There is something terribly funny about a book called “The Jellyfish Problem” attempting to contain as many problems as it possibly can. A giant sea monster is terrorizing a small town. Our protagonist is wracked with survivor’s guilt, grief and — worst of all — mommy issues. And a shitty job. And she’s a lesbian. Oh, and the small town is racist. She also has a book to write that’s past due. And a past to reckon with, or did I say that already? Somehow, strangely, the jellyfish are not the biggest problem brought to the table.
At her best, Tessa Yang makes the overcrowded premise of “The Jellyfish Problem” feel intentional. The novel moves between sea monster sadness and lesbian blues with an earnestness that is difficult not to empathize with, even when it occasionally seems like Yang has opened one too many narrative tabs. Some of these threads are given room to breathe; they develop alongside the characters and eventually circle back into satisfying conclusions. Others are introduced with enough weight to suggest they will matter, only to disappear for chapters at a time or return, already resolved, in a single line. By the end, the novel has cast a very wide net, but not everything it catches gets reeled in intact.
One of the novel’s more successful threads is its protagonist, Jo, who is — for a considerable portion of the story — deeply annoying. Her grief makes her defensive; her relationships are strained by her inability to communicate and she possesses the particular self-absorption of someone who is convinced she is always right. Everyone else is misunderstanding her all the time, obviously. I spent a majority of the book clinging to the life raft of hope that Jo might get over herself. Thankfully, she does.
Yang stages Jo’s growth carefully enough that the reader can see the machinery beneath it, but that does not make the destination any less satisfying. Jo’s gradual capability to look beyond her own grief is one of the novel’s more effective emotional arcs, particularly because the book does not pretend that becoming a better person means becoming a different one. Her flaws remain recognizable even as she begins to understand the damage they cause.
Unfortunately, I’m not sure Yang planned out resolutions for the novel’s many other concerns with the same care. “The Jellyfish Problem” wants to be a story about grief and environmental catastrophe, but also about Queer love, family, economic decline and the specific loneliness that comes with living in a small town. Some of these ideas complement one another naturally. Grief, for instance, becomes inseparable from Jo’s fascination with the ocean: Both are vast, unknowable and capable of swallowing people whole. The sea monster gives the characters something enormous to fear while also functioning as a way for each character to project their own unique struggle onto an external force.
Other issues feel as though they were pulled from a much longer book and then written into the margins. The novel occasionally gestures toward issues such as racism, social inequality and domestic violence without affording them enough space to become as meaningful as the story seemingly promises. A single line can introduce a problem that feels enormous before the narrative brushes past it to something else. These moments are not necessarily poorly written, but their presence raises the question of why they are included at all if the novel does not intend to investigate them.
The pacing suffers from a similar lack of attention. “The Jellyfish Problem” could have used another 60 or so pages, if only to give its various resolutions enough time to settle. Instead, the novel’s final stretch begins untying knots almost as quickly as it created them. Some conflicts — such as Jo’s grief and familial struggles — receive careful, emotionally satisfying conclusions. Others either feel brushed under the rug, or resolved with a suddenness that leaves readers feeling marooned in the wake.
This creates an odd sensation of being rushed toward the conclusion of a book that has spent so much time wandering. The novel is rarely boring; if anything, its biggest problem is that it is too interested in everything. Yang has a lot she wants to say about the people who live in this town and the things that have shaped them, but not every idea can receive the same attention. The result is a book whose strongest threads feel genuinely earned, while its weaker ones leave the reader stranded somewhere between relevance and resolution.
Still, there is something admirable about a novel that takes this many swings. “The Jellyfish Problem” would be easier to criticize if it were timid. Instead, it reaches for the giant sea monster, a messy family, Queer love, unending grief and the town’s buried histories all at once. Sometimes it catches exactly what it cast for. Sometimes it reels in nothing at all. But the things it does pull ashore make the journey worthwhile, even when the waters get a little crowded.
Digital Culture Beat Editor Estlin Salah can be reached at essalah@umich.edu.
