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About the author and blogger ...

Anne Goodwin’s drive to understand what makes people tick led to a career in clinical psychology. That same curiosity now powers her fiction.
A prize-winning short-story writer, she has published three novels and a short story collection with small independent press, Inspired Quill. Her debut novel, Sugar and Snails, was shortlisted for the 2016 Polari First Book Prize.
Away from her desk, Anne guides book-loving walkers through the Derbyshire landscape that inspired Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre.
Subscribers to her newsletter can download a free e-book of award-winning short stories.

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Waiting for the Rain: Water in Fiction from Novels to Flash

11/7/2014

15 Comments

 
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The latest flash fiction challenge from Charli Mills sent me cruising my geographically-arranged bookshelves for novels on the theme of water. Waiting for the Rain by Zimbabwean Charles Mungoshi was my obvious starting point since, as usual at this time of year, my garden is particularly thirsty. I try to conserve water by harvesting rain from the drainpipes and pounding my plot with a watering can as the sun goes down behind the trees. But, with my tendency to precrastinate over arduous tasks, I can often make extra work for myself by transplanting seedlings in the heat of the day, then bemoaning their failure to thrive. Yet, through this, through the dirt under my fingernails, I feel a connection to those subsistence farmers whose very survival is dependent on the rain. Of course, there’s an over romanticism bordering on the delusional in this assumed affinity between my pampered life and theirs.

The Westerners’ illusions about the poor is one of the themes of Ann Patchett’s novel, State of Wonder, about secret research in the muddy waters of the Brazilian jungle. It’s not too much of a boat ride from the Amazon basin to the West Indies, the setting for Jean Rhys’s reimagining of Charlotte Brontë’s mad-woman-in-the-attic, The Wide Sargasso Sea. Depending on how far they’ve drifted off course, we might also encounter Grace Winter on those waters, fighting for survival in Charlotte Rogan’s debut novel, The Lifeboat. From there, we could sail through the Panama Canal into the Pacific ocean, where, in Yan Martel’s debut, The Life of Pi, a young man shares his lifeboat with a hyena, a zebra, an orangutan and a 450-pound Bengal tiger.

While some find themselves making a temporary home on the ocean through shipwreck, others carve out a semi-permanent existence on the hopefully calmer waters of urban rivers. In Penelope Fitzgerald’s Booker-prize-winning Offshore, a small community of ragbag eccentrics develops among the houseboat dwellers on the Thames. A short hop on the cross-channel ferry takes us to the French coast where, in Véronique Olmi’s poignant novella Beside the Sea, a young mother takes her two sons on their final trip to the seaside.

Across the other side of the world, beach life is also a feature of Tim Winton’s Breath, a coming-of-age novel about sex and surfing and the fine line between exhilaration and terror. I’m staying in Australia for my final choice, where the heat reminds me again of my garden’s need of rain. Kate Grenville’s The Idea of Perfection evokes another way of traversing a stretch of water in the story of the unlikely relationship between a refugee of three marriages and an awkward divorcee charged with demolishing an antique bridge, the only tourist attraction in a dying country town.



On the subject of bridges, how about a musical interlude for an old folksong in a modern recording about the river running through the city in which I lived for twenty years from the age of 18.

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I could siphon up more novelistic watery connections – and, if you’re not already exhausted by this globetrotting, do pop back to my post on six degrees of separation for a voyage around Johanna Lane’s debut, Black Lake or to my climate-change post for a short synopsis of The Flood by Maggie Gee – but I need to deliver my 99-word flash. I could’ve cheated and recycled my climate-change story but, instead, this week’s effort draws on another of my stories, Silver Bangles, about a group of Western tourists becoming unnerved by an encounter with the locals:

We pulled up alongside a wooden shack with a blistered Coca-Cola sign above the entrance. The driver had barely stepped inside the ramshackle shop when they came, swarming round the windows of the SUV with their cupped hands and pleading faces.

It was sweltering inside without the aircon. When the driver returned bearing gallon bottles of water, we gave him a round of applause.

Leaving the village, we pointed our cameras at the shallow river where women scrubbed rainbow-coloured clothes and children splashed in the shallows. Where, in rusting cans and old oil drums, girls harvested the household’s water.

If you’re interested in the themes in this story, you’ll find some useful links in my post from World Tourism Day last year. But before you go, I’d love to know what’s your favourite watery novel, as well as what you think of this flash. And do pause, if you can to contemplate the ducks on my pond.

Thanks for reading. I'd love to know what you think. If you've enjoyed this post, you might like to sign up via the sidebar for regular email updates and/or my quarterly Newsletter.
15 Comments
geoff link
11/7/2014 04:23:10 pm

So much here, as usual Anne. First the flash. Terrific and so true and so sad and perceptive. Second the book. Graham Swift Waterland. Though you are so bloody well read I feel enfeebled whenever I read all the books I haven't even got close to. Third the song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dF5xVnTo8gs&feature=kp my favourite water related song...

Reply
Annecdotist
12/7/2014 07:11:53 am

Thanks, as always, Geoff. Haha, re Waterland, it did come to mind as this post was swimming in my head but it's not on my bookshelves -- actually, I don't think I even read it, so I look forward to your book review!

Reply
Norah Colvin link
11/7/2014 08:08:56 pm

Hi Anne,
What a lovely selection of water related books you have listed. I have read only one of these: Breath. It is a wonderful book and I do enjoy Tim Winton's writing. I haven't yet read his most recent one but I must do so soon. It sounds very interesting. I thought you may have included The Old Man and The Sea, but maybe its not such a battle with water.
Your flash did remind of your story Silver Bangles even before I reread it. It is very evocative, and as you say, unnerving. We are so lucky we can turn on a tap whenever we want water. Fresh water should be an unassailable right. Well done!
And I love your ducks on the pond! Serenity!

Reply
Annecdotist
12/7/2014 07:22:29 am

Thank you, Norah. The Old Man and The Sea is another famous one I don't think I've read and, now I'm focusing on contemporary literature for the sake of my own writing (!), perhaps I never will let you can persuade me.
A pleasure to disguss Tim Winton's writing with a compatriot. I found Breath a powerful novel, despite my lack of interest in surfing. And hope to read Eyrie when I get my hands on a copy.
Thanks also for your feedback on my fiction. Both the flash and Silver Bangles arose from real experiences on the same holiday. After that I stopped travelling and much prefer staying at home with my ducks. But they are somewhat fickle and only come to when they're not getting enough to eat elsewhere.

Reply
Charli Mills
12/7/2014 01:18:09 am

Lovely review of water-related books. You certainly siphoned the global reach of this topic! I went and read Silver Bangles--terrific writing. The character development and how the emotion of the piece arcs and returns is beautiful The topic is hard--I'd be buying bangles! So back to your fab flash--the blistered Coca-Cola sign is a great detail, really sets the environment we read into. Reminds me, too, of a friend who works to advocate for immigrants to America. It's so easy for new arrivals to slip into bad eating habits because in their countries Coke was a luxury few could afford so in America, Coke is cheap and readily available. It's a status to consume processed foods. Thus back to your flash--water so easily gained for the tourists in jugs but so hard to harvest by those who live there.

I'm new to both Tyne songs and enjoyed yours and Geoff's. I'm offering a link to my all time favorite water song by cowboy crooner, Eddie Arnold: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dF5xVnTo8gs&feature=kp my.

Reply
Charli Mills
12/7/2014 01:19:59 am

Oh! And my favorite water book is Life of Pi. Loved that book! And your ducks are gorgeous...you know I have a thing for ponds!

Reply
Annecdotist
12/7/2014 07:44:55 am

Thanks for the feedback, Charli, as well as for the prompt that got me going on this. I enjoyed siphoning those books from my shelves.
Thanks for having a read of Silver Bangles. As it happens, I did actually buy a bangle and wrote about it in another post:
http://annegoodwin.weebly.com/annecdotal/on-memory-and-imagination
If you pop over there, there's also a link to a lovely Malagasy song – in fact, now I've reminded myself of it, I think I'll go over there myself or hunt out the CD and have a listen.
Of the Tyne songs, the one in Geoff's link is the most famous here. I had never heard The Water of Tyne until I moved 150 miles away (that's a fair distance in the UK) and learn to sing it with the four-part choir. There's another YouTube link with pictures further down the river away from the city played on the Northumberland pipes (a bit like Scottish bagpipes) by a guy I knew through work https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cK9FBhMac8E.
Interesting what you say about Coke as a status thing, I'vecome across that dangerous assumption that, if it comes from the West it must be good for you.
Ah yes , Life of Pi. I haven't seen the film yet, have you?
As I said to Norah, our ducks are quite fickle. As for the pond, I'm assuming Elmira is much larger, more of a lake. I think we tend to reserve the word pond for smaller garden affairs.
BTW, did you post the right link for your water song? I'm just getting Fog on the Tyne again.

Reply
Charli Mills
12/7/2014 04:26:40 pm

Oops! Wrong link. Here's Eddie: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=05HOAi76XVk. Love the pipes and stunning photos of the Tyne in the other link. And the Malagasy song. It's a cultural music exchange!

Haven't seen Life of Pi on the screen but heard it was good.

Just finishing up a post on the Elmira Pond, updating ducks et all since I've neglected both pond and posts for a while. Elmira would not pass muster for being a lake. Most locals call it a bog. It deserves at least the title of pond.

Annecdotist
13/7/2014 09:34:24 am

Oh love this one, Charli. Reminds me of Jim Reeves. Yeah, now we're not just exchanging words and books but ponds and music too!

Teagan Kearney link
12/7/2014 03:17:05 pm

A lively world tour of books featuring water, Anne. Brilliant post and a excellent piece of flash fiction - loved the contrasts - SUV and blistered sign, outside pleading faces while inside they cheer the driver's return with their bottled water, and the cameras clicking with voyeuristic pleasure at the women scrubbing clothes.
I think the last book I read (that comes to mind that is) with a long passage at sea was 'Jamrach's Menagerie' by Carol Birch. But my favourite piece of writing about water is not a novel, it's the epic poem, 'The Rime of the Ancient Mariner'.

Reply
Annecdotist
13/7/2014 09:38:51 am

Thanks Teagan. I heard Jamrach's Menagerie had good reviews. One for the TBR pile?
Not sure why, but your mentioning the ancient mariner reminded me of another novel, John Banville's The Sea, The Sea

Reply
Sarah link
14/7/2014 12:35:57 pm

Wow.

That is some amazing flash, Anne. Ouch. I don't know how you fit all that in 99 words. Spectacular.

Reply
Annecdotist
15/7/2014 01:36:19 am

Very kind of you to say so, Sarah. Thank you.

Reply
Lisa Reiter link
15/7/2014 08:08:38 am

Gosh - this flash leave me with such a confusion of emotions as I'm sure is intended, but what perhaps strikes me most is just how well read you must be Anne! Not a prompt goes by where you can't pull up several books in relation to the topic! Even water :)

Reply
Annecdotist
15/7/2014 08:14:38 am

Haha, how else does one measure one's life?

Reply



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