We Are Water

Summary (from the publisher): From the New York Times bestselling author of The Hour I First Believed and I Know This Much Is True, a disquieting and ultimately uplifting novel about a marriage, a family, and human resilience in the face of tragedy.

In middle age, Anna Oh - wife, mother, outsider artist-has shaken her family to its core. After twenty-seven years of marriage and three children, Anna has fallen in love with Vivica, the wealthy, cultured, confident Manhattan art dealer who orchestrated her professional success.

Anna and Viveca plan to wed in the Oh family's hometown of Three Rivers in Connecticut, where gay marriage has recently been legalized. But the impending 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 an intricate and layered portrait of marriage, family, and the inexorable need for understanding and connection, told in the alternating voices of the Ohs - nonconformist Annie; 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 Oh. Set in New England and New York during the first years of the Obama presidency, 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 breathtaking compassion, Wally Lamb brilliantly captures the essence of human experience in vivid and unforgettable characters struggling to find hope and redemption in the aftermath of trauma and loss. We Are Water is vintage Wally Lamb - a compulsively readable, generous, and uplifting masterpiece that digs deep into the complexities of the human heart to explore the ways in which we search for love and meaning in our lives.

Review: I received an Advance Reader Copy from HarperCollins. 

We Are Water is the story of a modern family. Annie and Orion Oh are divorced and Annie is getting remarried, this time to a woman. Annie is a successful artist and Orion was a once successful psychologist. Their three children Ariane, Andrew, and Marissa have mixed reactions to the news of their parents' divorce and their mother's remarriage. Over the course of the novel, more background is learned, revealing Annie's traumatic childhood and eventual time in foster care, Orion's experience with never knowing his father, and the effect of their own issues on their children. This is an imperfect family doing their best to accept change and find happiness in an imperfect world. 

I did like how Lamb connects different threads of the novel, many of which center around the theme of art. For example, the novel opens with an interview of Museum Director Gulatiero Agnello about his memories and thoughts on deceased artist Josephus Jones. Over time, the readers learns that Jones lived in a shack behind the home of what would eventually be the Oh family house. Annie and Orion have several of Jones' paintings in their home, a holdover of Jones' living on the property. Art is a central theme to this novel, since several of the main characters are either an artist, art collector, or surrounded by art. Additionally, Orion's final tragedy in the novel is related to art theft.  

The other central theme of the novel is psychology. Most obviously, Orion Oh is a psychologist, but additionally, Annie's troubled childhood is expressed in her parenting and is dwelt on significantly by her children and herself, and by Orion when he is informed years later. Annie is physically abusive with her only son, which is attributed in the book to her sexual abuse as a child. (As a disclaimer, before reading this you should know that it continues a character who commits sexual abuse of minors, and a few sections of the book are told from his perspective.) Annie's children seem to intuitively recognize their mother's emotional scars are driving her behavior and cover up her behavior, hiding it even from their father until they are all adults. "He felt sorry for her, Daddy. We all did. It wasn't like she could help it when she got that way. And after, she'd feel terrible about it. Try to make it up to him. To all of us. She'd take us out for ice cream, or over to the mall. She felt so guilty" (334). It seems as if the novel attributes most behaviors to a cycle of abuse, since interestingly, Annie's sexual abuser was likewise abused as a child. Similarly, Orion who was raised without a father figure is fairly absent and focuses on work until later when his children are grown.

Ultimately, I felt that this novel began to drag significantly. For over five hundred pages of text, not a lot of action occurs, other than in flashbacks. While I enjoyed this while I was reading it, looking back, I can't recall anything significant or that makes it stand out. In retrospect, I think I loved the shifting perspectives that allows the reader to get an inside look at the dynamics of the Oh family and why everyone is motivated to behave the way they do. Additionally, some plot elements felt too over the top - such as the attack and results on Orion and Andrew's attack on another character.

The final pages finally allude to the title, arguing "We are like water, aren't we? We too can be fluid, flexible when we have to be. But strong and destructive, too.' And something else, I think to myself. Like water, we mostly follow the path of least resistance" (560).  Like water, the Oh family is in constant transition, with the dynamic constantly altering. Fortunately, the friction and destructive forces seem to resolve somewhat by the conclusion of the story, leaving a more settled and supportive family.

Stars: 3