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A review by funneemonkee
Waterland by Graham Swift
3.0
I devoured this book, was utterly entranced by Swift's weaving together of space and time. At times I even loved this book, and the length was no obstacle at all to finishing it.
But 'Waterland' left me with a bad taste in my mouth. Perhaps I expect too much from a novel written when it was, but the cold way Swift tackles sexual violence, and the indifference of his female characters to it, was so dishearteningly disappointing.
A girl who's father 'loves' her. She does not want to sleep with her father, does not want to be raped by him. But she accepts her fate. Swift's narrator comments that this is not usual and moves on.
A young girl has her clothes torn from her by a group of boys. No matter, she isn't afraid. Despite any woman knowing this is not the case. This is a man's imagining of this violation. She is run up on from behind, and penetrated with an eel. To which she only laughs.
Perhaps I should have been warned off the moment the topic of 'holes' came up. That this was the entirety of the care Swift would take towards women's bodies in this text should have perhaps been clearer to me from there. But it was still a disappointment. This novel could have been great, were it not for the misogyny.
But 'Waterland' left me with a bad taste in my mouth. Perhaps I expect too much from a novel written when it was, but the cold way Swift tackles sexual violence, and the indifference of his female characters to it, was so dishearteningly disappointing.
A girl who's father 'loves' her. She does not want to sleep with her father, does not want to be raped by him. But she accepts her fate. Swift's narrator comments that this is not usual and moves on.
A young girl has her clothes torn from her by a group of boys. No matter, she isn't afraid. Despite any woman knowing this is not the case. This is a man's imagining of this violation. She is run up on from behind, and penetrated with an eel. To which she only laughs.
Perhaps I should have been warned off the moment the topic of 'holes' came up. That this was the entirety of the care Swift would take towards women's bodies in this text should have perhaps been clearer to me from there. But it was still a disappointment. This novel could have been great, were it not for the misogyny.