DNF at 20%. I am bummed about this because the story was intriguing. Generational trauma, gender identity. I was hoping to learn something, but unfortunately the writing came across bland and boring as it’ll it were a random person sitting down writing down their random thoughts.

I know this book has won many awards so I’m the outlier here. Wasn’t for me.

Thanks for the arc opportunity, Net Galley.

Interesting and fluid way of following a gender fluid narrator that is dealing with a grandmothers dementia 💛

Such beautiful writing and details ..

"Sea, Mothers, Swallow, Tongues" by Kim De l'Horizon" is a captivating and emotional story about family relationships, grief and queer identity

I would like to thank Netgalley and the publisher for providing me with an audio ARC.

I kept coming across this book and was curious about it. I will say the writing flows well and there is a great writing style. This book seeks to cover many topics that are important and emotional. We are following a narrator that is writing to their grandmother with dementia in this one. I can can say it didn't feel like a single story being told, but that this book is made up of reflections. It's not a bad book and I liked listening to this one. I just didn't fully connect with this one. I also did enjoy the narrator and how relaxing it wad to listen to the narrator.

I keep returning to a single image from Sea, Mothers, Swallow, Tongues—the beech tree in the family garden, its copper leaves bleeding into autumn, standing as witness to generations of women whose stories have been buried beneath layers of silence and respectability. Kim de l’Horizon has created something that defies easy categorization, a work that functions simultaneously as memoir, genealogy, linguistic experiment, and act of literary rebellion. This is autofiction at its most ambitious and necessary, a book that uses the elasticity of form to explore what happens when the very language we inherit proves inadequate to contain our lived experience.

The brilliance of de l’Horizon’s approach lies in how they’ve structured this as excavation rather than confession. What could have been a straightforward coming-of-age narrative about non-binary identity becomes something far more complex—an archaeological dig through family history that reveals how gender, class, and trauma have shaped generations of women who never had the vocabulary to name their own experiences. The framing device of a letter to the grandmother creates both intimacy and distance, allowing de l’Horizon to address directly the person who might least understand their journey while simultaneously acknowledging that true communication across these generational and ideological gaps might be impossible.

The linguistic playfulness throughout the text serves profound thematic purposes beyond mere intellectual showing-off. De l’Horizon’s manipulation of Swiss German, French, and High German creates a kind of Tower of Babel effect where meaning becomes slippery, multiple, constantly shifting. When they play with “Meer” (sea) and “Mère” (mother), they’re not just being clever—they’re demonstrating how identity itself becomes fluid when you exist between languages, between genders, between the categories that society insists should define you. The fact that in Swiss German the mother becomes grammatically neuter feels almost too perfect, like the language itself has been waiting to acknowledge what de l’Horizon is trying to articulate about gender fluidity.

What struck me most powerfully was how de l’Horizon connects their contemporary struggle with identity to the historical experiences of women in their family who faced their own forms of erasure and violence. The stories of the institutionalized aunt and the child who died young become more than just family lore—they transform into a genealogy of resistance against systems designed to punish those who don’t conform to prescribed roles. The way de l’Horizon traces these connections never feels forced or opportunistic but emerges organically from genuine investigation into how oppression operates across generations and categories.

The sexual content operates on multiple levels that resist simple interpretation. These encounters could be read as self-destructive behavior stemming from trauma, as attempts at connection in a world that often feels alienating, or as acts of reclaiming agency over one’s own body and desires. De l’Horizon wisely refuses to provide definitive psychological explanations, instead presenting these experiences with the kind of unflinching honesty that makes readers complicit in the act of interpretation. The explicitness serves the larger project of refusing shame about bodies and desires that don’t fit conventional narratives of respectability.

The theoretical framework underlying the narrative—drawing from Foucault, Deleuze, and others—never feels academic in a negative sense because de l’Horizon grounds these concepts in lived experience and family history. Theory becomes a tool for understanding rather than a barrier to feeling, providing language for experiences that mainstream culture struggles to acknowledge or validate. The references to contemporary German literature create a sense of literary community while also positioning this work within broader conversations about identity, belonging, and the possibilities of language.

The form itself becomes thematically significant in ways that justify its experimental nature. The text’s constant shifting between genres, tones, and approaches mirrors the experience of existing between categories, of never finding a single form adequate to contain the complexity of one’s experience. The apparent failures and false starts that characterize parts of the narrative aren’t bugs but features—they demonstrate the impossibility of finding stable ground when the very foundations of identity are in question.

What makes this more than just another work of literary autofiction is de l’Horizon’s commitment to situating personal experience within broader systems of power and oppression. The class analysis that runs throughout the family histories shows how economic vulnerability compounds other forms of marginalization, how women’s options become constrained by both patriarchal expectations and material circumstances. The historical context, including the looming presence of World War II, adds layers of complexity that prevent the narrative from becoming purely personal or therapeutic.

The writing itself demonstrates remarkable range and control, shifting from lyrical passages about nature and memory to clinical descriptions of sexual encounters to theoretical meditations on language and identity. De l’Horizon has developed a voice that can contain multitudes—angry and tender, intellectual and visceral, hopeful and despairing—often within the same paragraph. This tonal complexity serves the book’s larger project of refusing to be contained within single categories or interpretations.

I found myself thinking repeatedly about how this book functions as both mirror and map for readers navigating similar questions about identity, family, and belonging. The specificity of de l’Horizon’s Swiss context never prevents the work from speaking to broader experiences of existing between categories, of inheriting trauma while also inheriting resilience, of finding ways to honor the past while creating space for futures that our ancestors couldn’t have imagined.

The book’s engagement with contemporary German literary culture adds another layer of meaning, positioning it within ongoing conversations about national identity, historical responsibility, and the possibilities of literature to address social and political concerns. References to authors like Christian Kracht and Didier Eribon create a sense of dialogue with other writers grappling with similar questions about masculinity, sexuality, and European identity in the 21st century.

For readers who like:
-Multi-generational family narratives
-Contemporary European literature
-Books that use linguistic playfulness

Final Verdict
Sea, Mothers, Swallow, Tongues is a remarkable achievement that demonstrates how experimental literature can serve urgent human needs rather than merely intellectual curiosity. Kim de l’Horizon has created something genuinely necessary—a work that expands our understanding of what family, identity, and literature itself can accomplish. This is challenging reading that rewards patience and engagement, offering insights that extend far beyond its specific cultural context to speak to anyone grappling with questions of belonging, inheritance, and the possibility of creating new forms of connection across difference. It’s the kind of book that changes how you think about language, family, and the stories we tell ourselves about who we are and who we might become.

Grateful to NetGalley, Dreamscape Media, and Kim De l’Horizon for the opportunity to read an advance copy of this story in exchange for an honest review.