The Chronology of Water - by Lidia Yuknavitch (Paperback)

About the Book

Yuknavitch expertly moves the reader through issues of gender, sexuality, violence, and the family from the point of view of a lifelong-swimmer-turned-artist who journeys through addiction, self-destruction, and ultimately survival that finally comes in the shape of love and motherhood.

Book Synopsis

This is not your mother's memoir. In "The Chronology of Water, " Lidia Yuknavitch expertly moves the reader through issues of gender, sexuality, violence, and the family from the point of view of a lifelong swimmer turned artist. In writing that explores the nature of memoir itself, her story traces the effect of extreme grief on a young woman's developing sexuality that some define as untraditional because of her attraction to both men and women. Her emergence as a writer evolves at the same time and takes the narrator on a journey of addiction, self-destruction, and ultimately survival that finally comes in the shape of love and motherhood.

Lidia Yuknavitch is the National Bestselling author of four novels: Thrust, The Book of Joan, Dora: A Headcase, and The Small Backs of Children, winner of the 2016 Oregon Book Awards Ken Kesey Award for Fiction as well as the OBA Reader's Choice Award. She has also published a critical book on war and narrative, Allegories Of Violence (Routledge). The Misfit's Manifesto, a book based on her recent TED Talk, was published by TED Books in 2017. Verge, a collection of short fiction, was released in 2020. Her widely acclaimed memoir The Chronology of Water was a finalist for a PEN Center USA award for creative nonfiction and winner of a PNBA Award and the Oregon Book Award Reader's Choice. Her newest memoir, Reading the Waves, was published by Riverhead books in 2025.

She has also had writing appear in publications including Guernica Magazine, Ms., The Iowa Review, Zyzzyva, Another Chicago Magazine, The Sun, Exquisite Corpse, TANK, and in the anthologies Life As We Show It (City Lights), Wreckage of Reason (Spuytin Duyvil), Forms at War (FC2), Feminaissance (Les Figues Press), and Representing Bisexualities (SUNY), as well as online at The Rumpus.

She founded the workshop series Corporeal Writing in Portland Oregon, where she teaches both in person and online. She received her doctorate in Literature from the University of Oregon. She is a very good swimmer.

From the Back Cover

This is not your mother's memoir. Lifelong swimmer and Olympic hopeful Lidia Yuknavitch accepts a college swimming scholarship in Texas in order to escape an abusive father and an alcoholic, suicidal mother. After losing her scholarship to drugs and alcohol, Lidia moves to Eugene and enrolls in the University of Oregon, where she is accepted by Ken Kesey to become one of thirteen graduate students who collaboratively write the novel Caverns with him. Drugs and alcohol continue to flow along with bisexual promiscuity and the discovery of S&M helps ease Lidia's demons. Ultimately Lidia's career as a writer and teacher combined with the love of her husband and son replace the earlier chaos that was her life.

Review Quotes

Finalist, Pen Center Creative Nonfiction Award

Readers' Choice Award, Oregon Book Awards

PNBA Award, Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association

Best Books of the Year, The Oregonian

Top 10 Portland Books, Willamette Week

Best Portland Book Releases, The Portland Mercury

Best Books of the Year, The Nervous Breakdown

Best books, LitReactorThe 10 Best Memoirs, Flavorwire

The 100 Great Nonfiction Books must-read works of narrative nonfiction and journalism, The Electric Typewriter

Canadian booksellers top non-fiction books, Quill & Quire: Canada's Magazine of Book News and Reviews

This is how writing is supposed to be.CHELSEA CAIN, New York Times bestselling author of Let Me Go, Kill You Twice and The Night Season

This is the book I've been waiting to read all of my life.CHERYL STRAYED, New York Times bestselling author of Wild

The book is extraordinary.CHUCK PALAHNIUK, author of Fight Club

The Chronology of Water ... has lately achieved cult status.CLAIRE DEDERER, The AtlanticYuknavitch has emerged as a trailblazing literary voice that spans genres and dives deep into themes of gender, sexuality, art, violence, and transcendence. Her work is a refreshing alternative to the hero's journey, offering instead what she calls the "misfit's journey."SULEIKA JAOUARD, Lenny Letter

The misfit's journey: Writer Lidia Yuknavitch tells her story at TED2016Why you should listen: The Chronology of Water, which has garnered her a cult following for its honesty and intensity.TED TALKS Watch Lidia Yuknavitch's TED Talk, The Beauty of Being A Misfit, here: https: //www.ted.com/talks/lidia_yuknavitch_the_beauty_of_being_a_misfit

The kind of book Janis Joplin might have written if she had made it through the fire - raw, tough, pure, more full of love than you thought possible and sometimes even hilarious.REBECCA BROWN, author of The Gifts of the Body

[The Chronology of Water] is about rage, ecstasy, abuse, appetite, bad decisions and grace. It is one of the most full-throated depictions of being a woman I have ever read. SARAH HEPOLA, author of Blackout: Remembering the Things I Drank to Forget

You will feel rage, fear, release, and joy, and you will not be able to stop reading this deeply brave and human voice. DIANA ABU-JABER, author of Origin

I read it at one sitting and wondered for days after about love, time, and truth.ANDREI CODRESCU, author of The Poetry Lesson

From the moment I picked up The Chronology of Water, I couldn't put it down, and I thought about it long after I'd finished. KERRY COHEN, author of Loose Girl: A Memoir of Promiscuity

The Chronology of Water's central metaphor works beautifully: we all keep our heads above water, look around, and enjoy our corporeal life despite all the reasons not to; beyond that, the book is immensely impressive to me on a human level: the narrator/speaker/protagonist/author emerges from a seriously hellish childhood and spooky adolescence into a middle age not of bliss, certainly, but of convincing engagement and satisfaction. DAVID SHIELDS, author of Reality Hunger: A Manifesto Simply stated: She is important.

Read. Her. Now. MARGARET ELYSIA GARCIA, The Plumas Weekly

Reading Lidia Yuknavitch...is to feel. E.V. DE CLEYRE, Ploughshares

This isn't a memoir "about" addiction, abuse, or love: it's a triumphantly unrelenting look at a life buoyed by the power of the written word. PUBLISHERS WEEKLY...I'm also convinced that this bold and highly unconventional book - hot, gritty, unrelenting in its push to dismantle the self and then, somehow, put the self back together again - gets not just under a reader's skin but seeps all the way into her bloodstream. DEBRA GWARTNEY, The Oregonian

Lidia Yuknavitch is my favorite new writer ... It's so genius I'm not quite sure how she did it. VALERIE STIVERS-ISAKOVA, Huffington Post

So honest and unapologetic is her writing that you can practically hear her sigh in catharsis as you turn the pages. MOLLY LABELL, BustBrave and breathless. LOS ANGELES REVIEW OF BOOKS

The Chronology of Water is powerful and beautifully written--even the tough parts. BRIDGET KINSELLA, Shelf Awareness

Artfully described in prose that's as spare and beautiful as a diver slicing through the water. FOREWORD REVIEWS

It's a sputteringly good read. ALISON BARKER, Chicago Reader

Tragedy, abuse, oceanic booze consumption, and rated-X sexiness. And Ken Kesey, of course. PORTLAND MONTHLY

It's war in there. I'm going back in. JEN GRAVES, The Stranger

The Chronology of Water is a vital book--a book that will be, as Kafka famously demanded, the axe for the frozen sea within you. KIRSTY LOGAN, Pank Magazine

Her language, inventive and sparse, is determined to leave its readers spinning in realness, the physical grit of being present as a woman and as a human being. NINA LARY, BitchOne of the strongest memoirs I have had the pleasure to encounter. Don't miss this book. DAVID ATKINSON, The Rumpus

Lidia Yuknavitch's The Chronology of Water might well turn out to be the best book of the year; it's unlike anything I've read before, and I haven't been able to forget it. MICHAEL SCHAUB, Bookslut Her story is haunting, touching, and heart breaking. RICHARD THOMAS, The Nervous Breakdown

Chronology is about the resiliency of the human heart and its ability to piece itself back together, over and over. VANESSA NIX ANTHONY, Portland Woman Magazine

Yuknavitch's nonlinear memoir that is at times lyrical, at times conversational, and almost always intense. ANCA SZIAGYI, Ploughsares

Her writing hits you, hard. MEGAN ZABEL, Powell's Books

The Chronology of Water is simply an unapologetic story about life. RENEE E. D'AOUST, The Collagist

Exhaustively compelling. EMILY GROSVENOR, Eugene Magazine

Yuknavitch has a powerful personal story to tell, and she does this in surprising ways. JAMIE PASSARO, Pnba Northwest Book Lovers

Yuknavitch can write a really hot sex scene. It's super sexy, and it's never cheesy or over-the-top or too tame. It's perfect...Yuknavitch's memoir is one of the best books I've ever read.CASEY REVIEWS, The Lesbrary

About the Author

Lidia Yuknavitch is the National Bestselling author of four novels: Thrust, The Book of Joan, Dora: A Headcase, and The Small Backs of Children, winner of the 2016 Oregon Book Awards Ken Kesey Award for Fiction as well as the OBA Reader's Choice Award. She has also published a critical book on war and narrative, Allegories Of Violence (Routledge). The Misfit's Manifesto, a book based on her recent TED Talk, was published by TED Books in 2017. Verge, a collection of short fiction, was released in 2020. Her widely acclaimed memoir The Chronology of Water was a finalist for a PEN Center USA award for creative nonfiction and winner of a PNBA Award and the Oregon Book Award Reader's Choice. Her newest memoir, Reading the Waves, was published by Riverhead books in 2025.

She has also had writing appear in publications including Guernica Magazine, Ms., The Iowa Review, Zyzzyva, Another Chicago Magazine, The Sun, Exquisite Corpse, TANK, and in the anthologies Life As We Show It (City Lights), Wreckage of Reason (Spuytin Duyvil), Forms at War (FC2), Feminaissance (Les Figues Press), and Representing Bisexualities (SUNY), as well as online at The Rumpus.

She founded the workshop series Corporeal Writing in Portland Oregon, where she teaches both in person and online. She received her doctorate in Literature from the University of Oregon. She is a very good swimmer.