I absolutely loved this book and was so sorry to finish it. It explored a very topical subject from an unusual angle ie the effect on the abusers family. John Boyne writes so well it brings the place and people alive.Great characters.

When Vanessa’s life collapses, rocked by a devastating revelation, she flees Dublin to an island off the coast of Ireland and changes her name. But our past is never far behind us and, rather than allowing her to forget her past and leave mistakes made behind her, her rugged isolated setting, and the people she encounters there, force to her to delve further back into her past to confront the demons at the root of recent revelations; the things we don’t see and the things we choose not to see. This is a story of family secrets, of broken people and heartache within broken families; beautifully written, both poignant and bold, but covering some dark and triggering themes. As often happens in books where characters relocate to remote places, the unexpected connections Vanessa makes on the island, fleeting or more prolonged moments of some connection or a shared understanding, form a subtle yet important part to this story’s unfolding.

Water is the first in a four-part series of books to be released at 6 month intervals, each taking one of the elements as the core binding factor in the book. Vanessa flees to a place beside the water, but water is also at the heart of her recent and more distant troubles, while also playing a role in the healing she so desperately seeks. I love this series concept and look forward to reading the next three books.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for my eARC.

Another powerful, thought-provoking and creative read from John Boyne. This is the first of a quartet of novellas each taking the name of the four elements, and they'll be released every six months.

The story begins with Vanessa changing her name to Willow.

She has left Dublin for a rented cottage on an island, seeking to escape her life to come to terms with all that has happened in the previous few months and years. In doing so, though, she comes to realise that she may have been complicit in what took place.

Her husband was a swimming coach who has been convicted of abusing the young women in his charge. Did Vanessa really not know what was taking place? And how did she keep her family safe?

Vanessa, or Willow, has to confront what she did and did not do, and whether she can ever make peace with herself.

This is a beautifully written, poignant and challenging read. Forthcoming books in the quartet will follow the lives of other minor characters in the book, telling their stories as they are confronted by abuse in their community.

A difficult subject, sensitively handled, John Boyne is a fascinating writer.

This is a profound character study that examines themes of guilt, complicity, and ignorance. It provides a strong metaphor for the behaviour of Ireland as a whole. It's a short read, but is powerful and has an ending filled with hope. Well executed and a thought-provoking read.
This honest review is given with thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for this book.

A gem of a little novel. A woman arrives on a small Irish island, changes her name and moves into a remote cottage. We discover from what she is escaping and we watch as she makes tentative connections with the community and her own daughter. This is a deeply moving and lyrical novel. Highly recommended and quite beautiful.

I didn’t expect this to be as gripping and as haunting as it was. I have been absorbed from the second I picked it up.

Willow Hale, formerly Vanessa Carvin relocated her entire life to a remote island, and Boyne keeps us guessing as to why for the first half of the book. When we find out the reason why, it angered me - I would 100% check the trigger warnings before picking this book up.

Despite the emotional topic, Boynes storytelling has me captivated, and I really felt as if had experienced all the same emotions as Willow.

Short, snappy, (far from sweet) but entirely un-put-downable.

Thank you netgalley/randomhouse for this ARC in exchange for an honest review

For such a short book, “Water” really does pack a punch. When Vanessa arrives on a small island off the Irish coast, she immediately goes to great lengths to hide her identity. As she attempts to settle into island life, we learn more about what prompted her flight and how the repercussions of these events continue to impact her daily life.

Vanessa is such a complete character, and the storytelling is exquisite. The author doesn’t shy away from the more difficult parts of the narrative but handles them with real sensitivity. To deal with so many substantial themes so concisely and thoughtfully is a real skill, and further cements my opinion of the author as someone quite brilliant at discussing important topics while being in no way heavy handed.

I would heartily recommend this book, as well as this author, and look forward to reading more by John Boyne.

My thanks to the author, NetGalley, and the publisher for the arc to review.

My first John Boyne novel and it didn’t disappoint!
This is a book that will stay with you long after you finish it, heartbreaking, amusing, thought-provoking and so much more.
I really enjoyed the dual timeline, following main character as her new persona Willow, and Vanessa, the person she once was and is desperately trying to leave behind.
It is a brilliant read and so we’ll executed, I’ll have to delve into more of Boyne’s writing!

A short but profoundly moving story.

Thanks NetGalley & Random House UK, Transworld Publishers, Doubleday for the ARC.

Synopsis –

Vanessa is running away from her life in Dublin. Seeking refuge on a remote Irish island, she renames herself as Willow Hale and wants nothing but an inconspicuous life of solitude in her small cottage. Unable to completely free herself from the vicious hands of the scandal, she must introspect about her past, her complicity in everything that transpired, the loss she has suffered, the grief and guilt she must now live with. Does she have any hope of finding peace?

Review –

Only a literary genius like John Boyne can accomplish what he has in this novella of 160 pages. As I went in blind, I found it all so bizarre to see this middle aged lady who is trying to escape her city life in a small island, changing her identity, trying to clear her head with the ocean air and long walks.

But as Vanessa’s narrative progresses, the veil is slowly uncovered, her past city life is neatly laid out, her journey of motherhood unraveled. And let me tell you, the gravity of her circumstances shook me to the core, shocked my senses and broke my heart.

Boyne’s character development is perfection. His richly evocative prose describes Vanessa’s troubled marriage, her enormous motherly guilt, battle with an impossible dilemma, poor choices, the kind of loss and grief no mother should ever have to suffer.

Discovering the significance of the title “Water” was of course the spotlight. Water has the power to give life, nurture life as well as take away life and this theme deeply resonates in the story of Vanessa - as she reflects upon how water has ebbed and flowed leading her to this point in her life.

It also bears significance on how she chooses to embrace her future with a hint of hope and redemption. Believe it or not, I loathed Vanessa and cheered for her at the same time through to the ending.

The Heart’s Invisible Furies is one of my top reads this year and this one has made me fall in love all over again with Boyne’s writing prowess and masterful storytelling.

I now can’t wait for the other 3 elemental books – Earth, Air and Fire planned in this exquisite quartet.

Highly recommend.

5★
“I read. I look out the window. I think about the morning when the Gardaí arrived at our front door in Terenure. I tell myself not to think about the morning when the Gardaí arrived at our front door in Terenure. And, in this way, the hours pass and, before I know it, it’s almost lunchtime and I can walk down to the village.”

She’s gone across Ireland from Dublin over to Galway, on the Atlantic Ocean, where she plans to hide out in a rented cottage on one of the many small islands in Galway Bay. This island has only 400 people, and she hopes they aren’t too up to date with the news.

She’s chopped off her hair, changed her name, and is treated politely but with evident curiosity as yet another refugee from the mainland. We don’t know exactly what’s happened, but she speaks of texting her surviving daughter, who keeps blocking and unblocking her.

She walks to one of the two pubs in the village for her lunch, keeping to herself. She has mobile coverage at the cottage, but wifi is only at one pub, which suits her just fine. Maybe she can fly under the radar for a while.

“Later, when I too am alone in my single bed, I wonder whether God is looking over me and, if he is, what punishment he will send my way next. A dead daughter. A husband in jail. My family’s reputation shattered. An entire country convinced that I was complicit in all of it. What more can he do to hurt me?”

She’s not a believer, which is a recurring theme in Boyne’s stories, but she befriends the local priest, because he’s an interesting man to talk to. Ifechi, born in Nigeria, invites Willow to use the church as a place of peace as it’s mostly empty during the day.

“It can be a good place to catch ones thoughts, away from the world. You can talk to God, talk to yourself, or talk to no one at all.”

She wanders in one day drawn to the Stations of the Cross, admiring the art work but then becoming annoyed with what it all represents.

“The whole business of the twelve apostles has always bothered me, the hard-nosed maleness of their clique, the decision from the start to exclude women from their number. Most became saints, I think, but did that prevent them from leering at the women who served their food, or making vulgar remarks about girls they noticed on the streets?”

She goes on to wonder if some of the apostles may have lured girls away or taken women without their permission. She gets angrier and angrier as she looks at the pictures.

“All these men, all these f**king men. Sacred and hallowed and venerated for two thousand years. And yet it was the women, and only the women, who were there for Him at the end when the men betrayed Him, denied Him, ran from Him, pocketed their thirty pieces of silver for traducing him.”

So much for a place of peace. It has done nothing but remind her of the evil she is trying to escape – how much damage is caused by men who consider women as here for their convenience.

“Outside, emerging into the sunlight, I inhale deeply, filling my lungs with air, and feel a sense of relief to have escaped a building that exists solely to comfort the troubled.”

When she is startled awake one night and can’t go back to sleep, she takes herself to the shore and wades in, thinking of the part water has played in her life. Her swimming teacher became her husband. He becomes a well-known coach and community figure, and she takes up social swimming.

Wading into the Bay that night she thinks about Virginia Woolfe, who walked into the water with her pockets full of stones to weigh her down.

“Water has been the undoing of me. It has been the undoing of my family. We swim in the womb. We are composed of it. We drink it. We are drawn to it throughout our lives, more than mountains, deserts, or canyons. But it is terrible. It kills.”

She has been badly shaken by what has happened to her family, but she is still very much an individual and a pretty strong one at that. It’s not all tears and guilt and grim self-recrimination, so I can say I enjoyed reading her story.

John Boyne is a master of the mind. He can put himself in someone else’s shoes, whether it’s a soldier in WW1 or, in All the Broken Places, an 80-year-old woman whose little brother was the protagonist of the The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas. His characters are always real and always memorable. This 54-year-old woman is no exception – he understands her mind, her strengths and her weaknesses.

Thanks to #NetGalley and Random House / Transworld for a copy of #Water for review.

An emotionally charged, intese and enthralling novel that deals with important topics in a very sensitive way.
There's a woman on the ran, choices in the past, a price to pay and a scandal.
It's story in the mind of the MC and it's not always easy and often disturbing.
That said I loved it as the author is a talented storyteller and the story brilliant.
A short novel or a long novella, it was like being punched and I loved it
Highly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher for this ARC, all opinions are mine

This novel is the very definition of small but perfectly formed. The first of a planned quartet, it gives us the story of a woman coming to terms with the life choices she has made, grappling with guilt and complicity.

Vanessa Carvin arrives from mainland Ireland to a remote rented cottage on a small island off the Irish coast, fleeing a media storm following her husband's trial for a heinous crime which is only slowly revealed. She goes under an assumed name and tries to change her appearance in an effort not to be recognised, and keeps herself to herself while she tries to use the headspace to examine her complicity in her husband's crimes and the effect it has all had on her relationship with her younger daughter following the death of her older daughter.

This is a novel of introspection, faultlessly constructed and psychologically insightful. In 150 pages, John Boyne deconstructs the process of grief, guilt, loss and coming to terms with all three. If this is a taste of what the other three novels will bring, I can't wait.

Despie the heaviness of the story I absolutely loved this book. I was drawn to Vanessa and found her a very compelling character. The island setting is perfect - exposed, isolated and removed. Emotionally it was intense and made a deep impression. For such a slim book it had great depth and the writing was just beautiful.

When Vanessa Carvin escapes to a small island off the coast of Ireland, all she wants to do is reinvent herself as Willow Hale and put the past behind her. But the consequences of her earlier actions and lack of action are not so easily escaped and the past continues to haunt her. I found this a powerful and compelling read, well-crafted and well-paced. The slow reveal is expertly handled and the issue at the heart of the novel is equally sensitively handled. It’s a short book but didn’t need to be any longer. Here less is most definitely more. A small gem of a novel.

As a go to author for me, I was very excited to have the opportunity to read Water by John Boyne. The first book in the new quartet of novels - Water, Earth, Fire and Air. Arriving on a small island off the coast of Ireland, Vanessa Carlton changes both her name and appearance in order to disappear from the scrutiny of society. Taking time to reflect on her life and the choices that she made her story gradually becomes clear in glimpses over the progress of the novel. A short but very powerful story of the choices that we make and how these affect others and one that deals with some very hard issues. A novel of guilt and complicity, love and hate, oppression and the hope of redemption it’s certainly does not disappoint and I can’t wait for the next in the quartet. Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for giving me the opportunity of reading the ARC of this novel in return for an honest review.

Vanessa Carvin moves to a remote island from Ireland's mainland in an attempt to remove herself from a media circus, and the wrath of strangers that she doesn't know, but who believe that she must have been complicit in crimes committed by her husband.

Her own daughter is amongst those who doesn't believe that her Mother knew nothing of the Father's crimes, which breaks Vanessa's heart. But she knows that she herself must learn to move on from the past, before she can expect others to do the same.

Almost immediately once she arrives on the island, Vanessa changes her name to Willow.

Wanting to appear as someone who is escaping city life, rather than real life.

She has deliberately chosen the most remote cottage on the island.

Not wanting to attract attention from the locals.

But of course she does.

She is an outsider, on a small island with a tight knit community, who have a reputation for running strangers off the island and back to the mainland.

She is careful who she make acquaintances with, and seeks out those like herself who seem to have something to hide.

For we all have secrets.

Although it wasn't made explicit at the start of the novel, I had an idea of what Brendan Carvin had been accused and convicted of, but to have it confirmed was no less shocking.

A short book which had a style that made it easy to read. Although the secrets of the characters were revealed gradually there never seemed to be any surprises. I think most readers would join the dots up fairly quickly but Boyne doesn’t leave you feeling short changed nevertheless.

Water is the first in a planned quartet of novellas named after the four elements and linked by some shared characters and themes. I’ve enjoyed many of John Boyne’s longer novels so I was intrigued to see what he could do with a shorter format.

We begin with Vanessa Carvin arriving on an island off the coast of Ireland where she has rented a cottage in the hope of escaping from her past and starting a new life for herself. The first thing she does when she gets there is cut her hair and change her name to Willow, before settling into a quiet existence, going for walks, attending church and trying not to attract too much attention to herself.

The whole book is narrated by Willow and she reveals her secrets to the reader slowly, when she is ready to do so, but we know from the start that something has gone badly wrong with her marriage to Brendan Carvin, Director of the National Swimming Federation. Where is he now? What happened to their eldest daughter, Emma? Why is Willow estranged from her younger daughter, Rebecca, who refuses to answer her texts and keeps blocking Willow’s number? It takes a while for the truth to emerge but, once it does, it gives Boyne the opportunity to return to the themes he has explored in other books such as A History of Loneliness and All the Broken Places (Father Odran Yates, protagonist of the former, is even referred to once or twice as a friend of Brendan’s, strengthening the tie between the two books). These themes include the questions of whether we can be considered complicit in another person’s crimes just by choosing to look the other way when our instincts tells us something is wrong and whether there is always more we could and should have done.

Water is the title of the book, but that element is also worked into the novel in a variety of different ways. Not only is Willow’s husband a swimming coach, but the sea has a role to play in the fate of one of the other characters and Willow’s own name refers to a tree that grows by water. And of course, the island itself is surrounded by water, both physically and metaphorically separating Willow from her old life in Dublin. For such a short book (176 pages in the hardback edition) it’s a very powerful one. It deals with some difficult and uncomfortable topics but, as I’ve come to expect from Boyne, there are also some humorous moments to lighten the mood. I can’t wait to see how he tackles the other three elements; I’m already looking forward to the second book in the series, Earth, which is due in May 2024.

What another remarkable piece of writing from the genius that is John Boyne. A novella so rich in scope and depth, it belies the slimness of its form. How Boyne manages to convey so much in so few pages is the stuff of alchemy.

Water is the story of Vanessa Carvin, a middle-aged woman, who arrives under an assumed name on a tiny island off the Irish coast. Her husband is in prison after committing monstrous crimes, in which she may or may not have been complicit. The tragic fallout has shattered her world. Before she can move on, she must consider her culpability, work through her guilt and grief, and find a path to redemption.

For me, it is Boyne’s masterful characterisation of Vanessa — known to the locals as Willow Hale — that is the standout feature of this novella. He reveals her layer by layer in the lightest of strokes, evoking sympathy and understanding for her plight. Her acts of penance — shaving off her hair, eschewing every luxury — are softly stated, her flashes of acerbic wit a quiet delight. Even the shocking events that have brought her to this place are unveiled slowly and subtly, devoid of the sensationalism that would rob them of their authenticity.

In fact, everything about Boyne’s writing here is sparse and nuanced, but weighted heavily with import; a deeply visceral experience that holds you, immersed, from start to finish. His use of water imagery alone is utterly spellbinding; its curious dichotomy as an element both dangerous and cleansing a compelling leitmotif.

I finished this with the sense that I’d read something hugely significant. And how wonderful that we have three further books to come in what I’m sure will be a highly praised literary quartet.

I loved the idea of four novellas, titled The Elements, written by John Boyne and was excited to get the opportunity to read the first, Water, in exchange for a fair and honest review. (Thank you to the publishers and NetGalley.)
John Boyne’s usual sensitivity, gentle but accurate observations and unflinching reality were present in Water. He does not avoid difficult subjects, but ensures his characters are multi-dimensional and complex, which ensures they are believable and relatable.
Boyne writes from a woman’s perspective so well. If I didn’t know, I would have guessed that the author was a woman. Willow (aka Vanessa) was not always easy to like, but it made her all the more interesting. I definitely invested in her and her story. The novella spends a year in her company, but includes her memories, which slowly reveal why she is living an isolated life on a small island, pretending she is someone new.
I 100% recommend this quick but meaningful book. It is going to stay with me. I am very much looking forward to reading the next three elements.