Waterland (Picador Thirty)
by Graham Swift
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other reviews (showing 1-20 of 491)
Read in February, 2006
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...more
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Read in January, 2008
"Waterland" is a book I think I will quickly forget. The place is perhaps what will stay with me the most. The author, Swift, clearly did quite a bit of research on English waterways & the historical relevance of inner-waterway travel & commerce in 19th century England. So that was different. And there is also a weird relationship between nature & the people that inhabit this place that was mildly intriguing, although I never really put my finger on what that connection mea...more
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recommended to Maria by:
a professor @ BYU
So, I'm interested in stories about people who live near water...(don't ask; I have my theories). Hence, I read Waterland. It is not a light read. It is dark, damp (very puny of me, I know, but the word DOES accurately describe the tone of the novel), disturbing, and often downright disgusting, but it is very interesting. There is a light at the end of the tunnel-redemption of sorts. It might not be worth it to many, but it was to me. Although I thought this book was amazing in many respec...more
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What is it about Swift's writing that I find so haunting? Nearly all of his novels are about a middle-aged man in an existential crisis, and yet I find them deeply, arrestingly relatable even as a young (and by all accounts happy) lady. It might be his concise sentence structure, or it might be his ability to, at the end of the story, connect all the small moments and rush them toward the reader in a fast, breathtaking wave until finally leaving a brisk declaration of The Point of Everything in ...more
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Read in September, 1997
recommends it for:
people who like tortured stories
...i read this book for a class in which the book was being used to illustrate "post-modern" writing. In all honesty, other than its self-conscious writing (which isn't that "post-modern") and its discussion of theory as it is being written there is little post-modern about this book, but it is still excellent. the flashbacks of the teacher's lives set against his struggle to communicate to his student about history being the story of each of us, of all us is so powerful. ...more
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Read in February, 2008
um, it took me a while to warm up to this book - then i started to enjoy it - then i got bogged down (ha!) in the historical passages - then i got excited when it seemed like all the threads of the story were coming together in a rewarding way - and finally i was a little bit disappointed by the way everything ended up. i liked the way it showed a depressive, stagnant landscape fomenting a depressed, stagnant society of people, and how it explored story-telling and the study of history as method...more
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Read in July, 2007
recommends it for:
Literature enthusiasts
This book is a little difficult to read if you are not into "deep literature." I enjoyed the narrator's plunging backwards and forwards on the timeline, explaining the water people's history of northern england. The narrator happens to be a history teacher so he ties in his present classroom drama and the even worse drama that is his marriage. The police become involved in a kidnapping that his wife commited.
This book has undercurrents of incest, murder, abortion, death, guilt... ...more
This book has undercurrents of incest, murder, abortion, death, guilt... ...more
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Have you ever read a book which, upon its conclusion, left you simultaneously hopeless but invigorated, surprised by the inevitable, exhausted yet rested?
Swift's hypnotic prose has this effect on the reader in Waterland. You are taken through 240 years of the narrator's ancestral history, which culminate into one single act of murder and escape.
This is also the first book I've read that makes a river (the River Ouse- pronounced "ooze") a character in and of itself, compar...more
Swift's hypnotic prose has this effect on the reader in Waterland. You are taken through 240 years of the narrator's ancestral history, which culminate into one single act of murder and escape.
This is also the first book I've read that makes a river (the River Ouse- pronounced "ooze") a character in and of itself, compar...more
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Read in January, 1994
Probably my favorite book (when I'm asked to identify such an animal). Love the way Swift writes. And the interplay of timelines and events really makes the book what it is. Waterland is about how history is not simply the major events, but the small events of our lives. The main character is a history teacher whose class is being phased out by his school. So in an act of rebellion, he stops teaching "history" and begins teaching the history of his family. There's an awful movie ...more
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Graham Swift's novel is frustrating, if well written. The narrator--a guilt-ridden teacher-intellectual, whose expansive vocabulary allows him to sew words and stories into a substantively fragile and linguistically bombastic Cohesive History--demands much of his reader. The breadth of the story is impressive, and much of the plot is tenderly tragic. Ultimately, the novel succeeds in communicating over a century of finely-wrought local lore through the voice of a curmudgeonly and cowardly his...more
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Read in January, 1993
I wish I could remember more detail about this book to write a more coherent review. I shall have to get hold of a copy and re-read it and then edit this, because all I can remember is being entranced and blown away by this book.
It is superb. It is one of those books that seems so simple when you look back and consider what it is about - the lives of families and people - and yet it sucks you in and draws the world these characters inhabit so fully that you find it comes alive in front of ...more
It is superb. It is one of those books that seems so simple when you look back and consider what it is about - the lives of families and people - and yet it sucks you in and draws the world these characters inhabit so fully that you find it comes alive in front of ...more
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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.
Though, as the blurb helpfully point out, there are eels and incest.
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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.
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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Read in March, 1994
Ok, this is my favorite book of all time. Perhaps a little odd choice for one's fav, but I have to say that something about this book completely connected with me. I was a senior in college at the time, double-majoring in history and English lit. The interwoven narrative of the generational histories of the principals captured my imagination in a totally unique way. The choices and actions of the past are inextricably linked with the present.
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Read in January, 2006
This book has a lot of sex in it, just to warn you up front. But I thought it was a good book. I read it for a class and I think I was the only one in the class that enjoyed the book. So, I suppose you'll have to take it for what it's worth. It is a challenging book to read. Some tough issues. But I think in the end the message is correct, that abortion and pre-marital sex are a bad idea. Getting to that message takes some wading through.
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It was a little hard to get into at first, but then I became completely engrossed. The story itself was really intricately woven, which was great, but even more interesting were the sidetracking (or perhaps the main point of the book) dialogues re. history, eels, the english Fens. I had to google the fens and now I really wish I could go see them in their heyday. Love a book that transports you physically and temporally.
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One of my very favorite novels, of any time. The narrator, a history teacher, has a flair for charmingly self-conscious melodrama, but the more you hear his story, the more you'll feel the true weight of it. Brilliant story-telling, haunting imagery. All Swift's books contain a mystery and this one's a whopper. I love his writing and think he's the most neglected contemporary British writer, at least here in the U.S.
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Read in July, 2008
recommends it for:
...people who can make it through the first 8 pages, maybe?
I'm not giving this one star because I thought it was a terrible book. I just have no idea what to give it because...I couldn't read it. I found it wholly unreadable. My brain shut down after every other sentence. I'm not even sure why. Was it powerfully dull and obtuse? Was it blindingly complex and rich? Was it actually in Sanskrit and I didn't realize? I have no idea. I just couldn't. read. it.
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This is one of those strange little books you come across at random and then are entranced by the world it brings to you. Narrated by a drepressed-intellectual-retired-teacher, it folds around time to tell the story of Tom's life and what he believes. I think I just made a wonderful book sound terribly boring, but I just don't have the words to describe just how beautiful a book this is.
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recommends it for:
anyone with historical consciousness!
this is BY FAR my favorite book, of all time. I tend to give this book as a gift - because when I read it as an undergrad freshman for my first course in history, I considered it a gift -- and had many "ah ha!" moments with it. Swift is a beautiful writer - simple, elegant prose. "History" and "history" collide here, as it does in everyone's lives -- read it to find out what that means...
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