In Flood (Sunlight Press 2025), Christine Kalafus writes with power. The myriad themes and stories she interweaves are beautiful, but more importantly, they serve a greater purpose: a woman writing with intention.
Dealing with her lived experience as source material, Kalafus layers snippets of her life in a vast collage of motherhood, chemotherapy, mental health, and what it means to be a woman.
Wielding fluid, gentle prose and a calm, matter-of-fact tone that occasionally dips into self-deprecating, Kalafus draws the reader into a conversation which, to me, felt like reconnecting with an older sister years after losing touch. She recollects her past with authority and insight, but lays bare the doubt, the pain and the ultimate growth that brought her through the ‘flood’, a metaphor used throughout the book to illustrate drowning, both in a literal and emotional sense. It is a highly reflective, carefully arranged memoir, unfolding the cost of pushing your body and mind to their limits.
I am reluctant to reveal too much of the content, but Kalafus’ situation is a tragedy that hardly bears imagining––lurking cancer, three children: one only four years old, two yet unborn.
As Kalafus so plainly puts it: “You can’t outrun a flood” (110).
Indeed, water pervades every aspect of the book. Humidity in the house, ruining the piano; the fresh spring at neighbours’; the leaking cracks in the basement; every literal breakage offers a mirror to Kalafus’ internal landscape.
Prevalent throughout the story as a stronghold against storms, the house earns its place at the centre of LJ Mucci’s cover design. When introduced, it feels alive, offering sanctuary, becoming a manifestation of feeling outcast or odd. It brings joy to Kalafus, “as if the house’s blueprint had been daylight” (21).
But this creation solidified my fears as Kalafus steadily accelerates the looming threat of a flood. Not just of emotion, but a physical, biblical flood that may leave behind nothing but wreckage. And all emphasised by the unearthing feeling of being told something you thought was certain is not: my husband loves me, my house cannot flood, I do not have cancer. Flood is what happens when solid ground becomes malleable, and stability falls away.
Over the course of the memoir, Kalafus delves into her life before diagnosis. She recalls growing up in Connecticut and northern Virginia, discusses the internalized threats women face and observes society persistently teaching women how to dress to avoid danger, and so the real threats go unnoticed––invasion “from the inside” (3). Amid powerful childhood memories, Kalafus recalls being objectified, sexualised, and fearful, shared with the casual understanding that this is what ‘normal’ looks like for most women. As I read, I found myself struck by an outsider’s perspective: the tragedy of growing up as a woman and never learning how proud you should be.
Kalafus’ musings on womanhood permeate the whole text: “In my family, a woman’s denial of herself equalled survival” (23), “I apologise for the mother they won in the lottery” (114), “I ignore him because that’s how I’ve been socially trained to manage a raging asshole” (121). To my surprise, I felt known by this book, and I felt rage on behalf of Kalafus, and every woman whose opinion was superseded by a man who thought he knew best.
With razor-sharp precision, Flood elaborates on female guilt, the pernicious companion to feminine rage: harder to eradicate and all too easy to indulge. Even after all she has survived, Kalafus struggles not to blame herself (163).
This was a topic made all the more raw by the realities of medical treatment. A combination of the occasional colossal ineptitude of medical professionals and the consistent devaluation of women’s opinions, Flood suggests that negligence can become a form of cruelty without intent. Kalafus makes a devastating case against the apathy of doctors and the American healthcare system at large.
I took away from this book a lesson in setting limits––a hard-won battle for Kalafus––an example of expressed agency, a deeper understanding of its worth, and a steadfast belief that your opinions about your body have value.
Kalafus delicately puts something that should be taught to every woman from childhood: you do not have to keep the whole world in balance, as much as you are told to. It is an impossible task; Atlas holding up the sky; Sisyphus’s boulder: “As a modern woman, I’m supposed to do everything at one time. Glass ceiling smacker, mother martyr, sex goddess, selfless sisterdaughterfriend” (156). All roles that led to such acute stress that they were considered the only suggested cause of her diagnosis.
Merging the poetic intent of Mary Oliver with the clarity of Margaret Atwood, Kalafus’s writing is ruthless with details and surgically precise. From the smooth and elegant inclusion of a second-person perspective to the balanced and intriguing variations in page layout, including lists and quotes, Kalafus offers an arrangement finely tuned for brutal contextual impact.
Flood layers its tragic elements so delicately that I felt the water rising around me––despite the stress of two newborns, rising water tables, and chemotherapy, I had been mercifully spared worrying about the details of medical bills and insurance repayments until Kalafus chose to open that floodgate as well.
Just as Kalafus quotes her mother’s wisdom, I will repeat it here: “It is possible to be completely terrified of something and do it anyway” (198) to show that you can survive the flood and smile again on the other side.
Order your copy of Flood today!
Rachel Bulman (she/her) holds a BA in English and Creative Writing as well as an MA in Publishing from the University of Exeter, specialising in interactive and children’s fiction. Her written work has appeared in The Book of Choices, Velvet Fields, and Exeposé, among others. Find her on Instagram @worm.can.read, through her online portfolio, or ask the bridge troll who taught him his riddles three.
