We Are Water by Wally Lamb
Today, I bring to you another installment of... Tales from the Toyota!
My most recent download from Audible.com was We Are Water by Wally Lamb. I had read a bunch of his most famous books... I Know This Much Is True, The Hour I First Believed, She's Come Undone. I've always really enjoyed his writing... even if it can occasionally leave you totally emotionally wrecked.
We Are Water was no exception. This particular book was different from his others as it unfolded a single story of a family as told from the point-of-view of various characters. It was amazing that Lamb was able to delve into the psyche of a sexual abuse victim... followed immediately by his writing in the voice of the pedophile himself. Although so much of Wally Lamb's writing can be difficult to read (meaning painful, not like reading Finnegans Wake), the pay-off is always worth every tear and disquieting feeling. After the audiobook completed, a short interview with Lamb followed. It was interesting to hear that he was just as affected by writing his characters as I was in reading them. Most notably, he revealed that after writing in the voice of Kent (the pedophile), he'd have to go upstairs each afternoon to take a shower. And as an aside, Lamb lives in Connecticut! And yet another Awesome Point goes to the best state! Amazon's Synposis: We Are Water is 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.