BIND ME TIGHTER STILL

The relationship between Ceto—a siren who left her sisters and the ocean behind—and her 15-year-old daughter, Naia, is tested when Sirenland, their seaside burlesque attraction, is threatened by the untimely death of a guest.

Tucked somewhere along the coast, amid harsh limestone cliffs overlooking the sea, is a renowned and intensely popular roadside attraction known as Sirenland. This glorified boardwalk amusement park is where Ceto, Naia, and several other women live and work as mermaids, performing every day in a large tank and along the beach for hordes of onlookers. The difference between Ceto and her staff, however, is that she’s not just donning a sequined mermaid tail for show—she actually is a siren. Keen-eyed readers might recognize her name from Greek mythology, as Ceto is known to be a primordial goddess and mother of sea monsters. As time passes, Ceto begins to recognize her own animalistic hunger reflected in Naia (whose name has its own ties to mythology) and keeps her sequestered away from the world and the people who could hurt her or lure her away from Sirenland. But as the constraints Ceto places on her daughter grow tighter, Naia, like all teenagers eventually do, begins to question her mother’s authority and whether or not she actually knows what’s best. When Naia discovers the body of a young woman during one of her performances, it threatens the already tenuous relationship with her mother and the safety of her fellow sirens. Packed with simmering female rage and a sense of hunger—both in a physical and metaphorical sense—Ehrlich has crafted a modern-day fairy tale that is both ghastly and beautiful, and that would give The Little Mermaid a run for its money.

A thought-provoking and often intense exploration of motherhood, sisterhood, and the ties that bind.