The Weight Of Water

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Or… well, wait until she’d changed out of her cozzie because I don’t want to get all chloriney but then we’d cuddle. Definitely. A murder of two women took place over 100 years ago on the island of Smutty Nose in the Isles of Shoals. Maren Hanvent moves to this very remote, sparse island with her fisherman husband. They are followed by her sister and brother with his wife, living lives full of hardship off the coast of Maine. The novel is split into two parts: the present day, told from Jean's point of view and in the present tense; and 1873, told in first person from Maren's point of view, her "memoir".

Not reading this book would have been a huge mistake, one I’m glad I didn’t make. Sarah Crossan has created an utterly engrossing story about a Polish girl whose mother has uprooted her and brought her to England in pursuit of her father, who has left their family. Kasienka is devoted to her mother but confused by her father's desertion and her new situation in England. She is upset about being placed in a Year 7 class, despite being nearly thirteen years old, just because of her English skills. And moving schools makes it hard enough to find friends and wage the wars of popularity; moving to a new country and learning a new language makes it even harder.One night, Rachel receives a phone call. The information she is given sets in motion a series of events that will unravel her life, force her to examine past decisions, and take her on a psychologically arduous journey to save her sister. Ultimately she is faced with the an almost impossible choice.

In The Weight of Water, Anita Shreve tells a story of pain, jealousy, and passion. Her characters and their closest relationships--with siblings, with partners--are trapped in isolated and claustrophobic spaces. Shreve tells the story of the murders of two Norwegian immigrant women on Smuttynose Island off the coast of New Hampshire in the late 19th century. She explores the 19th Century events in the context of a contemporary photographer's trip to the island to capture the location for a magazine story about the killings. The photographer travels to the island in a small sailboat with her husband, daughter, brother-in-law and his girlfriend. In the course of her research for the photo-shoot, she happens upon a previously unknown document, a letter from the one woman in the family who survived the killings. Shreve alternates sections of this letter, which describes what led up to the murders and what happened on the night they occurred, with the main structure of the book which moves fluidly between the interactions among the family of the photographer and the details of the history of the murder as it was revealed in the trial. In this way, Shreve allows the painful unfolding of events in the two different eras to play out alongside one another. Well Ms Crossan obviously listened to me and therefore she deserves the prize of a Flo-induced Theme Tune. A prize so coveted by authors across the land…. There are two stories intertwined here. There is a modern day story told in the first person by a photographer visiting the Isles of Shoals off the coast of New Hampshire. She is photographing the islands where a double murder took place in 1873 and is staying on a boat with her husband, her young daughter, her brother-in-law and his girlfriend and we see the often tetchy interaction between them in the close quarters. The second story is told in the first person by the only survivor of the nineteenth century double murder. This is in the form of a lost manuscript that the photographer finds during her research. Interwoven with the modern story is the saga of what happened on the island in 1873 when two women were brutally murdered with an ax. This part of the novel, told in a memoir by another woman who hid in a cave after the murders, is even more intense than Jean’s marital woes. I don’t want to spoil any of the delicious narrative surprises Shreve has in store, so I’ll just say that there’s insanity, jealousy and incest at work on the island in 1873—problems that continue to resonate and haunt characters 100 years later. This novel is really two stories in one. First there is the story of Norwegian immigrants coming to America, and secondly we have the contemporary story of a photographer going to the island where the immigrants lived to photograph and research a 100 year old murder.

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But I wouldn’t say that this is a particularly sad book. Yes there are a lot of moving poems, especially when Kasienka first moves to England and constantly feels “unwanted and misused”, but I also saw this book as more about finding out who you are and becoming comfortable with it. Rachel and Talia Fontenot are sisters born into brutal, rural poverty in southeastern Louisiana in the 1960s. Raised by relatives, they become fiercely devoted to one another until tragic circumstances intervene. They are separated, Talia disappearing into a life of drugs and petty crime, Rachel fleeing to New Orleans. Years later, Rachel is living in New Orleans and married to the CEO of the Southeast’s largest provider of long-term healthcare. She lives what appears to be a perfect life, yet she struggles with anxiety, prescription drug abuse, and grief. The story revolves around Kasienka and her mother who move into the city where there Dad escaped (escaped doesn't sound appropriate but oh well) It is her tale of drama that comes with moving into a new school, falling for a guy who doesn't treat her bad and her search for her dad. Debate about the identity of the Smuttynose murderer continues to this day, rekindled by the publication of The Weight of Water. "The facts are out there for speculation," Shreve says, "The book is something separate from that debate." How long have I been hankering to use a song from Ceremonials? Do you remember my demand polite suggestion that all authors must should listen to it on repeat and then write a book based on it solely to keep me happy?

I love it when my heroines stand up for themselves and don’t need any body to tell them how to do it. I need to finally brush off my prejudice against books that are written in verse. Every single time I raise a sceptical eyebrow in their direction - completely unable to believe that this is anything more than just lazy storytelling - and every single time I find myself impressed. The Weight of Water was no exception. This is a delightful, if somewhat heartbreaking, little story that took me just over an hour to read.You were so sad and you were so lonely and you were so insecure and you were OK with letting people The Weight of Water is a book entirely written in poetry. You may think that this is boring, but actually it is one of my favourite books. The Weight of Water helps you understand how refugees feel and how hard it can be a foreigner in a strange country. Life is lonely for Kasienka. She misses her old home in Poland, her mother's heart is breaking, and at her new English school friends are scarce. But when someone new swims into her life, Kasienka learns that there is more than one way to stay afloat. Shreve does a decent job of writing suspense here though the technique of switching stories and including a disjointed fragment of the older story at every point of tension in the modern day story began to get wearing after a while. The more measured voice of the nineteenth century woman does counter the sometimes hysterical tone of the modern day woman and the hysterical tone isn't a bad thing, it's a very good portrayal of someone who isn't quite certain what's going on around her and sometimes can't cope with her own thoughts.

Although I have read only two of Crossan's books. It's safe to say I love her. I read One last year and it actually made me cry and love it so bad, it jumped onto my top #5 spots. Although it has been replaced, but nevermind that. Sarah Crossan knows how to make you feel. She knows how to squeeze your heart and make you use up a whole box of tissues. Until you realised how it’s OK to be different and how there’ll always be moments where you feel a bit odd or alone but that there is always people who are just as different as you. If we had gone to school together I bet we’d be the best of friends and we’d stay up all night, swapping stories and drinking pop and being giddy. The book flashes between the present, a letter written in the 1800s and descriptions of events from the 1800s. The problem is that it goes something like this: The 19c woman's diary makes for tedious reading--interesting at first, but the tragic ending (and not to give anything away, there are tragic endings for both narratives) is telegraphed quite early.....

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The suspicion that her husband is having an affair burgeons into jealousy and distrust, and ultimately propels Jean to the verge of actions she had not known herself capable of-actions with horrific consequences. I always find it difficult to come up with a number for books such as this one because obviously the issues and situations that are dealt with in this book are extremely harrowing and, sadly, common in present day Britain. The book takes its title from Kasienka’s newly found love of swimming. Several people encourage her involvement, and she persists until she gets to go to a national competition in London. Again, the poetry works well here, communicating through vivid imagery the relief that Kasienka feels as she swims. Her mundane worries slide off her body; she revels in the feel of the water on her skin, the intensity of the competition of which she is a part. For her, the weight of water is something special, something almost holy. Crossan portrays the refuge that children (and adults, often enough) seek in a hobby or singular activity, something they can focus on—something they can control. Women. Boating. Island descriptions. Blah blah we're in the present now blah blah so I hope you were paying attention. Ugh. This book intertwines two stories. One is the murder of two women and happens in a previous century. The other is about a photographer sent to where the women were killed to take pictures for a magazine assignment. The older story works well and I even liked the weird way the author intertwines the two stories where one flows into the next with only a paragraph break. The problem is that the more contemporary story falls completely apart at the end. There's a build up full of the photographer's regrets and if only's but I don't see how anything she did caused what happened in the end.