I regret not writing a review while my thoughts and feelings were still fresh, because it's a powerful read - heavy, sad, melancholic. Jim Grimsley is a brilliant writer, he captures the smallest but most significant details, and does it subtly and effortlessly. The 'simple' truth of Ellen Tote's abusive childhood is neither sugarcoated nor exaggerated. It feels so heartbreakingly real as if the author had experienced it all himself. I certainly couldn't help but hurt for little Ellie. I was jus...

Memories and survival are the themes of this grimly descriptive tale of growing up dirt poor in the South. Ellen is the last survivor of her large family, and has no one left with whom she can check the story her brother told her just before he died -- that her own mother tried to drown her -- an event which comes too close to a haunting memory of her mother drowning in a river.

This is such a sad and moving book. A young lady has a reoccurring dream. The book is full of emotion. I should have read this when I wasn't so emotional. I might have enjoyed the book more.

This book is Ellen Tote's reminiscing about her childhood growing up in extreme poverty with not enough money, a useless father and beaten down mother who is constantly pregnant. There's never enough food or enough heat and a lot of hard physical work to be done. This is a sad tale especially since you know reading it that although this is a work of fiction, there were and are families just like hers all over America and the world. Yet Ellen manages to get by and what little happiness she finds

Oh dear this book was sad. If you've read the 12 Tribes of Hattie and not wanted to rip your heart out with sadness and despair, then this one might do it for you.This book flips around the memories of a woman who recalls, sometimes with accuracy, sometimes with nostalgia, her life growing up in the Deep South in abject poverty. The author managed to capture a female voice rather well, as well as a woman at various ages. The eyes of a child are a fascinating place to look through in any scenario...

This is definitely not a feel good book. The author narrates the life of Ellen, a southern woman growing up in horrific circumstances. It is a testimony that the human spirit is determined to succeed, that even when we are deprived of basic needs, we carry on and move forward. This book will make an impression that stays with the reader for a long time after putting the novel back on the shelf.

The bleak visions of reality and nightmare alternately appears in the poetic prose, providing the reader a tough yet tender scene of southern poor white family. Mother is typical of underclass women in the rural south who was always pregnant and suffered from incessant newcoming offspring. More children means worsening living condition and exasperating poverty. Mother disappeared from time to time, which left the heroine confused and tried to figured what happened to her. More urgent thing preva...

It was aight

Another slice-of-life story from Jim Grimsley, again telling the story of a poor white family in a rural community. This time, the protagonist is Ellen Tote, who overcomes adversity and hardship growing up to become an independent and happy adult. Although it is never explicitely stated, I believe that the main heroine of this story is the same woman who is the mother in the Grimsley novel Winter Birds.Although her story is compelling, drawing the reader through Ellen's life glimpsed through fla...

I only read this because it was assigned to a student I work with in class. It really blew me away. It's the story of a woman who describes her upbrinng in a family of white sharecroppers in the early 20th century, told a sshe looks back on her life. I know - it sounds hokey, but as the story unravels, so does your perspctive. Not only does it completely undo any romantic notions one might ever have of rural poverty, and deconstruct notions about the reliability of memory, but it helps to accoun...

Grimsley's first book, Winter Birds is one of my favorite books. It's a stunning piece of fiction. I also thought Dream Boy was impossible to put down. It falls apart at the end, maybe, but even then it's a great read. By comparison this book felt like a tepid regurgitation of his first works. It was bleak, and sad, and hopelessly derivative of his own genius.

I enjoyed this book, but the story really didn't end. The family made me glad I didn't grow up like they did, or have such useless parents, but something just didn't go quite right with entire story.

My Drowning is a wonderful novel in the Southern Gothic tradition. Dark, or darker, even, than Bastard out of Carolina, the novel is also more lyrical and evocative. Grimsley is wonderful in this genre and also in fantasy. He's a genius who understands so much about how to create a story that will keep you engrossed until the very last minute. Beautiful

Grimsley is one of the best southern writers of this generation. His books are painfully beautiful.

Love this first person recount of a hopelessly poor girl in a severely dysfunctional family. Loved the fact it was written by a man. Very sad and moving.

I have mixed feelings about this book. The characters are captivating, but not in a good way. There were so many disturbing things in this book that it was very difficult for me to read - just overall upsetting what the characters endured. There were few moments of happiness for the main character, Ellen Tote, snippets of joy but they were always framed by some sort of underlying threat to her survival. The misery of her life is highlighted by her search for the meaning of a dream that she has h...

Writing this a couple of days after finishing the book, the feeling of sadness has mellowed.Ellen's story is one made up of memories, which are clear, elusive, slippery, truthful, false. Because can one be ever sure of a memory. Our brains work in mysterious ways. I found Grimsley description of the feelings invoked by the blue dress and the fate of the blue dress a perfect analogy of how memories are. The blue dress was perfection to one sister, then represented hurt and fear. It brought pleasu...

My Recommendation: Jim Grimsley is probably one of the most depressing writers I've ever read, and yet I keep going back to him every 5-10 years. Depressing may not be the correct descriptor, he just writes such desolate books and truly embraces the southern gothic style and maybe that's what draws me to him?This was my first time reading My Drowning and it was very different from Winter Birds and Dream Boy but at the same time very similar (mostly through that southern gothic style). In additio...

Although the subject matter is grim, I enjoyed this book. The author succeeds in capturing and portraying the bleak, abusive life of Ellen, the main character and one of many children in a truly poor, destitute and dysfunctional home. The story is not new but the author pulled me in to Ellen's life and the despair she survived. I felt as if I understood her and the ignorance of her parents.

Well, I finished it. This book resembled a Dorothy Allison novel in terms of its dark depiction of Southern poverty through the eyes of a woman looking back on her childhood as an adult, but the writing style is much more reflective and aware of the beauty in even the worst scenes. The title of the book refers to a recurring dream by the protagonist that she sort of resolves at the end. There are many interesting narrative repetitions in the novel as her memories overlap with memories she had in...