Everything Under
Publisher
Graywolf Press
Publication Year
2018
ISBN
9781910702345
Pages
272 pages
Genre
realism
Format
novel
Item Type
Fiction
Annotation
The dictionary doesn’t contain every word. Gretel, a lexicographer by trade, knows this better than most. She grew up on a houseboat with her mother, wandering the canals of Oxford and speaking a private language of their own invention. Her mother disappeared when Gretel was a teen, abandoning her to foster care, and Gretel has tried to move on, spending her days updating dictionary entries. One phone call from her mother is all it takes for the past to come rushing back. To find her, Gretel will have to recover buried memories of her final, fateful winter on the canals. A runaway boy had found community and shelter with them, and all three were haunted by their past and stalked by an ominous creature lurking in the canal: the bonak. Everything and nothing at once, the bonak was Gretel’s name for the thing she feared most. And now that she’s searching for her mother, she’ll have to face it.
Grade Level
9-12; Adult
Diversity Topics
Family Relationships; LGBTQ (Gender and Sexuality); Disability and Health; Foster care; Transgender; Illness; foster teenager; transgender teenager; girl to boy; boy to girl; dementia
Main Character
adult female
Race/Ethnicities
White
Family Formation
mother
LGBTQ+
transgender male; transgender female
Keywords
lexicography; secret language; Oedipus Rex; myth; abandonment; memories; Hanesel and Gretel
Diversity Impact
indirect
STARS Citation
Johnson, Daisy, "Everything Under" (2018). Diverse Families. 2019.
https://stars.library.ucf.edu/diversefamilies/2019