Waterland

I didn’t have high hopes for Waterland.  The blurb really doesn’t do it justice.  It leads off with how the book’s a two hundred year history of the fen lands.  I live pretty near the fen lands and, even as someone who likes history, it didn’t appeal.  It’s not that at all though; it’s a proper story with characters and a plot and everything.  By the end of the first chapter there’s even a corpse.  And not just any old corpse, a child’s corpse.  I should have really paid more attention to the only other Graham Swift book I’ve ever read, The Light of Day, which I thoroughly enjoyed rather than the bloody blurb.

Waterland does tell the story of the East Anglian fen lands, about three hundred years’ worth of history, and these bits are actually kind of interesting.  Swift links it, by and large, to his narrator’s family and it works.  It’s nice to know why there are so many local beers, at least.  The main chunk of the plot revolves around Tom Crick, soon to be retired history teacher, his wife Mary and his mentally disabled brother Dick when the three of them were young.  In 1943, then sixteen year-old Mary falls pregnant, but the fact that there are three possible fathers (the Crick brothers and soon to be corpse, Freddie Parr) mean far more complications arise than the expected shotgun wedding.  Most of the book concerns itself with the cyclical nature of history and how this seemingly little event impacts upon the lives of the characters for decades to come.

The book itself is very good.  I had low expectations but (disregarding a few asides about the history of eels) it far surpassed them.  The problem that I’m running into when writing about it is that there are no stand out moments of brilliance (or just god awfulness).  Usually now, when I read a book, I’m thinking of what I’m going to write about it and mark certain pages or phrases as I go (not in a way that damages the book.  I am not a barbarian.  There are Post Its involved).  But I didn’t mark anything in Waterland.  It has a couple of moments that are probably better than the rest of it, but they’re spoilers that need a hell of a lot of context; the reasons for Dick’s mental disabilities, for example. 

So this book is good, I am not disputing that.  In fact, I enjoyed this book far more than I thought I would and while I’m not recommending it with the same zeal I was for something like The Secret History, you could do much worse when looking for your next read.  The problem is there are just no outstanding bits and, as such it falls into that category of books I’m not sure really belong on The List.  Also Dick Crick is a stupid name. 

My next read is terminal cancer chronicle Love’s Work by Gillian Rose.