The Weight Of Water
(Anita Shreve)
In her second fictional adaptation of the 1873 Smuttynose ax-murders (her first was an article, ?Silence at Smuttynose? published in the Cimarron Review), Anita Shreve uses the historical story to weave a powerful and disturbing tale about the consequences of women pushed to the edge.
Jean is a photojournalist working on a story about a pair of murders committed on the island of Smuttynose over a century ago. She is to photograph the lonely and windswept island, one of the Isles of Shoals off the coast of New Hampshire. Jean travels to the island with her poet husband Thomas, their lively five year old daughter Billie, her brother-in-law Rich, and his stunningly beautiful girlfriend Adaline. Days aboard Rich?s small boat, Jean finds herself subject to the harrowing weather of the region and amid a startling romance aboard.
Over a century ago, three women, Maren, her sister Karen, and sister-in-law Anethe, found themselves living on the secluded island of Smuttynose where their husbands had migrated from Norway to gain a new life and fortune fishing the Atlantic. Trapped by the harsh elements and sheer seclusion of the island, the women find their relationships strained by loneliness, close-quarters, and jealousy. With their husbands in Portsmouth, New Hampshire for a night of work, a gruesome murder takes the lives of Karen and Anethe. Maren survives huddled in a sea-cave with her small dog where she is found the next morning bloodied and nearly frozen.
As Jean explores a faded and translated journal written by Maren, she finds herself pushed to the edge by the events of her own life and faced with a horrific turn of events.
Anita Shreve expertly weaves the two stories together in a fascinating parallel that asks her readers to consider how knowing the facts of one story can influence the reading of another.
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