We Are Water

I finally finished my January book of the month, We Are Water. Now, my resolution isn't a total loss because I have absolutely read other books while working on this one, but I wouldn't exactly call my "Book a Month" resolution a success anyway.

So that's the good news.

The bad news is that... That book weighed me down a TON. By the end I felt like I was waist deep in mud just trying to slog through. And that makes me pretty sad because when I see Wally Lamb's name on a book, I buy it and read it as hastily as possible.

His ability to write characters is astounding. I adore the back story he provides with even seemingly minuscule characters - you can tell he's really become "one" with each character he writes about. You get to really be present in their minds and learn the way they operate. Which is incredible with characters like Dolores Price in She's Come Undone or Dominick Birdsey in I Know This Much is True. But in the case of one specific character in We Are Water (don't want to ruin it for you if this blog post doesn't completely turn you off), it just became too much. Incest, child rape, pedophilia. It was all too much to bear. Rampant, unabashed racism, infidelity, etc. The only thing I could appreciate about the book was the children's relationship with their father. Orion Oh, in many ways, is the parent I aspire to be. I need to go to school for Psychiatry.

I suppose Mr. Lamb has always written about difficult topics. It's not his first offering that included childhood trauma, but it's my first reception of his books as a parent. And of course, being a parent changes the game so completely that I'm not sure if I went back and read his other books I'd love them as much as I used to.

I feel like I'm going through a bit of a break up.

Wally and I will get back together when he puts out another book (which, if the current timeline continues, will be in about 5 years - OF COURSE it takes that long to write a book when you write as in-depth as he does, but sometimes I get impatient), we've been together since 1999, afterall. And we'll see how it goes from there, I guess. But for now, unless you like to feel like your heart weighs a thousand pounds, I can't recommend We Are Water.