The Drowning Woman

“I sit up in my seat, heart pounding. Adrenaline courses through me and there’s no way I can ignore this. What the hell is this woman doing? It’s just April—the Pacific will be frigid. Climbing out of the car, I spot the path. It is overgrown, barely visible, but I scramble my way down it. I smell the beach before I reach it, brackish and briny. It’s a rocky cove, seaweed and kelp coating the stones in shaggy green. I see her, the woman, standing hip deep in the water. She looks about my age, with shiny dark hair like I used to have. She’s wearing a running outfit, formfitting and expensive. Her sobs are softer now, but her shoulders shake with emotion. She closes her eyes. And then she goes under.”

Hazel’s apparent suicide attempt and Lee rescuing her catalyze the novel’s subsequent events. Sensory details, like the smell of the ocean, make the scene visceral and vivid. The use of first-person perspective conveys Lee’s thoughts in her own words (like “What the hell is this woman doing?”) and increases empathy for and understanding of Lee’s character. In addition, the passage introduces the connection between Lee and Hazel, emphasizing their similarities rather than differences, particularly through Lee’s thought that Hazel has “shiny dark hair like [she] used to have.”

“The drowning woman notices and invites me under the blanket. It feels strangely intimate, but I’m too cold to refuse.”

The reference to the novel’s title in this passage uses a vivid image of the two shivering women whose lives are quite different on the surface but who come into close proximity because of the near drowning. This foreshadows their unlikely friendship, which is a key theme throughout the novel.

“When we are dressed, we catch our reflections in the bank of mirrors running above the row of sinks. Hazel is wearing my jeans, T-shirt, jacket, and cap. Only the shoes are her own, expensive black trainers two sizes too small for me. I am dressed in pricey spandex, an oversized hoodie, worn black running shoes on my feet. The resemblance is astonishing. From a distance, we are virtually interchangeable.”

One of the novel’s themes is Friendship and Circumstance Superseding Class Distinctions. This passage provides a visual example of how Lee and Hazel are similar despite their differing outward circumstances. Emphasizing their physical resemblance are the words “virtually interchangeable.” The switching of clothes symbolizes how circumstances are changeable and often without reason.