grows up in Virginia Beach with a falling-apart mother, a racist grandmother, and an ominous father. Inside the submarine, there are three presences: Star, a sex-obsessed teen; Smooshed Bug, an 8-year-old girl; and Truitt, a young boy who identifies with Katherine's father. There are all the dead relatives, descended from a Confederate general in Katherine's family tree. And there's Dead Girl herself, keeper of Katherine's most shocking secrets. Told in rapidly cycling vignettes like TV channels continually being flipped through, the novel is, at its core, about the trauma of growing up in a dysfunctional family and the way trauma and mental illness can fracture a psyche. (A family is a circuit, says one narrator. "A family is a haunting.") Despite this dire description, though, Trundle's book is as cheekily humorous as it is deadly serious, a chaotic performance art piece wearing a novel as a disguise. A wildly strange reading experience that disorients and exhilarates in equal measure.

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July 3, 2023
Trundle debuts with an inventive if convoluted portrait of a woman’s trauma. Katherine Burns lives in the suburbs with her two teenagers and successful, often absent husband. The fragmented narrative is told by various voices in Katherine’s head, with section headers signifying shifts between aspects of her splintered self: Star, who recounts how she started enjoying sex at 13; Truitt, captain of a metaphorical submarine that the various selves are traveling on; and Smooshed Bug, an eight-year-old who tries to stop Star from spiraling into a “dark place.” Katherine’s ancestors also show up, as does Katherine herself. Trundle opens with Truitt: “I want to introduce you to my girls. We all live together in a U-boat.... Somewhere underwater, and not too deep, is our submarine, a ghost ship, a wreck, a childhood.” As the disjointed story line progresses, there are hints of Katherine’s childhood abuse. When Katherine confronts her mother about it, she responds: “It takes two to tango.” In the present-day narrative, Katherine remains dedicated to her family, and seeks help in coming to terms with her past, eventually by checking into a mental hospital. While some of the voices are too similar in tone to track, Trundle convincingly portrays her protagonist’s warring inner life. It’s an intriguing exercise, though one that leaves the reader at sea. Agent: Alice Tasman, Jean V. Naggar Literary.