Water is a beautiful short novel centred on a woman moving to a small island looking for anonymity and for an understanding of how her life has fallen apart. Boyne conveys so much understanding of people, their motivations, their relationships in so few pages. I wish all authors had his gift of bringing characters, even the minor ones, to life so concisely. He has a remarkable gift for dealing sensitively with difficult themes such as child abuse and suicide..

Boyne is a master of clarity in his plot development and whilst we don't know what turns Vanessa's life will take in future it's clear that her time on the island and the conversation she finally has with her daughter will take her in a new and more positive direction.

I look forward with impatience to Earth, Air and Fire.

This one has just made me more eager for the three other books, that are apparently all interconnected.
It's a sort of quiet story, of a woman hiding out on an island.
It reveals her story, and as it does so we learn about the neighbours, and as slways things are not always what they seem.
Despite being so short, it packs a punch, I welled up at one point, but I also smiled several times.
Glad to have a new Boyne book.

This is a short novel but it gripped me from the first page and from there I just couldn't put it down. The story begins with the arrival of a woman on a small Irish island and gradually unfolds until we learn her full story. I don't want to go into detail as the way the story progresses is so beautifully done I don't want to spoil it but readers should be aware that there are upsetting themes, as is often the case with John Boyne (as always, though, these are handled with sensitivity). I love this author's work, and each book impresses me more. His characters in this one, as in his others, come to the page fully formed - you really feel they have had a life before the book and will continue after, this is just the first time you've met them. Each of them has strengths and faults, they feel like real people living normal, complicated lives. Even when nothing much seems to be happening in the story, everything is adding to what we know of them and past history is never starkly laid out by the author but develops as the character remembers it so it always feels natural and believable. John Boyne just goes from strength to strength and to me is absolutely one of the best writers alive today. I can't wait to see what comes next. Thanks to Netgalley and Doubleday for a copy in return for an honest review. #Water #NetGalley

John Boyne is one of my favourite authors and I was very excited to read his latest book.
As I started reading I was surprised that the page count was only 176.
What I didn’t realise was that this book is the first of 4 in a series that he has written about the elements - water, earth, fire and air.
Each book slowly reveals the traumas faced by the characters and how they have been affected by each particular element. This is a very clever concept - I just wish I was aware of this from the start!
So in Water, we are introduced to the central character Vanessa Carvin who is running away from her past. As the story unravels we slowly find out the terrible events that caused her to run away and the guilt she constantly feels surrounding them.
Although I enjoyed the book, I didn’t really feel I connected with the other characters or their stories as it was so short. When a book is longer, I get more absorbed with the content and the characters and they stay with me long after I’ve reached the end.
I’m interested to read the other 3 books to see if the characters overlap with each other.
With thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for this arc in exchange for an honest review.

TW: Child sexual abuse, suicide.

"He is breathless for the life he is entering into and I hope that he will not know pain or betrayal or disappointment, but of course he will, because he's alive and that's the price we pay"

There was little doubt before but this book cements John Boyne as my favourite author. I genuinely can't believe that book was only 176 pages long as I feel I have lived an entire life whilst reading that.

The book starts out with Vanessa Carvin stepping onto a new island, clearly trying to leave behind a difficult life. She changes he name, cuts her hair and we slowly come to understand what brought her onto the island. Her husband was convicted of horrific crimes and Vanessa (now Willow) still lives with the shame and guilt of what her husband was and is.

I don't want to go into too much more detail however this book just moved me in a way very few authors can. I genuinely don't know how Boyne could have achieved that within such a short book.

The conflicts within Vanessa just jump off the page or, more accurately, they sneak off the page without you knowing and get inside your mind. I am so curious to find out what other people think of her and her actions. I genuinely felt for her and her pain was just indescribable yet so real.

A truly amazing novel which will stay with me forever.

Thanks so much to Netgalley and Random House, Doubleday for an ARC in exchange for an honest review

John Boyne’s Water begins with a woman arriving on an island whose first act is to change her name. Willow – once Vanessa - carefully mingles with the islanders in the hope of defusing gossip, obsessively checking her daughter’s social media profile and sending her texts which are more often than not ignored. Naturally the islanders are intrigued, some recognising her as the wife of the disgraced director of the National Swimming Association, jailed for molesting young girls, but while Willow may have dodged the judgement of Dublin’s elite, she’s unable to escape the family tragedy ensuing from Brendan's abuse, faced with the prospect of her own complicity.

Boyne has chosen a controversial theme for the first in his planned series of four interlinked novellas. We’re not immediately aware of what it is that Willow is escaping, details of Brendan’s abhorrent behaviour slowly emerging. Over the course of her stay on the island, Willow comes to face the possibility that the choice of an easy life made her wilfully blind to Brendan’s crimes, not least under their own roof. It’s a powerful theme couched within a story unfolded with Boyne’s customary wit but despite the seriousness of its subject it felt a little slight to me; characters, particularly men, are somewhat two-dimensional, not given the space to be fleshed out. That said, I enjoyed it enough to read the second in the series when it appears, keen to see the next theme tackled.