DeSales Harrison

One of Daniel Abend’s therapy patients commits suicide. She was an addict and was depressed so he thought he understood what had happened. But when he starts to receive mysterious packages and letters, he starts to think there may have more to her death than he first thought. The letters and packages take a more sinister turn when they lead him to believe that his teenage daughter is in danger. Whomever is sending Daniel these notes seems to know a lot about his past, which causes Daniel show more to visit his past mistakes in life.

Writing the above blurb outlining the basic plot of this book makes it sound like an ordinary thriller. Yes, there’s plenty of suspense, but it’s so much more than that. It’s an extraordinary, multi-layered look at the life of a man whose sorrows and regrets run deep. The writing is so luscious, I couldn’t get enough of it. The author chose to tell the story through a confession written to a priest, which added another layer of intrigue. It’s a dark, tragic tale and one I’ll never forget. This is an intense literary work of art and completely took my breath away. Kudos to the author on his debut novel. If it doesn’t receive many awards, I’ll be very surprised.

Most highly recommended.

This book was given to me by the publisher in return for an honest review. show less

The author's writing style has a beautiful literary quality with a poetic feel. Taken in small doses, it really is captivating. Unfortunately, style dominates and monopolizes, so the story gets lost somewhere in the overflow of words.

The story has two narrators. Daniel is the main narrator, and his part is in first person. Father Spurlock's parts are smaller and written in third person. These two characters are completely interchangeable. The same is true of Daniel's daughter and her show more mother. Their two characters are carbon copies in many ways. This is largely because the narration is more about the author's own literary style than the characters as unique individuals.

Pacing is incredibly slow. The characters are full of introspection. We ponder and lament and worry, but not much of anything actually happens for the longest time. The mystery and any possible suspense are completely swallowed up within the melodrama of Daniel's psyche and the homogeneity of the characters' voices.

For me, style overshadowed substance to the point where I was bored with the story.

*I received an advance copy from the publisher, via Amazon Vine, in exchange for my honest review.* show less

The Waters & The Wild by DeSales Harrison is a recommended mystery - for the right reader.

First Father Nelson Spurlock has a young women visit him, looking for something her father may have sent him. Later Spurlock receives through the mail the confession, of sorts, from a man he doesn't know. The writer is Daniel Abend, a psychoanalyst and single father living in New York City and father of a teenage daughter, Clementine, the young woman who must have been Spurlock's visitor. Abend show more apparently had an affair years earlier with a woman in Paris, presumably the mother of his daughter. When one of his patients commits suicide, Spurlock delivered the eulogy, which is what brought the man to Abend's attention. After this death, however, his daughter disappears and Abend begins to receive threatening messages, which lead him to examine his past.

While the writing is beautiful in this novel and the mystery is intriguing, the presentation and the prose overwhelm the plot. The beginning starts out strong, but after that the sheer barrage of language eliminates some of the pleasure of following the twists and turns of the story. The narrative mostly moves along at a crawl and I began to lose patience with the florid language of the prose and snail's pace of the plot. It must also be said that at times it was difficult to follow which character was talking as they weren't presented from the start as unique individuals. At the conclusion, it is an interesting story but, for me, a struggle to finish. 2.5 rounded up for the right reader.

Disclosure: My review copy was courtesy of the Random House Publishing Group.
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The Waters & The Wild is a book I would recommend only to those with strong literary leanings, and a particular interest in (or at least, patience for) psychological theory, theology and introspection. That is not to say this novel’s billing as a literary thriller is incorrect… It is simply that readers must traverse hundreds of pages of highly literary terrain before the thriller element really takes hold. It really needn’t have been that challenging. Yet the right reader, one that show more gives conscientious focus to the myriad tangents and imagery laid before them, will often find that ‘highly literary terrain’ profound; and dare I say it, in places majestic. Read full review >> show less