We Are Water: A Novel

Wally Lamb is one of my favorite authors and this book does not disappoint. Each chapter is told in first person format which is typically something not done very well. Lamb does this masterfully. The complex and interwoven stories of the family members will keep you turning pages even when it gets to a very dark and uncomfortable place a little more than halfway through the book. The subject matter is raw and emotional. With the introduction of an unexpected character, the book takes a turn towards uncomfortable yet you’re still unable to stop reading. This is definitely a must read for Lamb fans.

I was disappointed in Lamb's last novel, "The Hour I First Believed" for a number of reasons. My biggest was that the main character seemed like a rehash of Dominick from "I Know This Much is True" in a lot of ways. This newest novel by Lamb introduces several characters that are all different than anything we have seen before, especially Annie and Andrew, the two main narrators apart from Orion, who, while being cut in the image of Dominick and Caleum, differs from them in not being quite so angry and being a much more even personality. I've always liked books that skip around from POVs in the first person. It is a challenging way to write, and Lamb comes off doing it beautifully. I'd like if he maybe explored the personalities of the daughters a bit more, but ultimately this works out by being Annie, Orion, and Andrew's story in the main. In fact, he probably could have fattened up the chapters that are written by the three main characters and done just as well with the story. This is really Annie, Orion, and Andrew's story when you get down to it. I was happy to not have such a quick ending like Lamb sometimes does, tying things up a little too neatly. Orion's last three chapters are of substance, and it is interesting how well he writes from the perspective of someone in a wheelchair. It does have the affect of making Orion the main character and not Annie, but Orion really is a fascinating character when you get down to it. The scene of Orion and Andrew on the beach at the end is a tearjerker of the highest order. I highly recommend this book to anyone who has read anything by Lamb and anyone who like intelligent contemporary fiction with substance. The subject matter of this book is not easy to digest. Kent's chapters made me want to kill him but at the same time made me feel something for a disgusting human being. Without Kent's and Ruth's chapters the book would have suffered, and with them it tips the scale into greatness.

Wally Lamb is an incubator. Every five years, or every ten years, and only occasionally at other points in time, does this talented author bless our bookshelves with a new novel. When they arrive, they are gifts. His books, as they always are, are journeys into the human soul and not simply novels. They follow the arc of lives, allow the characters to seep in secrets, touch upon sensitive topics, unfold slowly over the course of hundreds of pages and leave the reader not only drawn into world which he so beautifully writes, but aching because they know they will have to sit and wait while he produces another -- a wait that will feel unforgivably long. In his latest offering WE ARE WATER, as he has in the past novels This Much I Know Is True and The Hour I First Believed, Lamb returns us to quiet town of Three Rivers, Connecticut to bare witness to legacy of the Oh's. Annie Oh is a `angry' artist. Her medium is other peoples trash. Street-found trinkets that -- with nothing more than the creative veins that roils inside her and a loud voice she likens to a cyclone -- she curates into treasures. Treasures that sell for thousands upon thousands of dollars to a fictional client list of not-so-fictional characters. Her life in New York City looks strikingly different from her once humble, erratic beginnings in America's foster care system. She is also a newly minted lesbian and as WE ARE WATER opens, we find Annie stumbling ever closer to her wedding to the woman cultured her vibrant career, Viveca. Orion Oh is trying to hold it together while simultaneously trying to reinvent himself in the third act of his life. His children have grown, his wife-whom he tried to love and understand for the duration of their 27 years together- is no longer his wife but a New York lesbian with a wealthy fiancee he blames for his marriage failing, and his job as a college psychologist has imploded around him after a two-part cataclysm: Lust and distraction. Orion is not trapped solely in the present, his past, too, proves be a divide he cannot overcome as it left him riddled with the shrapnel of estrangement and the hole that always existed in his personal history is one that never quite filled itself up. Annie and Orion's three shared children -- Ariane, Andrew and Marissa -- are as different as they are similar. Each struggles in their own way with change in their personal life -- a wedding, a baby, a fledgling career that requires certain, yet questionable, moral compromises -- as well the change of their parents. One could liken their mid-twenties struggles to the struggles that mid-fifties parents are in the throes of, drawing the conclusion that life, no matter one's age, is little more than a endless loop of choices, chances and possible regrets. Ah, the brilliance of Lamb reveals itself yet again. As the wedding of Annie (or Anna, the name given to her by the highfalutin society of art and prestige she now travels with) and Viveca draws near, so do the individual secrets that members of the Oh tribe have struggled to push away. Secrets and truths, the family must fully acknowledge both to move on...but the secrets they've kept will, in one single moment, lead to new secrets they'll be forced to keep as they try to move forward. WE ARE WATER is an astute, and at times harrowing, novel which begs to be read. Weaving chaotic pasts together with the present, the books delves heavily into many of the social issues we face today - race, class, marriage, parenting, forgiveness, mental illness and homosexuality. The book is not a light read by any means, but an amazing one that asks a reader to set aside all of her preconceived notions and look deeper into the core of where those notions stem from. Very possibly the best book of 2013, add this to you TBR list and move it right to the top. P.S: Lovers of Lamb's first best selling novel She's Come Undone should by close attention as a familiar face appears in this novel (as is almost the status quo for Lamb).

Used in good condition. The story is engaging, enjoying the way Lamb writes keeping reader interested.

Another wonderful book from Mr Lamb, I was totally sucked into the lives of the family at the centre of his latest creation, amazing character development as always.

A difficult read - yes. But a subject that needs to be addressed without hyperbole if we are ever to break the vicious circle of abuse. Wally tackles this subject with his usual fluidity, making it possible to read on, even through quite harrowing passages. Ever since I've stumbled across his second novel, I've been a keen fan. This novel deepens my respect for Wally's work and makes me impatient for his next. Wally, your humanity speaks (through every one of your) volumes! Thanks for your hard work. Keep it up.

Was mir an Wally Lamb's Büchern so gefällt, ist, wie er die einzelnen Charaktere so eindringlich beschreibt. Auch in seinem neuesten Buch "We are water" beschreibt Lamb die Charaktere, jeweils aus ihrer eigenen Sichtweise. Der Leser erhält dadurch Einblicke in die Gedanken- und Gefühlswelt aller Charaktere und wird deshalb nicht auf nur einen Hauptprotagonisten fokussiert. Die Aussage dieses hier beschriebenen Familiendramas ist ganz klar: es gibt nicht nur Schwarz oder Weiß, Gut oder Böse. Manchmal geraten wir unbeabsichtigt in einen Strudel aus Ereignissen, dessen Folgen wir erst Jahre oder Jahrzehnte später erkennen und die sogar bis in die nächste Generation noch ihre Auswirkungen haben können. Wally Lamb hat sich mal wieder selber übertroffen - ich habe alle seine Bücher gelesen und alle waren sehr gut geschrieben. Aber ich persönlich finde "We are water" ist sein bisher bestes Buch. Leider wurde dieses Buch bisher noch nicht ins Deutsche übersetzt - deshalb habe ich es im Original auf Englisch gelesen, was aber sehr gut ging. Wenn man mal die ersten 50-100 Seiten geschafft hat, dann ist man automatisch so in dieser Familiengeschichte drin, dass man unbedingt weiterlesen muss - es fiel mir persönlich nicht schwer, dieses Buch in einer Fremdsprache zu lesen. Wer Wally Lamb's Bücher mag, dem kann ich dieses Buch nur weiterempfehlen. Und an alle die noch kein Buch von ihm gelesen haben: es lohnt sich sehr seine Bücher zu lesen, weil Lamb einfach aus dem Leben schreibt !

I enjoyed this book immensely. There were some heavy triggering subjects written in such a way that have insight to the damage they caused to the victims from several vantage /viewpoints. The book is definitely hard to put down .Well done yet again Mr Lamb!!!

Slow to start but then you get caught up with the family and it's story. Of how one generation's secrets hurt the next generation.