In the book (and the song) these women become a new aquatic race of merpeople. Their mothers die, but the children who can breathe in the womb, find themselves able to breath in the sea. In the book, which Rivers Solomon develops from Clippings song, the merpeople, who call themselves wajinru, are deeply traumatized by their origin, and pass their memories onto a single historian. The historian Yetu carries the burden of memory within her, sharing it on just one single day a year with the other wajinru.
Solomon takes the basis for the story and fleshes it out, creating both a complex wajinru society and unveiling a wider context. The wajinru found themselves threatened by the search for resources and oil, the "metal fish" attacking them and their cities. They fight back, taking casualties, but ultimately defeating and destroying the world of the "two legs", the people of the land. Yetu's story takes place after this, and is itself an account of learning about other peoples memories, as Yetu encounters a handful of surface survivors.
The Deep is not an easy read, despite its short length. In the afterword Clipping point out that readers probably are regretting reading it so quickly and that certainly was how I felt. Indeed it pays re-reading, and their song repays listening. Ultimately though this is a book that is not just about the trauma inflicted on African people by colonialism and slavery - its about how that trauma cascades down through generations, inflicting pain and suffering anew. It is also about the importance of history to us as individuals and as wider society. As such it is an extremely powerful novel that demonstrates once again that there is a new wave of radical fantasy and speculative fiction out there, and Rivers Solomon is one of its foremost proponents.
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