How long have I been hankering to use a song from Ceremonials? Do you remember my demand polite suggestion that all authors must should listen to it on repeat and then write a book based on it solely to keep me happy? But I wouldn’t say that this is a particularly sad book. Yes there are a lot of moving poems, especially when Kasienka first moves to England and constantly feels “unwanted and misused”, but I also saw this book as more about finding out who you are and becoming comfortable with it. Jean becomes immersed in the details of the 19th-century murders after discovering a purported memoir of Maren in the library. Gradually, tensions increase among the group on the sloop, with unspoken emotions surfacing. Jean begins to suspect an affair between Thomas and Adaline. One night, Rachel receives a phone call. The information she is given sets in motion a series of events that will unravel her life, force her to examine past decisions, and take her on a psychologically arduous journey to save her sister. Ultimately she is faced with the an almost impossible choice.

Swimming is just about the only thing Kasienka can do right; in the water, she is too much of a winner to be a loser. It's the one place she is untouchable. And while the idea of young teens turning to their passion to escape from reality has been explored to death, Kasienka's story still feels fresh. I think it is all the other things that make this story stand out from the crowd - Kasienka's relationship with her mother, the difficult choices she has to make at such a young age, and the exploration of the alienation that many immigrants face. For such a short book, I was blown away by how powerful and moving it was. A murder of two women took place over 100 years ago on the island of Smutty Nose in the Isles of Shoals. Maren Hanvent moves to this very remote, sparse island with her fisherman husband. They are followed by her sister and brother with his wife, living lives full of hardship off the coast of Maine. The book takes its title from Kasienka’s newly found love of swimming. Several people encourage her involvement, and she persists until she gets to go to a national competition in London. Again, the poetry works well here, communicating through vivid imagery the relief that Kasienka feels as she swims. Her mundane worries slide off her body; she revels in the feel of the water on her skin, the intensity of the competition of which she is a part. For her, the weight of water is something special, something almost holy. Crossan portrays the refuge that children (and adults, often enough) seek in a hobby or singular activity, something they can focus on—something they can control. The verse works well because it forces you to pay attention to every word. With prose, it is so easy to skim and still get the gist of the plot. This book has a plot, but the story is definitely about the trajectory of Kasienka as a character. She begins as a scared girl and matures, with each challenge teaching her something valuable about who she is becoming. She faces down the Popular Girl, develops shy affection for a boy in Year 9, and even struggles with keeping a secret from her mother that could tear them asunder. Because everything is narrated in her poetry, we only ever get a sense of Kasienka—the other characters are more like shadows of themselves than real people—but that’s enough.

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I need to finally brush off my prejudice against books that are written in verse. Every single time I raise a sceptical eyebrow in their direction - completely unable to believe that this is anything more than just lazy storytelling - and every single time I find myself impressed. The Weight of Water was no exception. This is a delightful, if somewhat heartbreaking, little story that took me just over an hour to read. Debate about the identity of the Smuttynose murderer continues to this day, rekindled by the publication of The Weight of Water. "The facts are out there for speculation," Shreve says, "The book is something separate from that debate." In March 1873, two Norwegian-born women who lived on the desolate Smuttynose Island, one of the Isles of Shoals off the coast of Maine and New Hampshire, were brutally murdered. Maren Hontvedt, a sister of one of the victims, survived by hiding in a sea cave until dawn. The murdered women were her older sister Karen Christensen and Anethe Christensen, their sister-in-law. A man named Louis Wagner was tried and hanged for their murders, mostly on circumstantial evidence. His conviction has been argued about, as some people think he could not have done it. Life is lonely for Kasienka. She misses her old home in Poland, her mother's heart is breaking, and at her new English school friends are scarce. But when someone new swims into her life, Kasienka learns that there is more than one way to stay afloat.

I'm a huge fan of Shreve and had this book on my list for ages. It did not disappoint!! Her subtle yet loaded way with words captures the essence of a moment. The emotion just oozes from her prose. Her stories capture the full essence of tragedy and heartbreak. The Weight of Water contained all of these elements. I was utterly destroyed by the end. This novel is really two stories in one. First there is the story of Norwegian immigrants coming to America, and secondly we have the contemporary story of a photographer going to the island where the immigrants lived to photograph and research a 100 year old murder. The Weight of Water is a 1997 novel by Anita Shreve. Half of the novel is historical fiction based on the Smuttynose Island murders, which took place in 1873. In creating The Weight of Water, Shreve carefully wove the historical story with the fictional one, though, she maintains "the heart of the book has almost nothing to do with the facts." Rather, she used the historical record as a springboard for a larger story that explores the consequences of pushing a woman to the edge. Shreve says she was not the first to question the outcome of the murder trial, but she found it "a very hard book to write" because ultimately she intended for the reader to have sympathy for the women of Smuttynose. As Jean, the journalist’s, research into the ill-fated family are appearing in her own family, trapped as they are on the small boat in close quarters with one another. Her husband the poet, whose glory days are gone, he can no longer write. The younger brother, captain of the small craft, in love with a woman who doesn’t love him. And Adaline, somewhat of a beautiful enigma, set between the two brothers. The approaching storm is a catalyst for a modern-day tragedy.In a novel everywhere hailed for its beauty and power, Anita Shreve takes us on an unforgettable journey through the farthest extremes of emotion. Jean Janes is researching the Smuttynose Murders. Bringing along her husband and daughter, she charters her brother-in-law’s boat to take photos and get a feel for the island. She pulls letters, journals, and information about the trial which are archived in the historic city of Portsmouth. Jean steadily unravels the story leading up to the murders, as well as the suspecting infidelity of her husband. It is with this diary that the second voice is heard. The diary is written long after the events on Smuttynose, after Maren has returned to Norway and is in the final days of her life. The diary recounts the history of Maren; her marriage and relocation to Smuttynose; the struggles of her new life and her recounting of the events the night of the murders. The diary gives you a real feel for Maren as an individual and especially what life must have been like for a lonely, foreign fisherman's wife on such a desolate island. I love it when my heroines stand up for themselves and don’t need any body to tell them how to do it.

Or… well, wait until she’d changed out of her cozzie because I don’t want to get all chloriney but then we’d cuddle. Definitely. The novel is split into two parts: the present day, told from Jean's point of view and in the present tense; and 1873, told in first person from Maren's point of view, her "memoir". And if Kasienka’s ability to conquer her fears wasn’t good enough for you, Ms Crossan gives us an incredibly adorable love interest too! As Jean is learning the story of these murders through the diary, she is also experiencing a crisis of her own. For this assignment, Jean along with her husband (Thomas) and daughter (Billie) decide to stay with Thomas' brother Rich and Rich's girlfriend Adaline on their small boat in Portsmouth Harbor. Jean begins to suspect that Thomas and Adaline may be involved in an affair and a palpable sense of tension ensues. The tension climaxes as a storm hits and the five are caught out on the open water in rough seas. I wonder this: If you take a woman and push her to the edge, how will she behave?" The question is posed by Jean, a photographer, who in 1995 arrives on Smuttynose Island, off the coast of Maine, to research a century-old crime. As she immerses herself in the details of the case-a fit of passion that resulted in the deaths of two women-Jean herself becomes caught in the grip of an intense emotion.In The Weight of Water, Anita Shreve tells a story of pain, jealousy, and passion. Her characters and their closest relationships--with siblings, with partners--are trapped in isolated and claustrophobic spaces. Shreve tells the story of the murders of two Norwegian immigrant women on Smuttynose Island off the coast of New Hampshire in the late 19th century. She explores the 19th Century events in the context of a contemporary photographer's trip to the island to capture the location for a magazine story about the killings. The photographer travels to the island in a small sailboat with her husband, daughter, brother-in-law and his girlfriend. In the course of her research for the photo-shoot, she happens upon a previously unknown document, a letter from the one woman in the family who survived the killings. Shreve alternates sections of this letter, which describes what led up to the murders and what happened on the night they occurred, with the main structure of the book which moves fluidly between the interactions among the family of the photographer and the details of the history of the murder as it was revealed in the trial. In this way, Shreve allows the painful unfolding of events in the two different eras to play out alongside one another.

The book flashes between the present, a letter written in the 1800s and descriptions of events from the 1800s. The problem is that it goes something like this: The book was adapted for a film of the same name, directed by Kathryn Bigelow and released in 2000. There are two stories intertwined here. There is a modern day story told in the first person by a photographer visiting the Isles of Shoals off the coast of New Hampshire. She is photographing the islands where a double murder took place in 1873 and is staying on a boat with her husband, her young daughter, her brother-in-law and his girlfriend and we see the often tetchy interaction between them in the close quarters. The second story is told in the first person by the only survivor of the nineteenth century double murder. This is in the form of a lost manuscript that the photographer finds during her research.Now, I’m not sure if that’s because he tastes like Haribo or because he gives you the feeling you get when you eat an entire bag of the Sour ones and then chug a bottle of Coke. The 19c woman's diary makes for tedious reading--interesting at first, but the tragic ending (and not to give anything away, there are tragic endings for both narratives) is telegraphed quite early..... People who have ever felt at a loss with themselves. People who like to adopt happiness as their revenge. People who thought their first kiss way awkward *cringe*. People who always leave the best stories at a sleepover for when the lights are out.