A review by schausjk
The Water Dancer by Ta-Nehisi Coates

adventurous dark reflective tense slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.5

I'm rather conflicted on how to rate this one. I struggled a lot with getting through the first half of the book. The plot there felt kind of meandering and very slow, even as there were chunks of text that were very poetic. It very much felt like a heavy-handed telling rather than a showing, especially since it was being told in the first person by an older Hiram whose later experiences often colored the retellings of the earlier days. There were a lot of times that details were repeated multiple times, to the point where it felt like the author didn't trust us to remember them, or that readers couldn't be expected to draw out a symbol or a train of thought to its natural conclusion without the author explicitly walking us step by step to it. 
SpoilerIn particular, the way he kept emphasizing that he remembered everything got pretty old.
 There were also a few narrative gaps that left me wondering if I'd accidentally skipped ahead, even though I hadn't.

That being said, I did very much enjoy the magical realism aspect of the book once it became fully fleshed out in the latter portion of the book. It would have been nice to have seen that more gradually and thoughtfully woven in throughout the story, as much of the story felt far removed from it. I've seen some reviewers suggest that the magical realism portion could have been removed entirely to make the story more cohesive, but I disagree as I found it to be the most compelling part of the novel. 

Overall I'm very glad I stuck with this one. I do plan on reading more of Coates' nonfiction work, as his writing style does seem well-suited to that type of writing.
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