Jelly by Clare Rees (review)

Apparently, life on an enormous jellyfish isn’t so great. If you try to escape, giant tentacles toss you back on. Seaweed is the only break from an all-fish diet. Everything is covered in slime, and the one good thing about rampant pollution is that it sends endless plastic bags your way so that at least you can make clothes and shelter. The view of the shore reveals the damage climate change has wrought (most of the houses are flooded and giant crablike creatures mercilessly kill any humans they find), so at least the jellyfish residents are safe and dry. Martha narrates as one of the few teens out of the thirty or so folks surviving, in this cli-fi novel, on a giant jellyfish, articulating their frustration and poignantly describing the tenacious flickers of hope that persist in spite of seemingly insurmountable obstacles. Rees has impeccable control of the pace, at first doling out details sparingly to force the reader into slowly understanding exactly what is happening here and then ramping up the action considerably once the setting changes; this shift is a perfect mirror for the experience of the characters as they move from the lull of sameness to a jarring new world. Martha is wry, observant of nuance, and aware of the absurdity of her life, and hers is an exceptional viewpoint—clever but also very teen in terms of priorities and a decidedly short-term perspective. Fans of the post-apocalyptic, offbeat genius of Andrew Smith’s Grasshopper Jungle (BCCB 2/14) will likely be delighted by this equally odd novel.