reiher@ucla-cs.UUCP (07/07/85)
I strongly recommend this novel by English author Graham Swift. It is
beautifully written, filled with wonder, and solidly constructed.
"Waterland" is about the fenlands in the east of England. It is told by
a schoolteacher from that region, a history master who is about to lose
his post because of his wife's insanity. Having been challenged in class
about the relevency of history, he starts on an extended series of related
stories about the fens, skipping backward and forward in time, eventually
bringing everything together and solving all the mysteries he has raised.
"Waterland" really has everything: sex, murder, war, insanity, natural
disasters, the reproductive cycle of the eel, essays on land reclaimation,
and much more, all handled in a truly original style. Swift has one of the
finest ways with a metaphor I have ever seen. He has been compared to
William Faulkner, accurately in some ways, as Swift also deals with ideas
like family secrets and the past catching up with you. Also, like Faulkner,
Swift's story is very much bound to a place, the flat, canal-riddled wetlands,
and he is strongly concerned with how the place affects the people who live
there. Swift's style is much more accessible than Faulkner's, though. In
some ways, he is reminiscent of James Michener, as well, but he writes much,
much better than Michener and doesn't feel compelled to run on at such length.
Swift can tell you much more about the fenlands in 300 pages than Michener
could about Poland in around a thousand.
Don't be put off by the cover, an appropriate but unalluring photograph of
an eel. (While I was reading "Waterland" in a Korean restaurant, which
featured delicacies like sea cucumber and squid, a waitress noticed the
cover and said the obvious Korean equivalent of "Yuch!") There aren't
many books that I feel positively compelled to recommend. ("One Hundred
Years of Solitude" was the last one), but "Waterland" is one of them.
--
Peter Reiher
reiher@ucla-cs.arpa
soon to be reiher@LOCUS.UCLA.EDU
{...ihnp4,ucbvax,sdcrdcf}!ucla-cs!reiher