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Waterland

3.94 of 5 stars 3.94 · rating details · 2,805 ratings · 221 reviews

Set in the bleak Fen Country of East Anglia, and spanning some 240 years in the lives of its haunted narrator and his ancestors, Waterland is a book that takes in eels and incest, ale-making and madness, the heartless sweep of history and a family romance as tormented as any in Greek tragedy.

Hardcover, 368 pages

Published November 19th 1996 by Macmillan _ (first published 1983)

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Feb 09, 2013 Bettie rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: norfolk, one-penny-wonder, paper-read, historical-fiction, incest-agameforallthefamily, winter-20122013, tbr-busting-2013, published-1983, teh-brillianz, booker-longlist, suicide, teh-demon-booze

Dedication: For Candice

Quote: 'Ours was the marsh country...' Great Expectations

Opening: 'And don't forget,' my father would say, as if he expected me at any moment to up and leave to seek my fortune in the wide world, 'whatever you learn about people, however bad they turn out, each one of them has a heart, and each one of them was once a tiny baby sucking his mother's milk...'

Children, Francis Fukuyama published The End of History and the Last Man in 1992, and yet Swift showcases an ongoing d...more

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Apr 01, 2013 Laura rated it 5 of 5 stars

This may be one of the most beautifully written books I've ever read. A lot of my favorite books, some of which I enjoyed even more than this one, have some combination of good plots, good themes, or good characters, but the quality of the writing leaves something to be desired. This is one of those novels that is so expertly crafted that it makes you remember what great writing is. The premise of a history teacher who is about to involuntarily retire due to the principal's decision to eliminate...more

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Jul 26, 2007 Jessica rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: modern-fiction

Waterland, published in 1983, is a semi-postmodern examination of the end of History, the trajectory of the promise of the Enlightenment. It is set in the 80's, but looks backwards through history, centering around 1943. It has three different plots: in the 40's, when the narrator Tom is a teenager, it tells of the death of another teenage boy and of the consequences of fooling around with curious Catholic schoolgirls (it sort of screams "DON'T HAVE PREMARITAL SEX! PREMARITAL SEX HAS HORRIBLE PH...more Waterland, published in 1983, is a semi-postmodern examination of the end of History, the trajectory of the promise of the Enlightenment. It is set in the 80's, but looks backwards through history, centering around 1943. It has three different plots: in the 40's, when the narrator Tom is a teenager, it tells of the death of another teenage boy and of the consequences of fooling around with curious Catholic schoolgirls (it sort of screams "DON'T HAVE PREMARITAL SEX! PREMARITAL SEX HAS HORRIBLE PHYSICAL, EMOTIONAL, AND SUPERNATURAL CONSEQUENCES!"); Tom as an adult, and his wife's mental collapse and crime, and Tom's subsequent forced retirement from the school where he is a history teacher; and the history of his family, beginning centuries ago.

Between the two branches of his family, there's a great deal of playing with Freud's concepts of melancholia and mourning - melancholia, the inability to let go of something and move on, being stuck in the past, refusing to move forward with the future, leading to your eventual demise; and mourning being the state of moving on, of grieving and then getting over it. Tom's family has one branch on each side. And then it goes into History versus history (the big overarching world History, versus your own history, and how much you're ever a part of History), and the collapse of linear time, and the fact that although Time, God, and H(h)istory are possibly arbitrary and fictional, we still need them.

Then the incest starts.

Also some philosophizing about eels.

I'm not kidding. This book gets a little ridiculous. It's a semi-Postmodern text examining the difficulty of writing Realism in a Postmodern era, but it goes off on romantic (not Romantic) tangents about natural history and cultural history and all, in a very Julian Barnes (A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters) way. Then it goes into creepy, Stephen King-esque scenes with the children exploring the two great draws in life: sex and death. (The only constants, heh.) I ended up wishing either Stephen King or Julian Barnes had written it, and focused on it - as it is, the tension is uneasy, and yet uneasy in a way that really contributes to the novel and its aims. Although I do love how the idea of storytelling is played with in this novel: the idea that we can't bear reality without the stories we create to endow it with meaning, because otherwise reality is too strong, too harsh, and will overpower us. But again, that's very Barnes.

There is a beautiful passage, though, which I'll include here:

Once upon a time people believed in the end of the world. Look in the old books: see how many times and on how many pretexts the end of the world has been prophesied and foreseen, calculated and imagined. But that, of course, was superstition. The world grew up. It didn't end. People threw off superstition as they threw off their parents. They said, Don't believe that old mumbo-jumbo. You can change the world, you can make it better. The heavens won't fall. it was true. For a little while - it didn't start so long ago, only a few generations ago - the world went through its revolutionary, progressive phase, and the world believed it would never end, it would go on getting better. But then the end of the world came back again, not as an idea or a belief but as something the world had fashioned for itself all the time it was growing up.

Which only goes to show that if the end of the world didn't exist it would be necessary to invent it.(less)

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Mar 14, 2008 David rated it 2 of 5 stars Recommends it for: incestuous dracunculophiles

Like the countryside in which it is set, I recall this book as being grey, depressing, and sodden. I can't recall a thing that I learned from it - all I remember is the enormous sense of relief I had once I managed to finish it.

Though, as the blurb helpfully point out, there are eels and incest.

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Apr 02, 2009 Denis rated it 5 of 5 stars

Waterland may be the most intelligent book I have ever read. It is a mystery, a novel, a history or eeling and beer making on the fens and a romance. Graham swift is one of the best writers in English and this books is just way better than his other excellent stuff.

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Jan 05, 2012 Alex rated it 5 of 5 stars

This was an outstanding read for me, from an author who has absolute, complete command over language, plot, and moving a story through dialogue. There were times during which I wanted to quit being a writer, while reading this novel. Swift remains for me a master of the English language. This novel weaved history so incredibly well, with human emotion. I'll have more on this book in my review at The Lit Pub. The piece is written but it's not scheduled to run until beginning of March. Will includ...more

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Feb 20, 2013 Adam rated it 5 of 5 stars

I may have deleted my past "updates," so the evidence of my experience with this book is (fittingly?) gone. Since I am short on time, it would suffice to say that I started out loathing this book, and ended up lu-loving it. The book, and therefore I think, discussion of the book as well, is fraught with parallels; I was just about to write that the historical aspects of the book really BOG it down...

Reading negative reviews, it seems that the most oft-cited reason for a low rating was the fact...more

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Apr 02, 2012 Joselito Honestly and Brilliantly rated it 3 of 5 stars

The uniqueness of this novel is in its narrative voice, that of a history professor, so it has a pedantic feel to it, like a long series of lectures (as, indeed, some scenes take place in a classroom). The main action, where the narrator grew up, is a kind of place I have not actually seen, which here is called the Fens, and which in my imagination are but swamps expanded into acres upon acres. It's basically a family history spanning more than two centuries with its quirky characters, its trage...more The uniqueness of this novel is in its narrative voice, that of a history professor, so it has a pedantic feel to it, like a long series of lectures (as, indeed, some scenes take place in a classroom). The main action, where the narrator grew up, is a kind of place I have not actually seen, which here is called the Fens, and which in my imagination are but swamps expanded into acres upon acres. It's basically a family history spanning more than two centuries with its quirky characters, its tragedies, past glories, some sex, incest, suicide, murder, alcoholic intoxication and the usual stuff one finds when one digs up ancestral past to turn it into a novel which people will read with their mouths open in shock or surprise.

I do not find it difficult to relate to this novel because the narrator, like a true professor, love to occasionally segue into interesting topics perhaps to demonstrate his expansive knowledge about things (or, to be more precise, the impressive research done by the author--the narrator in real life). Many of these interesting little sub-topics are familiar to me. Like chapter 51 which speaks of something I often wake up with every cold morning--

"About Phlegm

" Or mucus. Or slime. An ambiguous substance. Neither liquid nor solid: a viscous semi-fluid. Benign (lubricating, cleansing, mollifying, protective) yet disagreeable (a universal mark of disgust: to spit). It checks inflammation; retains and disperses moisture. When fire breaks out in the body (or in the soul) phlegm rushes to the scene. It tackles emergencies. When all is quiet it does maintenance work on drains and hydrants.

"Its soggy virtues make it inimical to inspiration or cheer. It resists the sanguine and the choleric and inclines towards melancholy. A preponderance of phlegm may produce the following marks of temperament: stolidity; sobriety; patience; level-headedness; calm. But also their counterparts: indolence; dullness; fatalism; indifference; stupor.

"An ambiguous humour, said to be characteristic of the insular and bronchitic English. It affects the elderly; accumulates with experience. To the sick and fevered it brings equivocal comfort. Eases yet obstructs; assists yet overwhelms. According to ancient tradition the phlegmatic or watery disposition is to be remedied by infusions of strengthening liquors. A specific in all cases (though never a permanent or predictable one): the administration of alcohol."

There are also something quotable here about history, and beer, but the best--for me--is this one about phlegm.(less)

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Feb 06, 2012 Ruth rated it 2 of 5 stars

C1983: This book won the Guardian fiction Prize and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. I am now certain that I am a philistine. Whilst relishing the truly wonderful use of the English language, the continuing philosophical asides, whilst serving a purpose, really started to become draining towards the end. (Excuse the pun!) Very little dialogue with the narrative playing the larger role. The characters were brilliantly drawn and the family history eye opening. Of course, we all know what goes...more

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Jan 08, 2012 Mark rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: arms-akimbo-eyebrows-raised

Waterland brilliantly chronicles the mid-life crisis of high school history teacher Tom Crick, who makes sense of his life by placing his difficulties in the context of the lessons he teaches about the French Revolution. And what are his difficulties? His wife has gone mad and kidnapped a stranger’s baby from a supermarket, which lands her in a psychiatric hospital; his school is cutting its History Department, forcing him into early retirement; and his students, led by the rebellious teenager P...more

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Apr 23, 2011 Lorraine rated it 5 of 5 stars

Sometimes it's not only the book, but when you read the book. Sometimes, you pick up the book just when it has the most relevance to you. Synchronicity. I bought this years ago, at a booksale, and only picked it up this year. It is brilliantly constructed, but that isn't my point. I suppose normally I would've found it sort of soggy and slow, but at this particular point in time I found it more than sublime. It hit me. Somehow it just dealt with everything that I was fighting with, narrative, hi...more

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Jan 28, 2011 Toria Burrell-Hrencecin rated it 5 of 5 stars

This is a highly acclaimed English classic, from the 1980s. I read it 12 years ago, but just found my review on Amazon.com from that time, and am re-posting it here. I was totally thrilled, impressed and blown away by it! The whole novel is a masterpiece, weaving together different metaphors that beautifully illustrate LIFE, whilst maintaining a compelling narrative.
Tom Crick is a history teacher, forced to resign: - "History" is being struck off his school's curriculum due to "cut-backs", and...more

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May 08, 2007 Rob rated it 5 of 5 stars

This is a book that broke my heart, but added some interesting new valves in the process. It's best consumed by wolfing it down, then going back and reading it again, lingeringly and slow.

It also changed, and still colors, my understanding of history (I have two books in this category -- Waterland and War & Peace... this one's a better read, of course). That will likely sound painfully dull to you, unless you have read this book, in which case you'll probably know what I mean.

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Dec 14, 2012 Darran Mclaughlin rated it 3 of 5 stars

Not bad at all and yet a bit underwhelming. This novel suffers from what I see as the general underperformance of the major, critically acclaimed British novelists who have dominated the literary scene since the 80's. I mean Amis, McEwan, Barnes, Swift, Rushdie etc... It's not that they are bad writers at all, but it's just that from what I have read they never seem to get past 'good' and onto 'excellent'. As I was reading it I was thinking 'I am enjoying this, it's pretty good' but I was compar...more

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Oct 04, 2009 Joe rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: x2009-october, 2009, contemporary-fiction

A full-blooded descendant of Faulkner. You're thrust headfirst into a stream-of-consciousness history lesson about the Fens, a low water-logged region of England, to go along with a good many disturbing family histories as well. Along the way, the narrator indulges in a fascinating parallel discussion about the telling and learning of history. A literary novel with a mythological structure worthy of a fantasy tome.

"For the reality of things - be thankful - only visits us for a brief while." [33...more

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Sep 20, 2011 Alison rated it 3 of 5 stars

Read this book 25 years ago and loved it; curious to see how much I've changed, along with the general taste, in 25 years! It's not that I don't love it anymore, it's a classic in its way, but it's amazing to see how dense and wordy the text is, almost baroque or what we'd call overwritten nowadays, and yet it is a great story and a great way to tell a story. Swift's recent books have been so spare, it's hard to imagine it's the same author. Haven't finished yet, am waiting to see how it evolves...more

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Mar 28, 2010 Mike rated it 5 of 5 stars

A fascinating book for those who are on the lookout for new books is "The Harvard Guide To Influential Books" (1986) --- the subtitle of the book is "113 Eminent Harvard Professors Discuss The Books That Have Shaped Their Thinking" --- the book is edited by C. Maury Devine, Claudia M. Dissel, and Kim D. Parrish.

Each participating professor, when listing his or her influential books, has written a little blurb about the book and how it affected his or her thinking.

Most of the entries are about no...more A fascinating book for those who are on the lookout for new books is "The Harvard Guide To Influential Books" (1986) --- the subtitle of the book is "113 Eminent Harvard Professors Discuss The Books That Have Shaped Their Thinking" --- the book is edited by C. Maury Devine, Claudia M. Dissel, and Kim D. Parrish.

Each participating professor, when listing his or her influential books, has written a little blurb about the book and how it affected his or her thinking.

Most of the entries are about nonfiction books related to the subject the professor teaches, and many are tomes that sound detailed and probably are only of interest mainly to others who are really into that area of study. An example (European history) is "The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II" (1949) by noted French historian Fernand Braudel --- I'm sure it's an important book in the field, but still, not something I think the average reader would feel like going right out and getting a copy of to tackle. Truth be told, I actually do have a copy of it, and in all reality, the odds I'll ever read it are pretty small --- it looks too intense, heavy, and bogged down in detail for me (it has 664 pages).

What's more interesting is when non-English professors cite fiction. Although then again, most of the time when that happens the books are pretty predictable --- "War and Peace", "Middlemarch", "Lolita", "Anna Karenina", "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn", etc.

So I'm very drawn to a professor citing a lesser known work of fiction like this book --- "Waterland" by Graham Swift. I've barely started but as a reader it has me excited. Maybe how I feel will change, but so far I sense this book is a real winner. I need to stop now and go read some more of it.

Having now finished the book (this is being written about a week after the earlier parts of this review), I can only describe this as an incredibly, intelligently, well-written multi-generational gothic family tale with a lot of tragedy in it taking place in a fascinating setting --- well-worth reading.(less)

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Mar 31, 2012 Dan Kearns rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: serious-fiction, serious-fiction-sub-history

This book was oh-so-close to a 5star for me, and is one of the best I've read in a long time. I might move it up to a 5star later, but, for now, there's just the slightest lack of "bringing it all together" in the ending that keeps me from it.

Mr. Swift's themes are the ones I consider the main themes of life: time, loss, regret, and memory. He takes those concepts and runs with them in numerous fruitful directions. His most overarching theme is an attack on the notion of history as progress. He...more This book was oh-so-close to a 5star for me, and is one of the best I've read in a long time. I might move it up to a 5star later, but, for now, there's just the slightest lack of "bringing it all together" in the ending that keeps me from it.

Mr. Swift's themes are the ones I consider the main themes of life: time, loss, regret, and memory. He takes those concepts and runs with them in numerous fruitful directions. His most overarching theme is an attack on the notion of history as progress. He wants to us to see that history has downslopes and ends as much as it has beginnings and upslopes. He is inclined to see the history of the specific family whose story he is telling, the history of the fens region of East Anglia, the history of Great Britain and its empire, the history of Europe, and even the history of humanity as a whole as on the decline, heading towards natural ends, towards their deaths. It's a work of profound pessimism in many ways that he loves to capture with the metaphor of how water destroys everything over time, just as time flows and destroys. The best one can hope for is a bit of dry land, a bit of reclamation, and, most of all, to tell stories. If time, like water, erodes, then stories, like land, are where we are safe, where we protect ourselves, where we build meaning in a tough world of storms and floods. The human being is most of all "a story-telling creature" and its the only animal that can thus stand outside of time. Most importantly, the stories we tell about the past, the way we form memories are the most important of all of our tales. They define us. They create us.

Mr. Swift chooses to tell his stories are various levels of micro and macro, from the specific narrator (a history teacher of course) and his own narrative to that of the region, nation, continent, and species. Each "subject" of gets their due wonderfully with a sequence of endings, beginnings, revolutions, declines, and, perhaps, eternals. The narrator/historian knows that we wish to be detectives or investigators or even scientists, but our knowledge is instead always provisional and created. We simply are not gods. We create meaning and try ever harder to claim that that meaning is Truth, and, in that process, sow the seeds of our suffering as meaning and "truth" slowly slip away under time's (and water's) remorseless pressure. So that, strangely, maybe even horrifically, we are "stuck in the past" without actually being able to get to the past. We live in a present longing for a past that can never come back.

Like I said, the book is profoundly pessimistic in many ways, but I think that it earns every bit of it, and, even better, it captures a moment of time, the late 70s and early 80s, when that was the most important truth. I was knocked on my ass emotionally many times reading this book with its scenes of horrendous emotional turmoil, but each and every time it was worth it. It's an emotionally draining book, but one of the great books of the last 30 years.(less)

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Jan 16, 2010 Kate rated it 5 of 5 stars

This is a well-written story that resembles the show "Connections" where, in explaining a single moment in time, a hundred others are alluded to, illuminated, examined, and given a purpose. The basic story is that of a lock-keeper's sun who grows up in the English Fens on the reclaimed land of the Wash ("where everything comes out"). In telling it the author makes it not only necessary but pleasurable to delve into centuries worth of local history and touch on such topics as making barley into m...more

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Aug 19, 2008 Benjamin rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: top-ten

Amazing. Swift is consistent in his tone in his books - his characters always are burdened by some inescapable sadness - and his tricks are usually the same (fractured narration, irregular timeline, a quiet, introspective narrator) but it never comes together better than it does here.

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Dec 05, 2008 Meg Buscemi rated it 4 of 5 stars

Nothing was more humiliating than when I had to share this book with a boy in my English book, after I had dropped it in the bathtub and was unable to sufficiently dry it before class. The boy said, "I know it's called Waterland, but did you have to read it, while immersed in water?"

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Feb 10, 2012 Karen rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: keeper, second-hand

My only previous experience of Swift (and what, in fact, prompted me to read this) was 'Making an Elephant', his book of essays-cum-autobiography. In my review of that book, I described Swift as "phlegmatic", not a word in my everyday vocabulary, granted, but that seemed to sum him up beautifully. I now fear, however, that I may have inadvertently plagiarised it from his discussion of 'Waterland' in '...Elephant', as phlegm is a prominent motif in this novel (this is more relevant and less disgu...more

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Sep 01, 2011 Kait rated it 5 of 5 stars

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Jan 27, 2013 Katie Grainger rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Waterland is a beautiful, haunting novel which follows through the past and present the life of Tom Crick. Tom is a history teacher, who suffering a crisis in the present tells the reader about his past, growing up in the Fens and as a result his family history.

In the present Tom is suffering, he is being forced into early retirement, his wife has stolen a baby from Safeway and as a result has been hospitalized. Tom goes back in time and uses his and his wife's personal history to explain to the...more

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Nov 20, 2011 Mitch rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: literary-fiction

Graham Swift is a good writer. That's certain. For this he gets 3 stars. He's good enough that you don't realize that you're reading a book that pivots on murder, insanity, kidnapping, incest, lying, abortion etc...all set in the bleak, gray waterlogged fens of England.

Well, I suppose most stories do contain at least one of these elements, but Graham's characters are not happy people and ultimately, the book is about personal tragedies.

Throw in lots of philosophical observations about history, a...more

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Mar 17, 2012 Dawn rated it 4 of 5 stars

Okay, I'm probably about to be corrupted for life. What if I turn into Kara or even Kate Ditzler?

Finished last night. It was a very good book. I am somewhat perplexed that this was described as pornography. Perhaps that person had never seen actual pornography (note to my kids, of course I haven't either.) But, I have seen few books that better showed the personal consequences to yourself and others of the things that you do. The guilty and the innocent all suffer and prosper in different ways a...more

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Jun 22, 2009 Erika rated it 5 of 5 stars

If I could only have five books with me on a desert island, this would be one of them. It's got everything--madness, arson, alemaking, incest, the claiming of land by technology and its reclamation by the sea, and the French Revolution. Plus a lyrical, fairytale-like tone. No other book I've read explores the relationship between geography and the history of a people better than this one. What more could you want? Swift was shortlisted for the Booker Prize for this novel and won it for Last Orde...more

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Apr 06, 2013 David Sweeney rated it 1 of 5 stars

Firstly, I have read about 5 Graham Swift novels and liked all of them. This was the book that gave him his reputation, and the reviews from 1983 (or thereabouts) are stupendous. That said I have never been more bored. The short version is a family history (or two) over almost 200 years in 400 pages. For me it was just tedious, and there just wasn't enough oopmh to the narrative - nothing apart from the passing of time to spur it on. (It starts from the present and then goes back). It was a real...more

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Mar 29, 2013 Trina rated it 4 of 5 stars

The group of characters in Waterland for me were overly beset by tragedy, but there were two things about this book I loved. The first is the fact that the protagonist is a teacher of history, so he speaks a lot about History as stories, and what history means to us. The second thing, really the main thing I loved in this book is its setting in the Fenlands of eastern England, and there is so much here about the Fens, about its history, geography, its eels and the system of rivers, canals and mu...more

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Apr 04, 2013 John Swallow rated it 4 of 5 stars

An excellent read: a broad canvas across time where the place is the main character. There are human threads that maintain continuity and embed meaning and interest in the text. Swift is very clearly in command of his subject, shows enthusiasm for his "character" and has mastered his research. It is well written and skilfully intrigues the reader throughout their journey. On reflection, I admired the text, and I completed the read, but, whereas I would not rush to revisit it, I have been suffici...more

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About Graham Swift

Graham Colin Swift FRSL (born May 4, 1949) is a British author. He was born in London, England and educated at Dulwich College, London, Queens' College, Cambridge, and later the University of York. He was a friend of Ted Hughes.

Some of his works have been made into films, including Last Orders, which starred Michael Caine and Bob Hoskins and Waterland which starred Jeremy Irons. Last Orders was a...more

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Quotes from Waterland

“Children, be curious. Nothing is worse (I know it) than when curiosity stops. Nothing is more repressive than the repression of curiosity. Curiosity begets love. It weds us to the world. It's part of our perverse, madcap love for this impossible planet we inhabit. People die when curiosity goes. People have to find out, people have to know.” — 12 people liked it

“That's the way it is: life inculdes a lot of empty space. We are one-tenth living tissue, nine-tenths water; life is one-tenth Here and Now, nine-tenths a history lesson. For most of the time the Here and Now is neither now nor here.” — 3 people liked it

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