num_pages: 226
description: Nine brave, wise, and spellbinding stories make up this award-winning debut. In "When She is Old and I Am Famous" a young woman confronts the inscrutable power of her cousin's beauty. In "Note to Sixth-Grade Self" a band of popular girls exerts its social power over an awkward outcast. In "Isabel Fish" fourteen-year-old Maddy learns to scuba dive in order to mend her family after a terrible accident. Alive with the victories, humiliations, and tragedies of youth, How to Breathe Underwater illuminates this powerful territory with striking grace and intelligence.
language: English
title: How to Breathe Underwater
titlecomplete: How to Breathe Underwater
genres: Short Stories, American, Short Story Collection, Literary Fiction, Adult Fiction, Young Adult, Literature, Adult, Fiction, Contemporary
ratings_count: 6279
awards: awardedAt: 1072944000000
name: Guardian First Book Award
category: Also Commended, awardedAt: 1104566400000
name: William Saroyan International Prize for Writing
category: Fiction
publisher: Vintage