The Weight of Water
Anita Shreve. Little Brown and Company, $28 (256pp) ISBN 978-0-316-78997-4
In 1873, two women living on the Isles of Shoals, a lonely, windswept group of islands off the coast of New Hampshire, were brutally murdered. A third woman survived, cowering in a sea cave until dawn. More than a century later, Jean, a magazine photographer working on a photoessay about the murders, returns to the Isles with her husband, Thomas, and their five-year-old daughter, Billie, aboard a boat skippered by her brother-in-law, Rich, who has brought along his girlfriend, Adaline. As Jean becomes immersed in the details of the 19th-century murders, Thomas and Adaline find themselves drawn together-with potentially ruinous consequences. Shreve (Where or When; Resistance) perfectly captures the ubiquitous dampness of life on a sailboat, deftly evoking the way in which the weather comes to dictate all actions for those at sea. With the skill of a master shipbuilder, Shreve carefully fits her two stories together, tacking back and forth between the increasingly twisted murder mystery and the escalating tensions unleashed by the threat of a dangerous shipboard romance. Written with assurance and grace, plangent with foreboding and a taut sense of inexorability, The Weight of Water is a powerfully compelling tale of passion, a provocative and disturbing meditation on the nature of love. Author tour. (Jan.)
Details
Reviewed on: 12/30/1996
Genre: Fiction
Hardcover - 377 pages - 978-0-7862-1095-4
Mass Market Paperbound - 304 pages - 978-0-316-78250-0
Mass Market Paperbound - 978-0-316-73903-0
Open Ebook - 978-0-316-07351-6
Open Ebook - 168 pages - 978-0-316-15849-7
Paperback - 978-0-316-19057-2
Paperback - 978-0-316-16322-4