We Are Water is a disquieting and ultimately uplifting novel about a marriage, a family, and human resilience in the face of tragedy, from Wally Lamb, the New York Times bestselling author of The Hour I First Believed and I Know This Much Is True.After 27 years of marriage and three children, Anna Oh—wife, mother, outsider artist—has fallen in love with Viveca, the wealthy Manhattan art dealer who orchestrated her success. They plan to wed in the Oh family’s hometown of Three Rivers in Connecticut. But the wedding provokes some very mixed reactions and opens a Pandora’s Box of toxic secrets—dark and painful truths that have festered below the surface of the Ohs’ lives.We Are Water is a layered portrait of marriage, family, and t...
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1. Wonderful novel from a great author
In 1963, a dam ruptures and floods a small town in Connecticut, killing several people. Forty-five years later, the daughter of the young mother killed in the tragedy is preparing to join her partner in an elaborate gay marriage ceremony. These two events, and all the things that happen in between, are the basis of this wonderful book.
Annie Oh, first a daughter, then an orphan, then a wife and mother, then an artist, and finally a lesbian lover, has lived a life so full it seems like she has lived more than one lifetime. Through it all, the secrets she keeps from her early childhood affect herself and everyone around her. In the end, she can't continue to hide her past and finally has to confront it.
It's not a terribly complicated story, but the way Wally Lamb tells it is perfect. Details emerge from different points of view until everything is revealed. He focuses on the inner dialogs of the people involved, and in the process we get to know all the characters...
2. Lamb is an amazing writer
I cherished the experience of reading Lamb's "I Know This Much is True." And I enjoyed "She's Come Undone" as well, but not as much.
"We Are Water" reminds of "I Know This Much is True" in that it explores a family's secrets and sucks the reader in to the point where it's exquisitely uncomfortable to process what you're reading. The subject matter is not lightweight in either book, but still comes across as completely believable. The racism, child molestation, homophobia, etc. are difficult issues to read about from the different characters' point of view, but well worth it to bring you to the book's fabulous conclusion.
Some find his books verbose. I do not. There is no author on the planet, female or male, that can write female characters better than Wally Lamb. His character development, overall, is second to none. (Orion, Annie Oh's husband, is a particularly unforgettable character in this book.)
The Wally Lamb books I've read will never leave...
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Not his best, but many will enjoy it
Annie Oh, a fiftysomething divorced mother of three grown children, is a master of secrets. But it's the weekend of her second marriage - to a female gallery owner and art dealer -- and her secrets are about to come tumbling out; both those from her childhood, of the wrongs that were done to her, and those from her adulthood, the wrongs that she did to others. This weekend will change the entire course of her family's life. Forever, and not necessarily for better.
I admire the craft behind We Are Water. Wally Lamb has long been a favorite writer of mine and he remains the most astute writer of people and character that I have ever read. In this book he slips effortlessly under the skin of Annie, the lesbian art dealer who is both abused and abuser; her husband Orion, the psychologist who is both professionally astute and personally blind; her older daughter Ariane, the perfectionist with the low self-esteem; her younger daughter Marissa, aspiring actress and practicing...
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