We Are Water: A Novel (P.S.)

I didn't love We Are Water, I didn't hate We Are Water - in fact I just feel ambivalent about it. Annie Oh, a prominent artist, is days away from marrying gallery owner Viveca. She has recently ended a 27 year marriage to Orion Oh, with whom she has three grown children. Told in a stream of consciousness style by alternating characters, this book mainly takes place over a three day period - however, you throughly learn the back grounds of both Annie, Orion and their children. I did not care for this style of writing and would have enjoyed more dialogue and interaction between the characters. That being said the flow of the novel was good, it didn't lag or bore me, this is a testament to Wally Lamb's ability to craft a story. Character development was strong and each character had their own voice. I really hated Annie and I hated Orion for having a relationship with her - I never felt the connection between them even as they recalled their courtship. Annie's relationship with Viveca also felt unreal and odd, she had no business being in a relationship with a man or a women until she healed herself. I liked Orion the best, he was not perfect but possibly I liked him because he felt the most real, less cliche then other characters in the book. My favorite two chapters in We Are Water were the first one by Gualtiero Agnello and Part II Mercy by Ruth Fletcher, these chapters are where Lamb shined, giving us the story telling we have come to love in She's Come Undone and I Know this Much is True, I would enjoy a whole novel of Josephus Jones' murder. Part IV A Wedding was my least favorite part of the book. Kent Kelly was a fascinating and memorable character, one who was essential to Annie's story -but the way in which he was introduced into the story line felt forced and rushed, too convenient. I think Lamb needed a way to create a climax, action and reveal Annie's secrets but it all was a bit soapy and overly dramatic. As much as I disliked Annie I hated that he ruined her wedding, Kelly's exit from the novel and the secrets that created was also a bit too soapy. And now what I hated about We Are Water - Lamb's constant attempt to cram popular culture and current events down our throats, this novel felt to much like a political statement on everything and ultimately this distracted from the overall story. Lamb covered every trendy news topic from the past decade, 9/11, Iraq, Afghanistan, Palin, Fort Hood shooting, Lindsey Lohan, Lady Gaga, health care, gay rights, PTSD, Bush, Obama, Evangelical Christians, conservatives, Clinton, etc. It was exhausting and as I went through each characters chapters, I found my self thinking, do people really think like this. Lamb's ability to tie in current events and popular culture into his novels was part of what I loved about his first two, but this just felt to forced to crammed down your throat. Mayb...

I purchased for my daughter n law. I’m hoping she will lend it to me when she is done. Wally Lamb is a great storyteller.

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 Ann...

An amazing swim through the lives of others, recognizing the common denominators that lead us through to unknown caverns, all to solidify our lives.

It's a long book, but it never felt that way. Once i started reading, I put everything else to the side. The characters are truly believable, and complex. If you haven't read Wally Lamb before, you owe yourself the pleasure.