Waterland (1983) is
set in the marshlands (the Fen Country) of Stott’s Bridge, East Anglia,
England. The novel oscillates between two timeframes: the first is 1937 and the
second is 1943. At the time of writing, it is 1980 and the narrator, Tom Crick,
is leaving his job as a history teacher at the age of 52 for ‘personal reasons’ after 14 years – a
job he undertook after serving in the Second World War.
The first critical
year in the narrator’s life is when his mother dies in 1937, when he is nine
years old. His mother Helen and his father Henry, and his grandfather Ernest,
set the backdrop over 240 years of his heritage, for all that Tom becomes – and
even more so for his older brother, by four years, Dick Crick.
Dick Crick has an
unfortunate name. But he also has an unfortunate life that parallels a Greek tragedy.
The two brothers, Dick and Tom, live in a lock-keeper’s cottage by River Leem.
They come from a long line of water people in a place frequented by
fairy-tales, ghosts, legends, visionaries, fanatics, saints, and demons. Dick
and Tom have the same mother, but different fathers. Dick, from an incestuous
relationship, is born a ‘potato-head’ – a simpleton – but he is ‘strong in body
if not in mind.’ It is Tom that goes to school: Dick doesn’t – he catches eels
for a living, and helps his father at the lock, aiding the flow of boats along
the river.
The second critical
year in the narrator’s life is 1943. This is the year when Tom (15 years old) and
Dick (19 years old) fall in love with Mary Metcalf. It is also the year that
Mary becomes pregnant. It is also the year that Freddie Parr is found dead in
the lock, an incident that is ruled an accident – a non-swimmer, night time,
and drunk at the time. Is it bad luck to swim in the same water as a drowned
body?
Mary says she saw Dick
push Freddie into the lock. She said she told him that she was pregnant with
Freddie’s child, and that Dick was upset and shoved Freddie. She tells only
Tom, who thought he was the only one – and Mary reassures him that he was – but
can she be trusted? Who was the father: Freddie, Dick, or Tom? The tragic death
of the baby means that no-one really knows. That year haunts them all. Dick and
Tom can never really be sure of each other any more. And what becomes of Mary –
tested by lust, lies, and loss?
In 1980 the past
returns to reveal the truth about 1943. The ‘personal reasons’ for the end of
Tom’s teaching career become evident.
This novel is a blend
of epic-ness (over 240 years of personal history), the mystery of the
marshlands, brotherly mistrust, incest, unrequited love, madness, societal
norms, tragedy, birth, and death. The juxtapositions of timeframes creates a
confusion that parallels the hidden truth and the connection between the events
of both periods. It has the haunting of Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights and
the epic repetitive bleakness of Thomas Hardy’s moorlands. For many readers,
the book may be too bleak, depressing and confusing – and the long way around
the marshes to tell the tale. But if readers can get passed the unique style of
writing (telling the tale as one remembers it rather than in a logical order) the
novel is worth it.
I also prefer the original 1983 cover of the eel (top photograph), rather than the 1992 edition (below).
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