Marissa, Arielle, two soulmates, a Hurricane, and a Tsunami

Under Water is an undertow of powerful emotions. The narrative germinates in memories that refuse to fade, in horrors that cannot be erased, in coming of age and sensual desire, and in the splendour, wonder, and savage fury of nature.

By Ajith Pillai in Chennai

Under Water

Tara Menon

Summit Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster

Pages: 218

Rs 699

Never judge a book by its cover.

This aphorism fits well with Tara Menon’s debut novel, Under Water. The Indian edition features a tall, solitary palm standing at the edge of a desolate beach, reaching skyward. Behind this lone visible life form, the ocean stretches out to infinity. It is a surreal image that leads you to assume it is possibly a New Age novel meant to help you cope with urban stress and spiritual emptiness.

But nothing quite prepares you for the undertow of powerful emotions, not always recollected in tranquillity. Under Water, you immediately discover, is a kaleidoscope of many colours and shades. It is about longing, true friendship between two girls, environmental concerns and natural disasters. 

The narrative germinates in memories that refuse to fade, in horrors that cannot be erased, in coming of age and sensual desire, and in the splendour, wonder, and savage fury of nature. 

All this distilled into 218 pages makes the book an engrossing read, not because of any twists and turns in the plot, but because of the evocative, often poetic writing.

The author, an Assistant Professor in the Department of English at Harvard University, must have been overwhelmed by the approval her first novel received. The BBC has listed it among the top 40 books to read in 2026.  Kirkus Review listed it among the 20 best books to read in March 2026. It has received favourable notice from The Guardian, The Herald, Scotland, and Publishers Weekly. The rights to Menon’s debut as a storyteller have been sold and will be translated into 35 languages. 

The storyline is straightforward. Marissa, the narrator, and Arielle are the best of friends. To Marissa, Arielle is everything: she is the soulmate she found when she came to Thailand at the age of six with her father after her mother’s untimely death. The two girls hit it off from the moment they met.

Arielle’s parents own a hotel on the island of Phuket in the Andaman Sea, and together the girls attend school, explore the reefs, beaches, and tropical forests. They also have unbridled fun, playing pranks on unsuspecting tourists sunbathing with their beer bellies, dropping insects on them or serving them flaming green chillies hidden in their food.

But the idyllic days come to an end. It is subtly suggested within the first few pages that Arielle is no more. We later learn that she fell victim to the devastating 26 December 2004 Tsunami that hit several countries, including Thailand, Indonesia, Sri Lanka and India.

It is this loss of a friend that is the narrator’s lament. Memories of Arielle flood her mind eight years later as the US gears up for Hurricane Sandy, which hit the Caribbean and the coastal Mid-Atlantic region in October 2012.

When the story unfolds, Marissa is in New York, working as an editorial assistant at an upscale travel magazine. Her job is to churn out unattributed copy to accompany photographs for a “Top Five Destinations” series the publication is running. Her work, as Marissa puts it, involves conjuring “florid sentences to lure London bankers and Manhattan lawyers away from their luxury homes to the greater comforts of luxury hotels.”

To make her work easier, she keeps a collection of adjectives—isolated, secluded, pristine, untouched, gleaming, wild, cinematic, sparkling, spellbinding, magical, crystalline—which she arranges and rearranges to suit different destinations.

In the midst of playing around with cliched expressions and churning out pretty prose comes news of Hurricane Sandy. It immediately reminds Marissa of the catastrophic 2004 Tsunami. The two manifestations of nature’s fury, she later learns, are similar in some ways, but also strikingly different in their scale and the damage they caused. She is a witness to both.

The Tsunami killed some 227,000 people across 14 countries and displaced 1.7 million people. It came without a warning. Out of the blue, the waters rose and rushed landwards, heaping death and destruction in their wake. Marissa survived, but her closest friend did not.

Hurricane Sandy, on the other hand, claimed 250 or so lives in eight countries, from the Caribbean to Canada. There were shrill warnings about the impending storm, and news on TV flashed satellite images and updates 24/7, charting the progress of “the largest Atlantic hurricane on record as measured by diameter.” In panic, New Yorkers rushed to malls and neighbourhood stores to pick up food supplies, water and batteries in the event of an emergency.

Luckily, Menon’s book is far from a dreary elegy written for a friend in the midst of a storm. When Marissa looks back, she does so without losing any of the joy and wonder that marked her life with Arielle in Thailand. There is humour, spice, and spunk, and the magic comes from living on the edge of the water and exploring the sea.

The novel is filled with characters who are quaint, quirky, boring, and touristy. These are slices of memory served whole, with all their childishness, romance, sensuality, irony, and wit.

The narrative also foregrounds Marissa’s deep communion with nature. She is fully immersed in it, diving deep to understand the biodiversity of the sea, and the land in Thailand. Descriptions of fish, birds, and plants are filtered through the gaze of a child utterly absorbed in what she sees, hears, and smells.

Arielle and Marissa can even identify individual manta rays—fish that circle them almost as if observing and communicating with them. Is the novel autobiographical? No.

According to the author, she did not witness the Tsunami. She was at school in Singapore when the storm struck neighbouring countries, but she had read enough about the devastation the sea had unleashed to be curious about what had happened.

The novel, therefore, rests on meticulous research into the Tsunami and its aftermath. Like a scientist, Menon also studied the flora and fauna of Thailand, as well as the life forms that inhabit its coral reefs and surrounding seas. Indeed, so real and detailed are some of the descriptive passages that they feel like nonfiction, or at least as if the author has transcribed a lived experience into her writing.

Under Water is, by any yardstick, a creditworthy beginning. Here’s hoping that Tara Menon’s mind wanders to another exotic part of the planet to bring her next narrative to life…    

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Ajith Pillai is member, Editorial College, senior editor and writer, independentink.in. A seasoned journalist working in the profession for 40 years, he has reported out of Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Andhra Pradesh and Kashmir on a broad spectrum of events related to politics, crime, conflict and social change. He has worked with leading publications, including The Sunday Observer, Indian Post, Pioneer, The Week and India Today, where he headed the Chennai bureau. He was part of the team led by Editor Vinod Mehta that launched Outlook magazine and headed its current affairs section till 2012. Under his watch, Outlook broke several stories that attracted national attention and questioned the government of the day. He has written two books—'Off the Record: Untold Stories from a Reporter’s Diary,’ and a novel, ‘Junkland Journeys’. He is currently working on ‘Obedient Editor’, a satirical novel on the life and times of a ‘compromised’ journalist.