Wally Lamb doesn’t tell quiet, little stories. Through his previous three novels, Lamb has established himself as a “wordy” author who creates deeply complex and troubled characters with intricately detailed story lines. The case is no different with his latest 500+ page novel, We Are Water.
The marriage of Annie and Orion Oh began in a spirit of love and affection and produced three children, but its dissolution slowly crept up on them over the years. While each would like to point a finger at the other for the cause of their separation after almost thirty years of marriage, there is nothing simplistic about their faltering relationship. As the novel opens, their divorce may still be fresh, but their relationship had been over for quite some time, and Annie has fallen in love again. Her wedding is coming up, but the fact that she is marrying a woman, and doing so in the town in Connecticut where she had lived with Orion and raised their children, is a slightly contentious one within her family. While her children have varying opinions on this new relationship and gay marriage in general, even Annie is wrestling with some uncertainties as the wedding approaches.
The wedding of Annie and her art dealer Viveca may be at the center of the novel, but the perspectives of Orion, Annie, and their three children each get to take center stage in different chapters, and the result is a quite complex novel with important threads of the story reaching back in time to characters’ personal histories. As is often the case with Lamb’s fiction, painful and dark secrets haunt the story, and the effects of those hidden truths extend far beyond the individuals withholding them.
Wally Lamb hails from the area of Connecticut in which I grew up, and in this novel he again returns to the fictional town of Three Rivers that he created for previous novels, a town based on three specific towns that I know quite well. His fictional setting perfectly captures the feel of the eastern part of the state, a working class area that Lamb recently described as “a more humble Connecticut” in an interview on NPR’s The Diane Rehm Show. I’m personally drawn to his writing as it feels authentic, and his character development always reaches impressive levels of intricacy.
Tackling social issues like divorce, racism, sexual abuse, and gay marriage, with connections back to plot points decades ago, this is no light reading, not topically and not in relation to the characters’ experiences. The content in this book could be troubling to some, and though I found many passages to be discomforting, I applaud Lamb for his skill in bringing dark realities to the page. I’m not sure I could ever be disappointed by Wally Lamb’s writing, and while I’ve heard critiques of his writing style, I happen to be in the camp of readers who hang on his every word. I highly recommend this new novel.
I tried to read She’s Come Undone many many MANY years ago, I think. I’m not sure if I finished or not, but I know it didn’t knock me out.
However, he sounds like the kind of author I’d like, so which book would you recommend I try?
I was the most affected by I Know This Much is True, which came out in 1998. The sibling aspect of the story rang authentic to me, and even though it wasn’t exactly the same situation as my own personal experience, it was so very relatable. I’m a huge fan of his style, which features long passages and tons of small details in characters’ lives and thoughts, and I just can’t emphasize enough how accurate his depiction of eastern CT really is!
Did you ever read Johnathan Franzen’s FREEDOM? It seems like a similar style.
I didn’t, though it still sits on my “someday reading” list. 🙂