This Is the Water

In This Is the Water, Yannick Murphy (The Call) explores the effect a shocking, seemingly random killing of a community swim team star has on the rest of the swimmers and, more significantly, on their parents.

Annie, a photographer and the mother of two girls on the team, feels conflicted over her brother's recent suicide and is now fearful for her daughters. Her life is further complicated by her attraction to Paul, the father of another swimmer. Paul has entrusted Annie with a secret that he's kept for more than 25 years--one that may shed light on the recent murder of their daughters' teammate--and this knowledge both draws Annie closer to Paul and makes her urge him to share what he knows with the police and with his wife, Chris. Before the murder, Chris was convinced Paul was having an affair; she was wrong then, but even as infidelity becomes more of a possibility, those worries have been pushed aside by her own growing obsession with the killer.

The short scenes are almost like snapshots, each set up by the "this is..." construction of the novel's title to indicate which characters are present. Annie's sections are narrated in the second person--"this is you"--almost as if she's looking back over her own photos of a particularly disturbing swim-team season. The style can sometimes feel as choppy as the pool during a meet, but effectively amplifies the tensions of the shifting relationships. This Is the Water is a chilling combination of crime and domestic drama, and its effects linger. --Florinda Pendley Vasquez, blogger at The 3 R's Blog: Reading, 'Riting, and Randomness

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