- Hardcover: 434 pages
- Publisher: Doubleday; First American Edition edition (Feb 1996)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0385481780
- ISBN-13: 978-0385481786
- Product Dimensions: 23.4 x 16 x 4 cm
- Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 4,030,905 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
Blackwater
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More About the Author
Product Description
Product Description
In 1974 in the far north of Sweden, Annie's lover is brutally murdered. She tries to bury the past, but many years later, her grown daughter is seen in the arms of the man Annie believes responsible for the killings.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
About the Author
Kerstin Ekman is one of Sweden's most prominent novelists. She was born in 1933 in Risinge, a small village in the middle of Sweden. She has written seventeen novels which have been widely published in other Scandinavian languages, German, Finnish, Dutch and French, and have won numerous prizes and awards. She became a member of the Swedish Academy of Arts and Letters in 1978, but resigned in 1989 when the Academy did not make a statement that she could approve of about the Rushdie case. She lives in Valsjöbyn, a small village in the north of Sweden.
Blackwater has been awarded the Swedish Crime Academy's Award for the best crime novel, the August Prize, and the Nordic Council's Literary Prize.
--This text refers to the Paperback edition.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
19 of 19 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This is an extraordinarily complex and ingeniously plotted novel, and to categorise it as a thriller or a crime novel is only to touch the surface of the different aspects of its complexity.
'Blackwater' begins from the point of view a woman called Annie who, awoken by her daughter Mia, who is in her early twenties, returning home in the middle of the night, convinces herself the man with her daughter is the same man she saw eighteen years previously and whom she has always believed to be guilty of the brutal stabbing of two tourists sleeping in a tent. Annie herself had been the first person to discover the bodies of the tourists, on Midsummer Evening, when arriving with Mia, then a little girl, to pitch in her lot with a commune in the desolate north of Scandinavia.
The novel then slowly recreates the disturbing circumstances of the murder through a long and very complex combination of flashbacks seen from different points of view, before returning, at the opening of Part II, to its starting-point and the subsquent revival of interest in a double murder whose motives had never originally been explained (and a murderer who had never been caught).
The plot itself is watertight, but the postmodernist narrative techniques deployed are complex, and sometimes deliberately misleading: information is crucially withheld in order to develop and slowly increase an atmosphere of suspense which gradually becomes overwhelming.
Yet there is much more than suspense and unsolved mystery here. The characters are complex, and all of them have something to hide, or at the very least shady areas of their pasts which they are unwilling to contemplate. The commune itself is something of a failure, and the projected relationship there between Annie and Dan, the boyfriend who, ominously, fails to meet here on her arrival, is the fruit of one of many
misunderstandings in the story. And the wilderness itself functions like a late twentieth-century equivalent of those ominous hostile landscapes in the novels of Thomas Hardy.
Yes, I can sympathise with certain reviewers' frustration: it is a novel which the reader is at certain points tempted to give up. But this is because Kerstin Ekman cleverly allows the reader to be affected by the futility and monotony which characterise many of the characters' lives. But take my word for it: although the first part is (deliberately) slow-moving and ponderous, this is because it is like a spring being slowly wound up in preparation for the revelations in store in the second part.
And the translation, by the late Joan Tate, is of impeccable quality and, presumably, a quite monumental labour of love. This is one of those very rare novels where mystery and narrative mastery meet, and as such is very highly recommended to all those who end up feeling slightly unsatisfied when they get to the end of all those more run-of-the-mill whodunnits.
'Blackwater' begins from the point of view a woman called Annie who, awoken by her daughter Mia, who is in her early twenties, returning home in the middle of the night, convinces herself the man with her daughter is the same man she saw eighteen years previously and whom she has always believed to be guilty of the brutal stabbing of two tourists sleeping in a tent. Annie herself had been the first person to discover the bodies of the tourists, on Midsummer Evening, when arriving with Mia, then a little girl, to pitch in her lot with a commune in the desolate north of Scandinavia.
The novel then slowly recreates the disturbing circumstances of the murder through a long and very complex combination of flashbacks seen from different points of view, before returning, at the opening of Part II, to its starting-point and the subsquent revival of interest in a double murder whose motives had never originally been explained (and a murderer who had never been caught).
The plot itself is watertight, but the postmodernist narrative techniques deployed are complex, and sometimes deliberately misleading: information is crucially withheld in order to develop and slowly increase an atmosphere of suspense which gradually becomes overwhelming.
Yet there is much more than suspense and unsolved mystery here. The characters are complex, and all of them have something to hide, or at the very least shady areas of their pasts which they are unwilling to contemplate. The commune itself is something of a failure, and the projected relationship there between Annie and Dan, the boyfriend who, ominously, fails to meet here on her arrival, is the fruit of one of many
misunderstandings in the story. And the wilderness itself functions like a late twentieth-century equivalent of those ominous hostile landscapes in the novels of Thomas Hardy.
Yes, I can sympathise with certain reviewers' frustration: it is a novel which the reader is at certain points tempted to give up. But this is because Kerstin Ekman cleverly allows the reader to be affected by the futility and monotony which characterise many of the characters' lives. But take my word for it: although the first part is (deliberately) slow-moving and ponderous, this is because it is like a spring being slowly wound up in preparation for the revelations in store in the second part.
And the translation, by the late Joan Tate, is of impeccable quality and, presumably, a quite monumental labour of love. This is one of those very rare novels where mystery and narrative mastery meet, and as such is very highly recommended to all those who end up feeling slightly unsatisfied when they get to the end of all those more run-of-the-mill whodunnits.
19 of 21 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I am amazed that nobody else has yet written a review of this book. It is one of the most terrifying and literate thrillers I have read.
The story is set in the far northern forests of Sweden and centres on a brutal murder, in the late 1960s, of two foreign tourists. Around this crime, Ekman weaves a tale involving the brutalities of rural life, the commune-based radicalism that was so fashionable in Scandinavia at that time, environmental destruction and - most interestingly - a disturbing racism that seems to lurk within Swedish society.
Kerstin Ekman has clearly spent a long time honing the skills of plotting,but the book delivers much more: powerful ideas about education, memory and politics, and a profound, passionate evocation of nature.
Kerstin Ekman is one of the few contemporary Swedish writers to have become known internationally. I came to Blackwater having read The Forest of Hours, a magnificent historical novel that others have reviewed for Amazon. And I came to that book by chance. She is, for me, a wonderful discovery. We need more of her books in English.
9 of 10 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I would agree that "Blackwater" is very slow, painfully slow in the first half and certainly not everyones cup of tea. I admit that I very nearly gave up on it, but I am so glad I did not ! The second half moves along a lot faster and so much more is explained. The characters and plot develop superbly.
This is not the easiest book to read, and I found the Swedish charcters and place names very hard to get to grips with. The plot is complex and interwoven, jumping from character to character and across time.
The novel is also very dark and shows a different side to Swedish life, reminiscent more of an American backwoods lifestyle. The main characters are also fascinating especially one who you think could be a double murderer but ends up in a way as a sort of hero !
Ekman brings different threads and themes together superbly, from the despair of the village doctor, the awkward shyness and moodiness of a teenage boy, the darker thoughts of a teacher turned hippy and the even darker mind of a backwoods loner.
All in all this is a fantastic book. So stick with it, it is well worth it.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Crime writer - Well, not really
I rate this book highly for reasons which have already been given by many other reviewers. I write this to address the very negative views expressed by some reviewers. Read more
Published 13 months ago by JHu
Read this if you want complex ideas and subtle mystery, NOT a...
I am not going to add much to the previous positive reviews here, but it grieves me that this extraordinary novel has been so misunderstood on this and other review sites, so I'm... Read more
Published 17 months ago by Shelfseeker
Not an easy read but enormously rewarding.
This isn't a book for the reader who wants a superficially thrilling mystery novel with a death on every page, full of broken glass and violence. Read more
Published on 15 May 2010 by David Levine
Not an easy read
I read The forest of hours a few years ago and loved it, but this ... Wow! It was such a chore to finish. Read more
Published on 6 April 2010 by liveenl
Dreary
What a disappointment. I started with high hopes after an intriguing opening 50 pages that contained a novel setting, some quirky characters and a distinct style. Read more
Published on 1 Dec 2007 by Blockhead
A Bit Tedious
In 1974, Annie Raft takes her daughter Mia to small-town Blackwater in northern Sweden, to meet her lover Dan at a commune. Read more
Published on 22 Sep 2004 by Ez
a defense of blackwater
Wow, I totally disagree with just about everything in the previous review! It's true that this isn't a fast paced book at all, but it's only boring if you find the human heart... Read more
Published on 1 Mar 2004
Blackwater - as dull as...
What a load of pretentious old tripe. On and on it goes, with numerous pointless and trivial digressions, as if desperate to numb its reader with sheer, brain-killing BOREDOM. Read more
Published on 18 Aug 2002
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