In some ways, this book reminds me of Her Name, Titanic by the immensely talented and brilliant Charles Pellegrino, which is one of my favourite explorations of the depths of the ocean and the depths of space. In it, Pellegrino marvels at how little we know about the earth’s water, what myserious creatures might live at the bottom, where it’s darker than pitch, darker than midnight.

With In Oceans Deep, Streever skillfully outlines the same thesis – that human beings have long focused upward, aiming for the stars, and ignored the wonderland of discovery that exists in the oceans, those uncharted territories and little touched blue deserts.

From the synopsis:

In Oceans Deep celebrates the daring pioneers who tested the limits of what the human body can endure under water: free divers able to reach 300 feet on a single breath; engineers and scientists who uncovered the secrets of decompression; teenagers who built their own diving gear from discarded boilers and garden hoses in the 1930s; saturation divers who lived under water for weeks at a time in the 1960s; and the trailblazing men who voluntarily breathed experimental gases at pressures sufficient to trigger insanity.

Tracing both the little-known history and exciting future of how we travel and study the depths, Streever’s captivating journey includes seventeenth-century leather-hulled submarines, their nuclear-powered descendants, a workshop where luxury submersibles are built for billionaire clients, and robots capable of roving unsupervised between continents, revolutionizing access to the ocean.

I knew little about free diving before beginning this book, and while the scientific methods behind it (which I think Streever spends a bit too much time on) are of little interest to me personally, the limits that people will push their bodies to was fascinating. These free divers “welcome” the convulsions of their diaphragms, fighting to breathe, spit out blood on the surface from lungs on the verge of crushing, and follow lines into the dark, anxious for that next personal record, or world-breaking depth. It’s dangerous, to be sure, but it’s also a testament to how far human beings will go in the name of exploration and the testing of the body.

With captivating prose and an obvious love for the ocean, Streever outlines the ways that we’ve studied the oceans from time immemorial, and the ways we’ve studied how far our bodies – and our machines – can go before they’re broken beneath the crushing weight of water.

It reminds me of mountaineers, tagging peaks and pushing beyond the realms of endurance, to breathe the thinnest air imaginable, while standing on the roofs of the world. It’s these kinds of people who find out what it means to be human, and find out what it means to discover. To stand or go where no one else has been, or where few have been, it must be the ultimate high. Whether they survive or not is almost beside the point – it’s what they come to know, sitting in a tiny submersible, touching the earth six miles down, in the Challenger Deep, where monsters may live.

Where their dreams live, and go on, to the next – the next depth, the next mountain, the next star. The next flicker in the unknown, reminding them what it means to be alive.

Searingly honest and often uncomfortably intimate, this collection of non-fiction stories or “essays”, are elevated not only by the assured nature of Leslie Jamison’s writing, but also by how emotionally invested she becomes with her subjects.

In non-fiction, the trend is to be “once removed” from what you’re writing about, but not so here. Jamison is fully immersed in the telling. She’s the shadow of the photographer in every photo, her own personality, longings, obsessions and addictions seeping through, often with incredible results.

Though not every piece was as compelling as my favourites (52 Blue, We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live Again, Daughter of a Ghost, Museum of Broken Hearts), most – if not all – were blessed with Jamison’s rawness, her propensity for truth-telling, and her unflinching looks in the mirror. If her subjects are lonely or damaged or fraught with unseen hurts, well then, so is she. She’ll unwrap herself as surely as she unwraps them. This serves her better in stories where she can find a way in – in some, she still seems on the outside, trying to find a crack in the window.

In the best tales – mentioned above – there is a ribbon of understanding. Jamison’s empathy and desperate need to connect are beacons throughout the book – evident in one story about children who remember past lives. Where most journalists were dismissive of the claims, Jamison sought to cast aside her own belief system, opinions, or any other attitude that might reveal she was biased or had pre-conceived ideas – to do so, she felt, would be foolish and quick to judge:

It was more that I felt emotionally, spiritually and intellectually allergic to a certain disdainful tone that implied it knew better, that it understood what was possible and what wasn’t. It seemed arrogant to assume I understood much about consciousness itself – what it was, where it came from, or where it went once we were done with it.

Chased by her own demons – alcoholism, abandonment, guilt – Jamison tackles her subjects gently, peeling aside their armours and getting to the bloody truths with an unsparing eye and the brutality, the beauty, of language. Even as she shines the flashlight through the darkness, she seems to be saying, I can see you. You’re not alone. I know your story. I want to know your story.

Come here, I will tell of it.

Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review. I appreciate it!