Crick is passionate about his job but is being pushed out of his position by a headmaster that does not value history as a subject. He must know that his endless explanations of how and why his life turned out as it did are a kind of extended therapy session.

Maybe it is, but only in his determination not to leave anything out that might be important, or in some way helpful. This edition includes an introduction, by the author, written to celebrate the book’s 25th anniversary. Tom and his father hear him riding off on his motorbike, and know he’s filled his eel-sack with all the remaining bottles. The plot of the novel revolves around loosely interwoven themes and narrative, including the attraction of the narrator's brother to his girlfriend/wife, a resulting murder, a girl having an abortion that leaves her sterile, and her later struggle with depression.This ‘low-lying region of eastern England’ with the ‘shallow shifting waters’ that half-covered it before a Dutchman came to drain it is known to most people born in the country, even hundreds of miles away. To have a future, in this boy’s view, means to confine oneself to the here and now, not in the sense of Be (fully) Here (really) Now, but simply in that progressive sense of being prepared for whatever may come on the glorious journey into an ever-more prosperous and happy time ahead. Waterland' fait partie de ces classiques qui, pas forcément passionnants à la lecture, fascinent cependant le lecteur, conscient qu'il est d'être en présence d'un grand roman.

The confused circumstances of the death, and the narrator’s bland allusion to the fact that the pathologist never looks closely enough to notice the earlier bruise on Freddie’s temple, are irrelevant to her.And we remember how, right from the beginning of the novel, he has insisted on how a moment in the ‘here and now’ can echo down the years. More immediately, after the story comes out and becomes a local scandal, it leads to a new regret to add to the one about his having got Mary pregnant in the first place. Helen becomes a nurse, which is how she comes to meet Henry, the man who will become Tom Crick’s father. Potato-headed Dick was fine, humming to his motorbike and doing the kind of work suited to somebody like him. Tom and Mary have married and moved to the town by now, and as she nurses Henry, he continually mistakes her for the long-dead Helen.