The Weight of Water

Starred review from December 30, 1996
In 1873, two women living on the Isles of Shoals, a lonely, windswept group of islands off the coast of New Hampshire, were brutally murdered. A third woman survived, cowering in a sea cave until dawn. More than a century later, Jean, a magazine photographer working on a photoessay about the murders, returns to the Isles with her husband, Thomas, and their five-year-old daughter, Billie, aboard a boat skippered by her brother-in-law, Rich, who has brought along his girlfriend, Adaline. As Jean becomes immersed in the details of the 19th-century murders, Thomas and Adaline find themselves drawn together-with potentially ruinous consequences. Shreve (Where or When; Resistance) perfectly captures the ubiquitous dampness of life on a sailboat, deftly evoking the way in which the weather comes to dictate all actions for those at sea. With the skill of a master shipbuilder, Shreve carefully fits her two stories together, tacking back and forth between the increasingly twisted murder mystery and the escalating tensions unleashed by the threat of a dangerous shipboard romance. Written with assurance and grace, plangent with foreboding and a taut sense of inexorability, The Weight of Water is a powerfully compelling tale of passion, a provocative and disturbing meditation on the nature of love. Author tour.

September 15, 1996
In Shreve's latest, a woman who investigates a century-old murder of passion (on the fabulously named Smuttynose Island) finds her own life subtly influenced by those past events.

Starred review from January 1, 1997
Shreve, an award-winning author of fiction and nonfiction, has crafted a tour de force that will beguile readers with its depth, passion, and power. Jean a professional photographer, is hired to shoot a photo-essay about a tragic murder that took place in 1873 on Smuttynose Island, off the New Hampshire coast. Two women were brutally hacked to death, and a third barely survived to identify the killer, who was hanged for the crime. Jean persuades her husband, her five-year-old daughter, her brother-in-law, and his girlfriend to accompany her to Smuttynose to photograph the house where the murder was committed. She soon becomes completely absorbed by the sensational case, learning from trial records, newspaper clippings, and the victims' personal journals how the murder wreaked emotional havoc, shattered lives, and destroyed a family forever. But a parallel tragedy, horrifyingly similar to the one in 1873, is about to occur. Just as the murder survivor found that a single moment changed her life forever, so Jean finds that a single action alters everything for her. Shreve's story is at once powerfully affecting and indescribably sorrowful, exploring the tenuous nature of happiness, the frailty of the human psyche, and the catastrophe of unthinking impulse. A masterfully written, riveting must-have for all collections. ((Reviewed January 1 & 15, 1997))(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 1997, American Library Association.)

October 15, 1996
Professional photographer Jean thinks her latest assignment on New England's Isle of Shoals is a good chance to combine work with a family getaway. Her mistake is soon clear. Tensions build among the five passengers on a relative's sailboat as she begins to question her husband's relationship with a beautiful young woman. While researching the 1873 double murder of two Norwegian immigrants, Jean discovers a heretofore unknown diary kept by Maren Hontvedt, lone survivor of the mayhem. In separate chapters Maren passionately recounts the grisly events, while Jean finds a peculiar resonance between Maren's situation and her own, leading inexorably to a terrible denouement. Shreve (Resistance, LJ 5/15/95) moves the action along deftly, and if plot details sometimes veer perilously close to soap opera, the level of writing is far above the typical best-seller treatment of similar themes. A good choice for libraries where fiction readers want historical drama and family suspense. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 9/15/96.]--Starr E. Smith, Marymount Univ. Lib., Arlington, Va.