This is the Water by Yannick Murphy (DNF)

This is the Water by Yannick Murphy
Copyright 2014
Harper Perennial - General fiction
Source: Harper Collins for TLC Book Tours

This is the water, lapping the edge of the pool, coming up in small waves as children race through it.  This is the swim mom named Dinah wearing the team shirt with a whale logo on it, yelling at her daughter Jessie to swim faster. This is Jessie who cannot hear Dinah because Jessie is in the water. Jessie is singing a song to herself. She is singing, "This old man, he played one. He played knick knack on his thumb." Dinah is red in the face, standing in the stands. Dinah moves her hand in the air as if to help hurry her daughter along. Behind the starting blocks the water comes up over the edge of the pool and splashes the parents who are timing on deck.

~p. 1 of This is the Water (first paragraph)

This is the Water was a DNF (Did Not Finish) read, unfortunately. The Call by Yannick Murphy was actually one of my absolute favorite books of the year in 2011, so I had high hopes.

This is the Water is a book with characters involved in a private swim team. One of the swimmers is murdered, one of the parents thinks her husband is having an affair, another finds herself attracted to someone else's husband. This is the Water interested me primarily because I loved The Call so much, but I also was a swim mom for many years and in spite of some painful politics that made a mess of things for a time, I still miss that world. I thought it would be fun to immerse myself in the reading of a book that described an activity I really loved being involved in. I didn't particularly care about the murder aspect, just the world of swimming.

Unfortunately, it was the author's choice to write This is the Water in 2nd person present that drove me away. I made it 65 pages. Had the book been told in 3rd person or even 1st person, either past or present, I think it would have worked fine for me.  I was interested in the characters and what was going to happen to them. The fact of the matter is that the storytelling was simply too clunky and exhausting. Every time I put the book down, I found myself sighing with relief. The final time I set it down, I realized that I could happily walk away from the story without ever picking it up again. It was simply too draining. So, I stopped. I usually go by the 50-page rule but, again, I did think the characters and the idea were good ones. It was just not a manner of storytelling that I could bear, although I can appreciate the idea -- the experimentation and creativity of trying a new style.

If you like the writing in that first paragraph (from the published print version) and don't find the repetition as tiring as I did, I definitely recommend that you go for it. I skimmed the reviews at Goodreads and found that I'm in the minority; This is the Water is getting pretty high ratings. And, although this particular book did not work for me, I will definitely read Yannick Murphy's work, again.

©2014 Nancy Horner. All rights reserved. If you are reading this post at a site other than Bookfoolery  or its RSS feed, you are reading a stolen feed. Email bookfoolery@gmail.com for written permission to reproduce text or photos.

Weekly Reading Update #4 - Incl. mini reviews of The Call, The Lost Wife and The Hottest Dishes of the Tartar Cuisine

I thought last week would be a bad reading week because I spent half of my week in New England with Carrie, aka Care of Care's Online Book Club. I told her Simon Van Booy would be doing a reading at the Boston Public Library and advised her to go, a couple months ago. She said, "Why don't you come up here and go to the reading with me?" Well . . . who can pass up an invitation to hang out with a friend and see a favorite author in the same trip?

Simon was amazing, of course. He is a spectacular speaker, poised and elegant, charming and self-deprecating, witty and insightful. If you haven't read any of his books -- his novel, Everything Beautiful Began After and the two short story collections, The Secret Lives of People in Love and Love Begins in Winter -- you really must. And, if you ever have an opportunity to see him, don't pass it up!!!

Of course, Carrie is always a blast to hang out with.

As it turned out, I still had a terrific reading week. Here's what I read:

The Call by Yannick Murphy (fiction) is about a veterinarian in Vermont whose son gets shot and goes into a coma. The vet thinks he's seeing spaceships, then something happens and he has to make a life-changing decision. That's a vast simplification. The Call is a riot. It's also touching, and an all-around good story, definitely one of the most enjoyable books I've picked up in a while. I highly recommend The Call, especially if you're looking for a quick, light and delightful read with plenty of drama and depth. I left my copy with Carrie because she asked. "Ask and ye shall receive" apparently still works just fine.

The Lost Wife by Alyson Richman is the story of a couple who are married and only together as husband and wife for a few days. Czechoslovakia is on the brink of invasion and Lenka refuses to leave her beloved family behind when her husband's family manages to acquire only enough visas to allow her to travel with them, but not her father, mother and sister. She reads his name in a list of dead after a U-boat attack. He believes she died in Auschwitz. Years later, they meet at the wedding of their grandchildren. The Lost Wife is a novel based on a true story and it's a good one. The only problem I had with it was a few weird tense changes. I'm guessing the author was trying to imbue certain scenes with an immediacy that past tense wouldn't allow, but the occasional switch to present tense was simply confusing. Otherwise -- great story, nicely written but not brilliantly so. Definitely recommended.

The Hottest Dishes of the Tartar Cuisine by Alina Bronsky is a book that Carrie playfully shoved on me and which I started reading almost immediately. I'd only brought The Call and Simon's Everything Beautiful Began After with me and I finished The Call the night I arrived. My first thought, as I began reading The Hottest Dishes of the Tartar Cuisine, was that reading it was probably the closest I've ever come to the reading equivalent of gawking at a car wreck. It's compelling, but why? Why couldn't I tear my eyes away? Possibly because it's really quite funny, if a bit freaky and disturbing. Rosa believes herself to be beautiful and perfect, the mother of an ugly, stupid daughter named Sulfia. Rosa accepts her daughter's explanation for her mysterious pregnancy -- that she dreamed of a man and became pregnant. Surely no man would have her ugly daughter.

When her granddaughter Aminat arrives, Rosa takes charge. Obviously, Sulfia is too dim and preoccupied to care for her own child. But, while this fierce grandmother works, takes care of her grandchild, henpecks her husband and drives her daughter batty, she also manages to keep all of them alive during a time of rationing and despair in Russia. Rosa is at once clueless and tenacious, self-confident to the point of being strident, baffling and fascinating, devious and admirable.

It's not a spoiler, to share the final two lines to give you a peek into Rosa's crazy, irreverent mode of speech:

"I was afraid to hear that she had already been there and that I hadn't noticed. I much preferred freeing metal countertops from encrusted bits of food and sending silent thanks to God, mechanically, out of courtesy--I mean, so he wouldn't feel totally useless."

In the end, I decided The Hottest Dishes of the Tartar Cuisine is, at its core, a survival story and I loved it. Now, I want to read Alina Bronsky's first book, Broken Glass Park. Thanks for sharing your copy of Tartar, Carrie!!!

Care's Review

Softdrink's Review

I'm about 2/3 of the way through The Oracle of Stamboul, which I just began reading last night. It's a tour book that I'll review later this week. I didn't take anything from my sidebar along to Massachusetts, so the rest of those books are still languishing. Hopefully, I can begin to amend that, this week. I'll be home for a good, long time, now!

Just FYI, the Boston Public Library is full of awesome:

©2011 Nancy Horner. All rights reserved. If you are reading this post at a site other than Bookfoolery and Babble or its RSS feed, you are reading a stolen feed. Email bookfoolery@gmail.com for written permission to reproduce text or photos.