- Paperback: 368 pages
- Publisher: Picador UK (Nov 19 1999)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0330336320
- ISBN-13: 978-0330336321
- Product Dimensions: 19.2 x 13 x 2.4 cm
- Shipping Weight: 200 g
- Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (42 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #359,192 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
Review
"Perfectly controlled, superbly written -- Waterland is original, compelling and narration of the highest order." -- The Guardian (U.K.)
"Swift spins a tale of empire-building, land reclamation, brewers and sluice-minders, bewhiskered Victorian patriarchs, insane and visionary relicts.... I can't remember when I read a book of such strange, insidious, unsettling power with a more startling cast of characters." -- Books and Bookmen (U.K.)
"Teems with energy, fertility, violence, madness -- demonstrates the irrepressible, wide-ranging talent of this young British writer." -- Washington Post Book World
"A formidably intelligent book -- animated by an impressive, angry pity at what human creatures are capable of doing to one another in the name of love and need.... The most powerful novel I have read for some time." -- The New York Review of Books
"Waterland appropriates the Fens as Moby Dick did whaling or Wuthering Heights the moors -- a beautiful, serious, and intelligent novel, admirably ambitious and original." -- The Observer (U.K.)
"Rich, ingenious, inspired." -- The New York Times --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.
"Swift spins a tale of empire-building, land reclamation, brewers and sluice-minders, bewhiskered Victorian patriarchs, insane and visionary relicts.... I can't remember when I read a book of such strange, insidious, unsettling power with a more startling cast of characters." -- Books and Bookmen (U.K.)
"Teems with energy, fertility, violence, madness -- demonstrates the irrepressible, wide-ranging talent of this young British writer." -- Washington Post Book World
"A formidably intelligent book -- animated by an impressive, angry pity at what human creatures are capable of doing to one another in the name of love and need.... The most powerful novel I have read for some time." -- The New York Review of Books
"Waterland appropriates the Fens as Moby Dick did whaling or Wuthering Heights the moors -- a beautiful, serious, and intelligent novel, admirably ambitious and original." -- The Observer (U.K.)
"Rich, ingenious, inspired." -- The New York Times --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.
Book Description
Tom Crick, a history teacher in the Fenlands, is driven by a marital crisis and the provocation of one of his pupils, to forsake his teaching and relate the story of his family who have lived in the Fens since the 18th century. Graham Swift won the 1996 Booker Prize for Fiction for "Last Orders".
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Most helpful customer reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
about nothing,
By A Customer
This review is from: Waterland (Vintage International) (Paperback)
And so it seems like everyone extracts something different from this book. I wasn't interested in the history as much as on the actual content, on the part that dealt with people. The content was confusing. But I liked his play on words. I liked it how he wasn't grammatically correct. I liked it how sentences wouldn't have to make sense the way they were written, but they still made sense to me.
5.0 out of 5 stars
It just happens to be my favourite novel.,
By "dbsweeney" (Sydney, Australia) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Waterland (Vintage International) (Paperback)
Now, I'm not going to try and pretend I can explain the different facets of just why I hold this novel so dear to my heart, because I can't. It's enough to say that it's a terribly heartfelt novel, about the past, present and the ways that humans rely on each to live and love, even when the ones they love seem lost to them. It sense of character and location seems persuasive, and the sense of loss that the narrator holds for his past and his wife is simply tragic. Wonderful.
3.0 out of 5 stars
Return to Waterland,
By Norman Dale (Prince George) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Waterland (Vintage International) (Paperback)
I read Waterland almost two decades ago when it first appeared and was nominated for the Booker Prize. Since then I maintained a memory of it as a masterpiece and commended to it scores of friends. I came back and re-read it after recently discovering (and reviewing elsewhere on Amazon.com) W.G. Sebald's "Rings of Saturn" I was inspired by the coincidence that both novels are set in the same water-logged landscape of East Anglia (England) and both are centrally concerned with the way that history (and divergent versions of history) as well as the geography affect the interwoven course of lives, famous and not. My return to Waterland left me less sanguine and commendatory. The voice throughout is that of soon-to-be- forcibly retired history teacher, Tom Crick and the style almost all the way through is that of an excessively didactic lecturer, telling the mainly woeful tales of his family and forbears as these stretched over several centuries. All the while the teacher is badgering his class with ironic rhetorical questions which, after a few hundred pages begin to annoy. Don't get me wrong: this novel is very entertaining and presaged the more refined unfolding of family tragedy and entanglements that Swift mastered in "Last Orders" (which did win the Booker). Perhaps like Tom Crick who always says too much, the younger Swift wanted to get it all out in one fell swoop in Waterland. And he sure did that: there is early adolescent sex, murder, incest, suicides, spousal battery, kidnap, arson, a great deal of madness and mental defect, and a vividly described botched abortion. Interspersed are the mysteries associated with land drainage, eel biology, brewing ale and the French Revolution all revealing Swift's fascination with the ultimately unknowable nature of nature, human and otherwise. A frequent switching back and forth through time adds to the intrigue allowing Swift to keep secrets from the reader about the twisted chain of causes and effects that ultimately explain the actions of Crick, his parents, his brother and his mentally disturbed wife. I would still recommend Waterland but I also suggest that you follow it up with Sebald's more sparing, mature and, all said, better exploration of the same themes in the same geographic region.
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