The Drowning Girl

Synopsis

The Drowning Girl follows the story of India Morgan Phelps, an unreliable narrator struggling with mental illness. Early in the novel, she befriends her eventual roommate and lover, a transgender woman named Abalyn. India works at an antique store, but she is also a painter and a writer. The entirety of the novel is written as a fictionalized memoir.

One night, India picks up a hitchhiker named Eva Canning, whom she finds stranded and naked on the side of the road, although India is unable to pinpoint when or how the encounter took place. Eva stays with India only for a short while before the mysterious woman takes off on her own, sparking India's obsessive investigation into Canning's past.

Over time, India begins to lose her grasp on what is real and what isn't, and her relationship with Abalyn rapidly deteriorates. As a result of her inability to tell fact from fiction, her growing obsession with Eva Canning, and Abalyn's eventual break-up with her, India suffers a mental breakdown. India stops taking her medication, stops eating, and begins to paint and write obsessively until Abalyn finds her half-dead in her apartment.

With the help of Abalyn, India discovers that Eva Canning's mother was part of a cult who committed mass suicide by walking into the sea some years prior, and that Eva was the only survivor. India believes that Eva Canning might be a ghost or a sea-dwelling creature in a human disguise, but the story is vague as to whether India actually encounters any supernatural phenomena.

India eventually does meet Eva Canning, and the two have a bizarre sexual encounter during which Canning appears to morph into a fish-like creature. Eva confesses to India that she wishes to go to the sea to be with her mother, which India obliges by taking her to the beach, at which point Eva walks into the water and disappears.

Eventually, some female human remains are discovered inside the body of a shark.

Won

Nominated