The Gilmore Guide to Books

Connecting Books and Readers One Review at a Time

  • Home
  • About Me
  • Reviews
    • Reviews by Author
    • Reviews by Title
    • Reviews by Genre
  • More Books
  • Policies
    • Review Policy
    • Privacy Policy

We Are Water: A Novel

October 25, 2013

We Are Water by Wally Lamb
Published by Harper
Publication date: October 22nd 2013
Genres: Contemporary, Fiction, Literary
five-stars

we are water

 

How a work can be solid and delicate, earthy and of air is a mystery but describes Wally Lamb’s novel, We Are Water. Ostensibly it is the story of Annie Oh—wife, mother, artist and keeper of secrets, secrets that grow and beget other secrets, changing her life and the lives around her. When she is only five, she watches as her mother is swept away by a flood, along with her baby sister. Her father turns to drink in his despair and she is left largely in the care of a teenage cousin, Kent, to whom she clings in her desperation for security.

Despite this traumatic childhood, the rest of Annie’s life progresses through largely normal channels. She marries a good man, gives birth to twins, and later, a daughter. It is the arrival of her children that opens a door within her, one of creativity, which leads to three dimensional pieces of art, and eventually to her recognition and success as an artist. At this point, she falls in love with her art dealer, Viveca, and leaves her husband and their grown children to move to New York City and live with her. The novel begins with their impending wedding in Connecticut, an event that brings the past crashing into the present.

We Are Water is told alternately by each member of the Oh family, so we hear from father Orion, twins Ariane and Andrew, baby sister Marissa, and Annie herself. As they reconstruct family history from their own perspective there are areas that distinctly mesh and those that do not. Lamb writes in the language of families from the most petty of actions to the larger, more confusing times, times that are often not remembered by all but left to fade away, replaced by something better. The family rewriting of history. In his inimitable way, he draws us into the family circle, plying us with childhood fights and name calling, marital discord, and the pull between one’s dreams and one’s obligations, creating a deep empathy for and recognition of his characters. We not only know these people and their battles but we may be them as well. It is as our attention is held by these everyday dramas that the past unspools like a wayward bale of barbed wire, slashing and cutting indiscriminately. It creates pain and permanent damage but Lamb still manages to leave us with the poignant beauty of familial love and how we go on, even when it does not seem possible.

five-stars

Related Posts

  • Related Posts
  • Same Genre
  • 5 Star Books
splitfoot
Mr. Splitfoot: A Novel
Seating Arrangements
Seating Arrangements
another
Another Side of Paradise
witches
The Witches Are Coming by Lindy West
November Mini-Reviews
hollywood
Hollywood Women: The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo
son
Everybody’s Son: A Novel
What I need to Read
What I Need When I Read
clockmaker
The Clockmaker’s Daughter by Kate Morton
mountains
The Mountains Sing
blowout
Blowout by Rachel Maddow
five best
Valentine: A Novel by Elizabeth Wetmore
miniaturist
The Miniaturist by Jessie Burton
rules
The Rules of Magic
submission
The Submission by Amy Waldman

5 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: book clubs, contemporary life, Harper, literary

Comments

  1. Jennine G. says

    October 25, 2013 at 8:06 pm

    Can’t wait! I have a signed copy on its way to my house any day now!

    Reply
  2. Jenny @ Reading the End says

    October 27, 2013 at 12:14 pm

    I have a thing about floods, but this sounds amazing. One of my favorite things in books is when you see the ways shared memories can differ so wildly from each other — Karen Joy Fowler does this a bit in We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, and I thought it was great.

    Reply
  3. Jennifer @ The Relentless Reader says

    October 28, 2013 at 6:01 am

    I recently won a copy of this. I was excited but now I’m doubly looking forward to reading it. Fantastic review 😀

    Reply
  4. Kelly says

    October 28, 2013 at 10:29 am

    LOVE this review. I finished this one last week and adored it. Have you read any of Lamb’s other work?

    Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

  • Bloglovin
  • Email
  • Facebook
  • Google+
  • Instagram
  • Pinterest
  • Twitter

Save time and subscribe via email

No time to keep checking for new reviews? Enter your email address to subscribe and receive notifications of new posts by email. No spam!

Currently Reading

Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle
Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle
by Emily Nagoski
The Dutch House
The Dutch House
by Ann Patchett
Wild Game: My Mother, Her Lover, and Me
Wild Game: My Mother, Her Lover, and Me
by Adrienne Brodeur

goodreads.com

Affiliate Disclosure

I’m an affiliate for Indiebound and Amazon. If you click on a link that takes you to any of these sites and make a purchase I’ll earn a small fee, which goes towards the costs of maintaining this site. Your support is appreciated. Thank you!

Archives

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 United States License.

Theme Design By Studio Mommy · Copyright © 2021

Copyright © 2021 · Beyond Madison Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in