I am aware that I have grumbled a few times on this site about short novels or novellas. This year I've read short work by Philippe Besson, Claire Keegan and Mike McCormack and I've felt the need each time to mention my ambivalent feelings towards this form. In my review of Claire Keegan's much celebrated "Small Things Like These" (2021) I said "faced with a couple of tempting novels, one short, one longer I'd generally pick the longer." Trust John Boyne to challenge my prejudices.
It's no real surprise that this is one of the few under 200 pages (176 in the hardback edition) that I'm giving my top rating to. Irish author John Boyne is the author I've given the most five stars to ever (this will be the 6th out of the 9 books of his I've read).
The author is getting all elemental on us with this the first in a projected quartet which will also feature Fire, Earth & Air, producing a literary sequence which is reminiscent of the seasonal quartet which did so well for Ali Smith (note to self- must get round to the other three of these).
"Water" is the tale of a woman in her early fifties who arrives on a sparsely populated Irish island to escape her past. The first thing she does is change her name and shave her head so we know the past is obviously a problem. Slowly, we get to know why she is there and what she is hiding from. What John Boyne does so well is to hide the horrors amongst domestic detail – there's a point where the situation is grim for main character Willow/Vanessa related through her first-person narrative but she becomes preoccupied with the arrival of her new credit card. Although she has chosen a solitary life there's some great interactions especially with neighbour and busybody Mrs Duggan. The author knows exactly when to release information to us (generally just slightly before you think it's coming, which keeps the reader on their toes). It is superbly crafted. This belies one of my issues with novellas in that despite their brevity they can feel drawn out. Here, it feels packed with character development, plot twists and a delight in story-telling. Water is everywhere, unsurprisingly as the main character has relocated onto a smaller island than where she previously lived but it is the danger and unpredictability of it which influences this work most.
I really did not want it to end but it feels as if it does so at an appropriate time which challenged another of my short-fiction notions. I've read two sub-200 pages books by celebrated authors back to back. In my opinion John Boyne gets the form exactly right and really drew me in whereas Mike McCormack, which also dealt with serious issues, distanced me somewhat and left me unsatisfied. I can't wait to read the other three works in this quartet- whether they are going to be short or long.
Water is published in the UK by Doubleday on 2nd November 2023. Many thanks to the publishers and Netgalley for the advance review copy.
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