Water by John Boyne [8/10]

A seemingly gentle novella that quickly seizes the reader with dread, Water shows Irish novelist John Boyne at his best. The storyline is simple if oblique: a Dublin woman flees the ignominy of a husband recently jailed for some unmentionable crime, flees to a tiny island where she adopts a pseudonym and attempts to recover but also to examine her own complicity in the crime. Slowly the insular, remote community draws her in and she stumbles toward some form of understand, maybe even redemption. The author’s supple, lyrical style is never intrusive but quickly and beautifully creates worlds, physical and internal. Rural Ireland comes to life, Boyne’s bravery in tackling a dark subject head on is notable but its rendering through our heroine’s internal landscape is especially moving. I gather this is the first of four similarly styled novellas named after the elements; each should be snapped up and devoured, for here is a master at work.