this is a fitting first book review on this blog because my feelings on it are complex, and there is a lot that I want to express.

let’s start with a quick synopsis! How To Not Drown In A Glass Of Water written by Angie Cruz is a story of Cara Romero, a Dominican mother in her mid-fifties, reentering the job market after the housing crisis of 2008. it follows her story through a series of interviews, which are more like monologues, separated by various mundane documents found in Cara’s life.

I guess I’ll start off by saying that I liked this novel. however, from my tone you can probably gather that I struggle to say that. this is because I found Cara frustrating for the first three-quarters of the novel. she is a very stubborn person, yielding very little of her opinions to anyone else’s, and this gets her in a lot of trouble with her relationships. I wanted to give up after the first 30 pages since I found her stubbornness and arrogance annoying. and yet, I kept reading.

the form of the novel is what kept me going, being told almost entirely by Cara herself. the storytelling is engaging and makes for a very easy page-turner. it’s very strange, but I always enjoyed each chapter in the moment, laughing from Cara’s frequent quips, enjoying the way she gives her opinions and tells her stories, etc. Cara herself charmed me. still, after each chapter, I felt frustrated with Cara and how she goes about her life.

I think that frustration is kind of the point though. as we learn more about Cara and her relationships, we learn that this behavior that I found so frustrating is the reason her family is being pushed away from her. or rather, they feel that Cara’s stubbornness and unwilling to change become near unbearable. thankfully, by the near-end of the novel, Cara finally does learn to change, just as her life is beginning to fall apart.

so that’s why I relent and can say that I enjoyed this novel. Cruz, as an author, does an amazing job achieving what she sets out to do.

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one final thing I want to touch on is a core theme of this novel: family.

according to Cara, Dominican people care a lot more about familial relationships than Americans do. this is a core tension in the book. Cara feels that, by living in the US, her family is being “corrupted” and turned against her. but as I mentioned above, that’s not what’s going on at all.

this highlights a question about family in general. how important is family? or maybe put a different way, when is being part of one’s family worth the pain? I truly believe this is the core question being explored in this novel, and I love it. Cara deeply cares about her family, holding on—squeezing unbearably tightly. at the same time, she has escaped the abuse of her mother, essentially cutting ties. so there is something paradoxical in her views of family that she has to realize.

one last interesting point of tension is that Cara’s best relationships are ones that are not familial. she is very caring and nurturing with her close friends in the apartment building, as if they too are her family. in fact, it’s what “saves” her in the end. she is very talented at caring for people’s needs, when she is not desperate to. I think this does touch on the value of finding one’s family, regardless of whether they are blood or not. relationships need to be nurtured, not strangled, and the ties of family can do either very easily.

to sum up, I can pretty confidently say now that I liked this novel. it’s frustrating, yet deeply human and beautifully crafted. to anyone who cares to witness a very human story, I recommend How Not To Drown In A Glass Of Water.