The Weight of Water by Sarah Crossan: book review

The Weight of Water (2013) is set in Coventry, England. The narrator is 12-year-old Kasienka, who has just migrated to England with her 41-year-old mother Ola from Gdansk, Poland.

They rent a one-room apartment. They know no-one in England, except Tata, her father, who moved there years before – but they can’t find him. Ola secures a job as a cleaner in a local hospital, while Kasienka has to deal with a new school. She is good at swimming, and is the best runner in her class, but she is teased relentlessly and hates school. She likes William, a year older, who is an excellent swimmer. She even dreams of him at night – swimming together.

In the next room in their building is Kanoro, a Kenyan doctor, who also works as a cleaner in Coventry. They play chess together and build a snowman together when Kanoro sees snow for the first time. Kasienka confides in him, and he tells her: ‘Happiness should be your revenge, Kasienka. Happiness.’

When she is 13 she finds her father, but he has been living with Melanie and their daughter Briony. Her mother does not know that her husband has been living with his new family for years. Again, Kasienka confides in Kanoro, but one day he is gone – his room is vacant. Kasienka has lost both her father and her father-like figure.

It is the water in the swimming pool that provides the route to her happiness. She is lost to the water: ‘Water is another world. A land with its own language. Which I speak fluently.’ She likes the ‘safe silence of submergence’ and the weight of water.

This is a Young Adult novel in the form of poems. Kasienka’s story is told in verse – simply told and understood, with each verse clearly defining situations, emotions, relationships, and her way of trying to fit into a new school in a new country.

MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the author of:- The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).

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