Items related to Forms of Water, The
Synopsis
Set in New England, ‘The Forms of Water’ is a superb exploration of the complexities of family life, grief and the ties that continue to bind us to the past.
At the age of eighty, Brendan Auberon, a former monk, is now confined to a wheelchair in a nursing home. As a last wish, he is desperate to catch a final glimpse of the two hundred acres of woodland on which once stood his parental home. Half a century ago, the owners of the land were evicted from their homes and the land was flooded to create a reservoir which would provide water for the big city.
‘The Forms of Water’ is the story of what happens when Brendan convinces his staid nephew Henry to hijack the nursing home van to make this ancestral visit. What begins as a joke becomes infinitely more complex as the family roles begin to rearrange themselves.
A rich and absorbing look at the complexities of family life, at grief and at the ties that continue to bind us to the past.
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Review
The Forms of Water is Andrea Barrett’s second highly accomplished novel and tells the story of the bitter history of the Auberon clan. Henry Auberon is a failed property developer, who has "lost his house, his daughters, his friends, his wife" and is now "trapped in a dead-end job with no future he could see." His sister Wiloma is an emotional wreck, absorbed in "the glories of her newfound religion" following an emotionally bruising divorce. The only connection to their lost childhood spent in Paradise Valley, long ago flooded to make way for a reservoir to quench the thirst of nearby Boston, is their 80-year-old Uncle Brendan. A former monk who has lost his faith, Brendan convinces Henry to take him on one final trip to see the Auberon’s remaining piece of land, which Henry will do anything to get his hands on and develop.
So begins a sometimes funny but relentlessly elegiac story of the search for a world that has been irretrievably lost. Henry, Brendan, Wiloma and their alienated children all converge on Paradise Valley, hoping to find something that will give their lives some meaning. The children pursue their parents "because they were confused and lost and destructive and incapable of caring for themselves. They were so busy chasing after a past they couldn’t recover that they couldn’t see what was happening right in front of their eyes." At the other extreme, Brendan wearily concludes that "it would take hours, days, for them to explain themselves to each other, and the telling would mean reliving everything. And who could stand that? Just surviving was work enough."
The Forms of Water is a beautifully written and carefully structured novel, but its bleak elegy to a lost world will not stimulate everyone as profoundly as Barrett’s triumphant first novel, The Voyage of the Narwhal.--Jerry Brotton
Review
‘Subtle and strong...Barrett’s talents shine...Barrett not only gets the geographical terrain right, she has the emotional terrain down as well. Her writing...is insidious and fluid and as clean as a Berkshire stream. Long after the book has been shelved you’ll find yourself thinking of Brendan, a crowning achievement for any writer.’ Detroit News
‘Barrett returns with her speciality – a story about the tangled web of a family told in prose that’s spun smooth as silk...The strength this time around lies in Barrett’s fine writing and the haunting power of the water, rising to fill that reservoir. It was a real event, but like the best of fiction writers, Barrett makes it more than real.’ Kirkus Reviews
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- PublisherUlverscroft. F A Thorpe Ltd
- Publication date2003
- ISBN 10 0708948391
- ISBN 13 9780708948392
- BindingHardcover
(No Available Copies)
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