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The Forms of Water [Paperback]

Andrea Barrett (Author)
3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
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Product details

  • Paperback: 304 pages
  • Publisher: Flamingo; New Ed edition (21 Oct 2002)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0007114915
  • ISBN-13: 978-0007114917
  • Product Dimensions: 19.2 x 12.8 x 2 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 1,326,385 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Andrea Barrett
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Product Description

Amazon.co.uk Review

The Forms of Water is Andrea Barrett’s second highly accomplished novel and tells the story of the bitter history of the Auberon clan. Henry Auberon is a failed property developer, who has "lost his house, his daughters, his friends, his wife" and is now "trapped in a dead-end job with no future he could see." His sister Wiloma is an emotional wreck, absorbed in "the glories of her newfound religion" following an emotionally bruising divorce. The only connection to their lost childhood spent in Paradise Valley, long ago flooded to make way for a reservoir to quench the thirst of nearby Boston, is their 80-year-old Uncle Brendan. A former monk who has lost his faith, Brendan convinces Henry to take him on one final trip to see the Auberon’s remaining piece of land, which Henry will do anything to get his hands on and develop.

So begins a sometimes funny but relentlessly elegiac story of the search for a world that has been irretrievably lost. Henry, Brendan, Wiloma and their alienated children all converge on Paradise Valley, hoping to find something that will give their lives some meaning. The children pursue their parents "because they were confused and lost and destructive and incapable of caring for themselves. They were so busy chasing after a past they couldn’t recover that they couldn’t see what was happening right in front of their eyes." At the other extreme, Brendan wearily concludes that "it would take hours, days, for them to explain themselves to each other, and the telling would mean reliving everything. And who could stand that? Just surviving was work enough."

The Forms of Water is a beautifully written and carefully structured novel, but its bleak elegy to a lost world will not stimulate everyone as profoundly as Barrett’s triumphant first novel, The Voyage of the Narwhal.--Jerry Brotton --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

‘Subtle and strong…Barrett’s talents shine…Barrett not only gets the geographical terrain right, she has the emotional terrain down as well. Her writing…is insidious and fluid and as clean as a Berkshire stream. Long after the book has been shelved you’ll find yourself thinking of Brendan, a crowning achievement for any writer.’ Detroit News

‘Barrett returns with her speciality – a story about the tangled web of a family told in prose that’s spun smooth as silk…The strength this time around lies in Barrett’s fine writing and the haunting power of the water, rising to fill that reservoir. It was a real event, but like the best of fiction writers, Barrett makes it more than real.’ Kirkus Reviews

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First Sentence
HENRY AUBERON, NEARING FIFTY AND WITHOUT A CAR, SAT IN a shabby living room that didn't belong to him. Read the first page
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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
By Sentinel TOP 500 REVIEWER VINE™ VOICE
Format:Paperback
This is an engrossing book, a tale of a dysfunctional family, a dying patriarch, a lost home (in a valley which is now home for a reservoir), all blended into a journey toward resolution, understanding and forgiveness. The magic of the old homeland acts like a siren call to draw the estranged members of the family back together, and a battle of will ensues where trickery, cunning and honesty all have their part to play. Barrett's compassionate eye shows us humanity in its many guises,with its imperfections as important to character as the more positive aspects. She has an unerring ability to conjure up locations which come alive, in addition to the gradual development of character. At the still centre of the various literal and personal journeys in the book is Brendan, on his own final quest, and the story of his 'springing' from residential care, and the part he plays in the final resolution of 'who obtains what' is the centerpiece of the novel. An uplifting, thoroughly gripping tale, with a fine cast of colourful characters jockeying for position. If you enjoy this, you'll also lose yourself in the radically different, but equally engaging The Voyage of the Narwhal
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1 of 2 people found the following review helpful
By A Customer
Format:Paperback
This book is really about the effect of the early death of parents on the subsequent generations. Brendan is a secondary character; his journey is the wheel around which the book turns. The true protagonists of the book are the following 2 generations, whose lives are profoundly disturbed by the early deaths of Brendan's brother and sister-in-law. I kept thinking about this book long after I'd finished it.
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1 of 2 people found the following review helpful
By A Customer
Format:Paperback
The synopsis of this book doesn't do it justice. It's really about the long term effects of the early death of parents on the following generations. Brenden is actually a secondary character, whose journey home is the wheel around which the story plays out. It's one of those books I found myself thinking about long after I finished reading it.
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