What We’re Reading: Clancy of the Undertow

Clancy of the Undertow by Christopher Currie (Text Publishing, December 2016)

Like any other closeted teenage lesbian whose favorite hobby is chasing frogs with the local nature club, Clancy Underhill knows a bit about being an outsider. But everything goes from bad to worse when her dad, a construction worker, is involved in—and maybe the cause of—an accident that kills Barwen High School’s power couple. Clancy’s family is ostracized. Poorly-spelled graffiti accusing her dad of being a “MURDRER” appears on their garage overnight. Even Clancy’s after-school job, working at a make-up kiosk at the mall, suffers when customers refuse to buy anything from the child of an alleged killer.

There are bright spots, though: a new girl in nature club, Nancy, who hasn’t even been in town long enough to know to hate Clancy (and who knows that rhyming names = instant BFFs). Angus, Clancy’s slacker and conspiracy theorist older brother (whose biggest aspiration in life is to catch live video footage of Barwen’s version of Bigfoot), starts to be a little less of a jerkwad. And the gorgeous, unattainable Sasha Strickland is maybe (just maybe) showing an interest.

There’s a lot packed into the 280 pages of this book, to say the least, but it never crosses over into the realm of the contrived and overdramatic; it’s a complicated book because being a teenager is, well, complicated. From her home life to extracurriculars to friends and more, Clancy’s world feels three-dimensional in a way that many YA novels fall short of. It’s visceral and complex and so, so, so real (especially to anyone who knows what it feels like to be capital-D Different in a small town). Like many contemporary/”literary” novels, the plot is less intense than that of its sci-fi or fantasy counterparts, but Currie’s writing makes the stakes just as high and just as engaging. Clancy getting asked out on a maybe-date by Sasha Strickland is just as exciting as it would be if she was learning sorcery, or plotting to overthrow the Queen of England.

Another highlight of this book (though, if I’m being honest, the book is so good the whole thing could be considered a highlight) is Clancy’s narration. She’s bitterly sarcastic, surprisingly perceptive, and kind of an asshole in the way that many teenagers are. Here’s a sample paragraphs taken from Clancy and Sasha’s first maybe-date at a roadside diner:

We’re sitting there with matching milkshakes, Sasha and me. Somehow, things aren’t going like I always thought they would. Firstly, she invited me, when in fact our first date was meant to be the result of a concerted campaign I’d waged to convince her of my attractiveness/worth. Secondly, we’re sitting face to face under twenty-four-hour fluorescents, with the unromantic buzz of air-con in our ears and endless flabby wedges of seated trucker’s arsecrack as our view.

I’ve often walked past Sasha’s mum’s travel agency, where she works, even though I never went in. Hoping for a quick glimpse as I went past, a fleeting view of her profile: white blouse, blue scarf, spidery telephone headset.

Now I have her all to myself it’s almost too much. There’s no more mystery.

I’ve never thought about what her voice would really sound like, or how she’d have a tiny pimple beside her nose or how she’d spin a milkshake container a quarter-turn every few seconds like if she didn’t it would disappear.

But then she smiles, and I go all warm, and I forget any doubts that this is the right thing to be doing.

Okay, so that’s more than a paragraph, but that’s the thing about Currie’s writing: it’s addictive. I couldn’t stop reading it any more than I could stop at eating just a single Pringle.

Beyond the world-building and addictive narrative voice, Clancy of the Undertow is refreshing in that it’s a book with a queer narrator without being a Queer Book™, by which I mean a book that centers on a) coming out, b) homophobia, or c) queer trauma. Are Queer Books™ important? Totally. But when they’re the only places you see queer characters, it can feel more than a little repetitive and exhausting. Clancy’s identity and her coming out are definitely a large part of this book, but they’re not the stars. The book spends equally as much time developing Clancy’s friendship with Nancy and examining Clancy’s tenuous relationship to her brother Angus and the rest of her family. Clancy’s friendship with Nancy in particular shines. It’s rocky, flawed, and beautifully human. Clancy is so anxious to not be alone that she unknowingly (and sometimes knowingly) sabotages their friendship, over and over again, in a cycle that is all-too-familiar for this former teenage angst queen.

In short, if I could, I would throw free copies of this book from the rooftops just to get them into the hands of every young adult reader in the world. As a young adult novel from an independent Australian publisher, Clancy of the Undertow is going to have to fight for its own space on U.S. bookshelves. But goddammit if I’m not going to be here fighting for it.

What “hidden gems” have you found lately?