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Product Description
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From Publishers Weekly
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
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Most helpful customer reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
COMPELLING...ABSORBING...SUSPENSEFUL...,
By
This review is from: The Weight of Water: A Novel (Paperback)
This is an exceptionally well-written tour de force about complex emotions. Written is clean, spare prose, it is two stories in one, each with its own voice, demanding to be heard. It is, without a doubt, a book to remember. It tells the story of Jean, a news photographer who sets out on a sailboat to a remote island off the coast of New Hampshire, accompanied by her husband, Thomas, her five year old daughter, Billie, her brother-in-law, Rich, and his girl friend of several months, Adaline. The purpose of her visit is to photograph the scene of a nineteenth century double murder that saw two Norwegian, immigrant women hacked to death, which murders were much ballyhooed at the time as the crime of the century. While there, she discovers an uncatalogued translation of the personal journal of the ostensible lone, female eyewitness, Maren Hontvedt, who seemed to have survived the carnage. Written in a somber and ruminative tone, the journal of Maren's life and of the events that led up to the carnage forms a core of the story. Maren's journal provides a framework for looking at the angst of Jean's present, which is haunted by passion, jealousy, and betrayal. It is through Maren's story that Jean herself comes to terms with her own personal tragedy. Alternating between Jean's unraveling present and the secrets of the past, the book provides a compelling, absorbing and suspenseful narrative, keeping the reader in its thrall. The two juxtaposed dramas come together in a primal and tragic climax. Those who read this book will find themselves haunted by it.
4.0 out of 5 stars
Serious fiction,
By
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This review is from: The Weight of Water: A Novel (Paperback)
I'm not a big fan of Shreve's novels, with the exception of this book, "The Weight of Water," and "Light on Snow," because they tend to be so predictable. "Water," however, could truly be called serious fiction. I was drawn to it due to the parallels the story makes between the life of a contemporary woman, a photographer struggling with jealousy in her marriage to a well-known poet, and the nineteenth-century account she becomes interested in of a local woman who may have committed--and gotten away with--murder. The novel is surprising and unexpected--and ultimately tragic--in the truths uncovered by the main character about the shocking murder in the past and her own life.This is not light-weight beach reading, but for readers who enjoy novels about the impact of past upon present and the revelation of secrets, this is a worthwhile and haunting novel. Other novels with a similar theme and connections to the nineteenth century and earlier are "Alias Grace" (Margaret Atwood), "Possession" (A.S. Byatt), and "Virgin Blue" (Tracy Chevalier).
1.0 out of 5 stars
Weight of Water,
By
This review is from: The Weight of Water: A Novel (Paperback)
I usually love Anita Shreve's style of writing, but this book just didn't do anything for me. It was hard to follow as there are 2 stories within one. The ending was not what I expected.Try 'Sea Glass' by the same author, it is amazing.
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