Ratings9
Average rating3.7
A disquieting and ultimately uplifting novel about a marriage, a family, and human resilience in the face of tragedy, from Wally Lamb, the New York Times bestselling author of The Hour I First Believed and I Know This Much Is True. After 27 years of marriage and three children, Anna Oh—wife, mother, outsider artist—has fallen in love with Viveca, the wealthy Manhattan art dealer who orchestrated her success. They plan to wed in the Oh family’s hometown of Three Rivers in Connecticut. But the wedding provokes some very mixed reactions and opens a Pandora’s Box of toxic secrets—dark and painful truths that have festered below the surface of the Ohs’ lives. We Are Water is a layered portrait of marriage, family, and the inexorable need for understanding and connection, told in the alternating voices of the Ohs—nonconformist, Anna; her ex-husband, Orion, a psychologist; Ariane, the do-gooder daughter, and her twin, Andrew, the rebellious only son; and free-spirited Marissa, the youngest. It is also a portrait of modern America, exploring issues of class, changing social mores, the legacy of racial violence, and the nature of creativity and art. With humor and compassion, Wally Lamb brilliantly captures the essence of human experience and the ways in which we search for love and meaning in our lives.
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More like 2 and a half stars. A C-? At the end of the audiobook there is an interview with Lamb in which he said he began this novel with the voice of Orion (the one Lamb read for the audiobook), and if there is a character here I admired, he would be it. At least at the outset, he seems the least screwed up, despite his own childhood challenges. But that's not the main issue. It's over-written and repetitive, there are too many voices (even though there's a sameness to them), and so the story has no focus. But the worst part is that the voice of the pedophile in the story is completely unnecessary. The reader understands his crimes without having to read/hear about them in graphic detail.