Book Title:
Breathing Underwater
Author:
Alex Flinn
Genre:
Young Adult Fiction / Overcoming anger and abuse
Age Appropriateness
• Nicholas Andreas is a very angry, abused, and abusive sixteen-year-old
narrator
• This is a mature book. There is a lot of vividly recounted violence, mostly
related in flashbacks and directed primarily by the hand of Nick against
his girlfriend. There is also drinking at parties and on a trip down to the
Keys. There is a scene of dangerous reckless driving. Nick and his
friends use profanity frequently, from calling each other “asshole” and
saying “I shit you not,” and to his constant references to his girlfriend as a
“bitch,” “slut” and “whore.” There is a bigoted lowlife in the anger group
named Kelly who makes racist and misogynistic comments (“What do you
call a woman with two black eyes? The new and improved model.”) and
Nick relates to use through flashbacks in a journal his own horribly cruel
emotional abuse of his girlfriend: (“Go hang with the geek brigade. You
fit right in, you fat loser.” “Isn’t Caitlyn beautiful? Almost makes you
forget how fat and ugly she was a few month ago…Come on, Cat. Show
them how hot you look…Show them your tits, Cat…Come on, I want
everyone to see what I’m getting.” “I’ve heard you sing. You suck. I
don’t want you embarrassing both of us.”)
Elements of the Review
• Plot summary
Nick Andreas is sixteen, goes to Key Biscayne High and lives in a
beautiful house with his rich father. As the story begins, he is being sentenced
to anger management classes and to keep a journal by a judge acting on a
restraining order complaint filed by Nick’s former girlfriend Caitlyn (Cat).
Nick is regularly beaten by his father at home, and the story of the past few
months unfolds through his journal entries, where we learn of his best friend
Tom, a fellow football player unaware of his friend’s dangerous home
situation and whose house provides sanctuary from his father’s abuse. We see
Nick meet Cat, a brainy gifted singer who recently went to fat camp and lost a
tremendous amount of weight. They quickly begin going out, and
interspersed with revelatory anger management meetings, he tells us in his
journal of the progress of their relationship, initially unaware that he was
describing a pattern of isolation and emotional abuse that led inexorably to the
first slap and then to the horrible beating he gave her after she “defied” him
and performed a sexy song at a talent show. Things come to a head as he
violates the restraining order, writes a revelatory poem for his honors English
class, and begins to see himself in the dangerous Leo, a fellow member of the
anger class whose girlfriend was bought off by his family and dropped the
charges. Nick becomes completely isolated, but his catharsis helps him
realize that the anger and insecurities he carries inside him are causing him to
feel like he is constantly “Breathing Underwater,” and that it is his fear of
abandonment and loss of love, along with the physical abuse of his father, that
have set him on this path. By the end of the book and his journal, Nick is a
different person, and he does renew an old relationship, but not with whom
you might think.
•
Literary devices
Nick is the first person narrator. The story is told in two time frames, the
present (after the hearing and sentencing to the class and the writing of the
journal) and the past details of his relationship with Cat (in a handwriting
font, his “journal entries.”) The different fonts help to keep things from
getting confusing, and we hear the anger in his narrative and journal voice
fade as he realizes what he has really done.
•
Conflicts
The initial conflict is with Nick and Caitlyn – he thinks that he can win her
back. There are other conflicts (he hates her new boyfriend, also a
football player, the conflicts within the anger group, his trashed friendship
with Tom, and the abusive relationship with his father). Ultimately,
though, the conflict is internal – Nick wrestling with the abusive man he
could become for the rest of his life if he does not learn to apply the
techniques his teacher and group leader, Mario, tries to impart to the
group.
•
Characters
Nick is a great character – unapologetically self-absorbed and an obsessed
controlling jerk who treats his girlfriend like a psychological punching
bag. He sounds like he should sound. The father is rather flat, but that is
mostly because all Nick knows about him is the back of his hand and his
cruelty (he sells the ’68 Mustang he gave Nick for his birthday without
discussing it with him – a car that has sat in the garage for years after he
and Nick worked on restoring it, sitting all that time because Nick
scratched it waxing it for his dad when he was eight; when he finds
condoms in Nick’s things he pours his son a Scotch and toasts the fact that
he is now a man, but yells at him not to trust the condoms because one
“ruined his life” – meaning the birth of Nick, his only child.) Tom is a
good friend, but is almost too good. It is bothersome that he didn’t
intervene earlier with Nick and Caitlyn, after witnessing all the verbal
abuse. Caitlyn is disappointing, succumbing so easily to the verbal abuse,
and having no thoughts about leaving Nick until he slaps her, but we can
•
attribute this to her low self-esteem, a result of being raised by her
appearance-obsessed mother (who dresses provocatively and hits on
Tom). There are other utility characters, like Tiny, the paradoxically
named huge girlfriend-beater in the group with the surprising level of
insight; Peyton, the leader of the sorority-like Sphinx girls club that Cat
joins, who typifies the tolerance and propagation of cruelty in the
“popular” circles that Nick runs (ran) in, and Leo, the coldly abusive foil
for Nick, the dark mirror in which he sees himself. There are a lot of
characters to keep track of, but only the really essential ones get major
treatment, so it is not confusing.
Theme
The theme is the need to break free of the cycle of abuse and anger that
fuels Nick’s beatings of Caitlyn. This is not a pretty theme, and Flinn
does a great job of giving us reasons to hate Nick, and then having us
come to believe that he can redeem himself through insight and catharsis.
•
Style
Flinn does a great job with a male narrator; she is on par with Hinton in
that respect. Nick sounds like what he is; a privileged but secretly abused,
scared young man who doesn’t know how to express his feelings in
words…yet. The choice of telling the story through the flashbacks of the
journal is great, and we do see Nick grow as he tells us the story.
•
Cultural references
The world of privileged Key Biscayne High students will be unfamiliar to
most readers, but will resonate because certain things are universal. Not
everyone has huge houses on the beach with spectacular views, or a
convertible Mercedes or can take road trips down to Key West, but most
high schoolers have a lunch crowd, have hung out at people’s houses, have
heard of secret clubs and initiations, and have seen inconsiderate guys
mistreat their girlfriends. There are a couple of references to Madonna,
Abercrombie and Fitch, and the World Class Wreckin’ Cru’s “Gang Bang
Song” that do date the book, but they are just in passing, and are not
essential to the plot (besides, at this point, Madonna is as entrenched in the
public consciousness as Elvis or the Beatles). Nothing should really get in
the way of truly understanding the dynamics, and the turmoil that is the
relationship of Cat and Nick is free from these dated references.
•
Diversity
Being that the story is set in Key Biscayne, there is ethnic diversity, and it
is represented through Tom’s girlfriend, Liana, the anger group leader,
Mario, and the abusive Leo. The group itself is very diverse, which is nice.
(There is even a police officer who is taking the class because he hit his
wife for the crime of leaving water spots on the glasses), There is no
cultural information that you need to understand the book.
•
Readability –The Fog index is 5.8 and the Flesch-Kincaid index is 4.7.
Awards – web search can identify any awards received
Reading Skills/Benchmarks
• LA.A.2.4.2 - determines the author's purpose and point of view and their
effects on the text – (students could write about how the points of view of
Nick changes throughout the text, or how his point of view changes how
he relates to events that happen in the novel)
• LA.A.1.4.1 -- selects and uses prereading strategies that are appropriate to
the text, such as discussion, making predictions, brainstorming, generating
questions, and previewing to anticipate content, purpose, and organization
of a reading selection. (students could predict how the story will end as it
approaches the climax)
• LA.A.2.4.3 -- describes and evaluates personal preferences regarding
fiction and nonfiction. (students could read a similar book – see the list
below – and compare the two, citing reasons why they prefer one over
another)
• LA.A.2.4.6 -- selects and uses appropriate study and research skills and
tools according to the type of information being gathered or organized,
including almanacs, government publications, microfiche, news sources,
and information services. (students could further research the topics of
anger management and relationship abuse and present the information to
the class)
Connections:
• The cross-curricular connections could be a study of the psychology of
anger and abuse. You could look at the structure and effectiveness of
anger management strategies in a health class.
• This is not part of a series.
• Dealing with anger and abuse:
o Touching Spirit Bear, by
o Hero, By S.L. Rottman
o Monster, by Walter Dean Myers
o You Don’t Know Me, by David Klaas
o Crash, by Jerry Spinelli
o Shattering Glass, by Gail Giles
o Stotan, by Chris Crutcher
o Ironman, by Chris Crutcher
o Who the Man, by Chris Lynch
o We All Fall Down, by Robert Cormier
o Rumblefish, S.E. Hinton
o Fighting Ruben Wolfe, by Markus Zusak
Audience Recommendation
• This is not a book for most middle schoolers, due to the violence, thematic
elements of abuse, and profanity. It is a great read for any male in high
school, if only for them to see how hateful and wrong it is to abuse a
woman even verbally.
• This would be a good book for shared (small group) or independent
reading, but is a problem for read alouds because of the profanity and
vivid depictions of cruelty and violence.
Filename:
breathingunderwater
Directory:
C:\Documents and Settings\Calvin\Desktop\reviews
Template:
C:\Documents and Settings\Calvin\Application
Data\Microsoft\Templates\Normal.dot
Title:
PERSPECTIVES TO CONSIDER
Subject:
Author:
doughertyl
Keywords:
Comments:
Creation Date:
6/15/2005 11:36 AM
Change Number:
7
Last Saved On:
7/29/2006 9:37 AM
Last Saved By:
Jennifer and Calvin
Total Editing Time: 109 Minutes
Last Printed On:
7/29/2006 9:37 AM
As of Last Complete Printing
Number of Pages: 5
Number of Words:
1,563 (approx.)
Number of Characters: 8,910 (approx.)