The Norwich, Gildsey, Peterborough railway was introduced primarily as a passenger service but, by enabling cheap freight transportation, also contributed to the emergence of rail as the principal artery of agricultural trade in mid-nineteenth century East Anglia, overtaking inland waterways, with radical implications for the region’s economy and socio-political fabric.

By doing so, he makes himself a part of the history he is teaching, relating his tales to local history and genealogy. The headmaster, Lewis, tries to entice Tom into taking an early retirement. Tom resists this because his leaving would mean that the History Department would cease to exist and would be combined with the broader area of General Studies. Tom's wife is arrested for snatching a baby. The publicity that attends her arrest reflects badly on the school, and Tom is told that he now must retire. In response, he uses his impending forced retirement as an excuse to recount a story to his students. The pivot of Waterland focuses on both the past in 1943, and the present time thirty years after – all related through the eyes of Tom as an adolescent. Pradėjus skaityti galvojau "kaip žmogus gali taip gerai rašyti?". Ir iki šiol tas jausmas liko. Ši istorija - tai dėlionė akylam ir neskubančiam skaitytojui. Ji supinta iš subtilių užuominų, kurios viena po kitos atskleidžiamos ir po truputį dedamos į savas vietas parodo pilną vaizdą. Aš joje tiesiog mėgavausi. Pasakojimo stiliumi, pasirinktomis temomis, magijos ir pasakos priemaišomis, istorija ir beprotybe, pelkėmis, vandenimis ir jų žmonėmis. 💛 There is an excitement, a sense of tension that builds in the novel. You want to know more and more and more. A sentence is started and then left hanging. You know exactly what was to be said but is then not said. This writing style is unusual; I have not run into it before. It’s good, very good. It draws your attention, keeps you alert and adds suspense. There is an underlying satirical tone that has you questioning what is implied. The prose is thought provoking. Do we all live in the fens of history, I dare to ask? And is there more to it than trying to keep our heads above the water of its recurring floods?Her father forces her into seclusion, and for three years she remains isolated. The two fathers finally agree to allow their children to come together again. Unknown to them, Tom, away fighting in World War II, has already written to Mary. When he comes home, the two marry. Tom begins his teaching career while Mary takes a job in an old people's home. Is history simply a record of past mistakes? How do religious beliefs fit into the picture? Can knowledge of past events make us better people? With knowledge can we make better decisions? Sometimes yes. Sometimes no. Life without curiosity is a dead end. If you have curiosity, how can one stop asking why, why, why as life unrolls? If you are a person who incessantly asks why, the need for history is a given. Tarihin dikkate değer tek yönü, bence efendim muhtemelen sona ermek üzere olduğu noktaya gelmiş olması.” Swift spins a tale of empire-building, land reclamation, brewers and sluice-minders, bewhiskered Victorian patriarchs, insane and visionary relicts . . . A book of strange, insidious, unsettling power.”— Books and Bookmen Swift suggests that history is cyclical, that any revolution for a better future is always based on a vision or an adapted reflection of a period of prosperity and wellbeing in the past. That a change leads to another change, which does not always mean progress. That there is also regression and repetition. The Fens, where the biggest part of the story is based, serve Swift as the main metaphor of this cyclicality. Despite centuries of efforts to drain and improve the land in the fens, the water had always found the way to return through rains and floods, bringing disasters to the inhabitants.

Murder, incest, guilt, insanity, ale and eels. Hard to imagine not loving a book with themes like that eh? Or is it? Graham Swift kulağımıza yer yer güçlü çığlıklar haline bürünen çok özel bir hikaye fısıldıyor Su Diyarı kitabıyla. Tarihe geçmeden mekâna bir uğrayalım zira öğretmenimiz tarihçi olduğu kadar yetkin bir coğrafya bilgisine de sahip. Su diyarı namlı Fens, İngiltere’nin kuzey doğusunda insan emeği ile yaratılmış bir bölge, yüzlerce yıla yayılan bir süreç ve çaba sonucunda su diyarının göbeğine bir toprak diyarı inşa ediliyor. Anlatıcımız buranı yerlisi su diyarı insanları ile bölgeye toprağı taşıyan toprak insanlarının soyundan geliyor. Bu iki diyar iki farklı insan türünü de ortaya çıkarıyor. Su insanları doğaları ile barışık ve doğanın sunduğu nimetlerle –yılanbalıkları nereden geliyor- yaşarken toprak insanları sürekli bir gelişim, çatışma ve doğayı hizaya sokmanın tüm ard anlamları ve olumsuzluklarını bağrında taşıyorlar. Bu iki dünyanın çatışması metni ekolojist bir yoruma da açık kılıyor olsa da yazar bunu ve çatışmanın gerilimini büyük sözler sarf etmeden metnin son sahnesine kadar taşıyor ve nihayetinde topraktan gelen soy –dünyanın kurtarıcısı- karanlık sularda nihayete eriyor ya da kitaba sadık kalarak söylemek gerekirse doğanın tarihi büyük anlatının tarihine baskın geliyor. This personal narrative is set in the context of a wider history, of the narrator's family, the Fens in general, and the eel. I'm not kidding. This book gets a little ridiculous. It's a semi-Postmodern text examining the difficulty of writing Realism in a Postmodern era, but it goes off on romantic (not Romantic) tangents about natural history and cultural history and all, in a very Julian Barnes ( A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters) way. Then it goes into creepy, Stephen King-esque scenes with the children exploring the two great draws in life: sex and death. (The only constants, heh.) I ended up wishing either Stephen King or Julian Barnes had written it, and focused on it - as it is, the tension is uneasy, and yet uneasy in a way that really contributes to the novel and its aims. Although I do love how the idea of storytelling is played with in this novel: the idea that we can't bear reality without the stories we create to endow it with meaning, because otherwise reality is too strong, too harsh, and will overpower us. But again, that's very Barnes. Extraordinary . . . A personal book, a book that speaks to the innermost core of the reader . . . Waterland is history, it is exploration. Waterland is geography, lineage. It is commerce, decline and fall, the industrial revolution (the French one, too, with heads lopped off) and, like everything around us, it bears the scars of the two great wars of the twentieth century. It is family saga, family secrets, love, licit and otherwise; it is, above all, an exploration into what it is, this history thing, that affects us all, your history, mine, ours.”What is drawn is no happy story, but it feels real. We read of the discovery and awakening of sexual desire. Of incest, mental retardation, jealousy and envy. Abortion and deaths. A father fights in the First World War and his son in the Second World War. A formidably intelligent book—animated by an impressive, angry pity at what human creatures are capable of doing to one another in the name of love and need.”— The New York Review of Books The telling shifts this way and that in time. The telling is fragmentary and nonlinear. This is a technique that usually does not appeal to me, but it works here! It has a strong and veritable bearing on today, this history, the past, that incident; incidents. It shapes, shakes, cautions, humiliates, and intimidates – this history. Vienu metu galvojau, kad kiek primena Gabriel Garcia Marquez kūrybą. Riba tarp istorijos ir mito čia labai plona. Ir kaip viską išpainiot, kaip sudėliot į logiškus stalčiukus, o galiausiai - ar to išvis reikia? 🙂 Pasakojimuose man patinka, kai ši riba slysčioja tai šen tai ten. Kai tikra gali būt ir netikra. Kai vaizduotei paliekama vietos. Kažkas magiško ir nuostabaus!