Book notes: The Salt Grows Heavy

By Cassandra Khaw.

Put this on my list on a recommendation by the Nytimes Best Horror Books of 2023.

Scoring:

• Axe for the frozen sea: 10/10.
• Page count: 97, but effective page count was higher, say 200? The prose was dense and I had to look up ~50 words in the dictionary.

I really enjoyed this book! By the 5th page it seemed like “Little Mermaid” gone wrong, with the mermaid and her daughters eating her prince/husband’s kingdom, and the ride only got wilder from there with delightful turns. I’ve never read another story like this. How did the author conceive of it I wonder? The prose was dense, and I had to stop every other page to get the dictionary, yet each word and sentence had impact, and it added to the feel and pleasure of the story in a cohesive and tidy way. Bravo!

Favorite line: “Man mistakes his own experiences as the canvas on which all truths are drawn. He is rarely correct in this respect.” (Chomp!)

Shout out to all the plague doctors in our lives!