A history teacher, Tom Crick, nearing the end of his career abandons the demands of his curriculum, forsaking the French Revolution for the story of his own life and that of his home, the Fens of East Anglia. The events of his childhood and the repurcussions they have in the present day are the core of this novel, but it is made clear that the flat Fens landscape plays just as much a part in the novel as any of the characters, reinforcing the sense of isolation that haunts the lives of Crick and his family and acquaintances.

Swift weaves a detailed, multi-layered fictional history of the landscape and those who have shaped it over centuries seamlessly into the intimate dramas of one man. I found the plot took a while to get going but once it did the various nuggests of new information and scandalous developments in the various parallel plot lines meant that this is a serious, literary novel that nevertheless grips you with the intensity of an airport page-turner.

Personally I found Swift's style to contain some slightly annoying tics, but once the plot picks up the pace these become less obtrusive. ( )

Now this is an interesting book. It’s interesting because, as far as I know, it’s a rare novel about the Fens. This is the area of the UK that I spent my first five years in and where my sister was born. Flat, flat, flat farmland - a curious landscape. And the landscape, as in Toibin’s The Heather Blazing and Wharton’s Ethan Frome plays a sinister part as any other in the story.

Head on over to Arukiyomi and read the rest... ( )

2504 Waterland, by Graham Swift (read 25 Mar 1993) This novel was hailed by The Guardian as "the best novel' of 1983. It is written like Faulkner and while I used to enjoy Faulkner I did not enjoy this book. It is mainly laid in The Fens, an area of eastern England I never heard of before, being the area near The Wash. It is silt and the silt adds land. Tom Crick is a history teacher who tells of his ancestry and his youth (in 1943) and his uncle-brother Dick, who is a potatohead. I thought this book started OK but I lost interest. ( )

Swift, Graham. Waterland. Vintage, New York, 1983. This book became a movie with Jeremy Irons. It's a good tale, but it kind of hits you over the head with symbolism.

Somewhat interesting, but I found the narrator's avuncular charm distinctly uncharming. Another complaint is the water metaphor that started to feel crude and overdone in the first 50 pages already. I expected more from this book, even the writing itself was a disappointment. ( )