Waterland

Waterland is Graham Swift’s third novel, published in 1983. Although his Last Orders won the 1996 Booker Prize, many readers consider Waterland to be his finest work.

The narrator, Tom Crick, is a fifty‑two‑year‑old history teacher whose wife has been arrested for abducting a baby. Living in Greenwich — the place where world time begins — he is being quietly pushed into retirement. He turns to his students and begins, “Children…,” launching a strange and unsettling series of history lessons.

Tom speaks about the history of the Fens where he was born and raised, the story of his mother’s family, his youthful sexual experiences with Mary, his intellectually disabled brother Dick, the death of Freddie Parr, the French Revolution, the life cycle of eels, incest, abortion, madness, ghosts… Through this fragmented narrative, Swift explores the question of what history is, using a distinctly postmodern approach.

The Fens of East Anglia were once a vast waterland. It was the Atkinson family who drained the region and turned it into barley fields. At the end of the eighteenth century, Thomas Atkinson established a brewery there. His young wife, Sarah — lovely, dignified, and restrained — loses her mind and her speech after a tragic incident with her husband. She spends the rest of her long life gazing out at the Fens from her window, dying at the age of ninety‑two. On the day of her funeral, heavy rain floods the land again, and Sarah becomes a kind of local myth.

By the early twentieth century, the Atkinsons are in decline. Ernest Atkinson, Sarah’s great‑grandson, fails in politics and becomes obsessively devoted to his beautiful daughter, Helen. Helen loves him as well. Ernest longs for a child by her, believing such a child would be “a saviour of the world.” Helen chooses instead to marry Henry Crick, a wounded soldier and lock‑keeper. Thus, as the novel says, she becomes “a daughter tried hard by two men at the same time, both of whom she loved” (chapter 30).

Mary, as a young girl, is curious about sex and fascinated by Dick’s large penis. She becomes pregnant, but the father cannot be Dick — he is physically incapable of intercourse. She tells Dick that Freddie Parr is the father. The next day, Freddie is found dead in the river. Mary and Tom visit the local witch, Martha Clay, and Mary undergoes an abortion. This is why Tom and Mary never have children.

Swift’s intricate, layered storytelling is completely different from the straightforward narrative of The Shadow of the Wind. Waterland is a work of contemporary literature shaped by the postmodern imagination.

For me, this book was extremely difficult. Many times I felt like giving up. I managed to finish it, but I cannot say I enjoyed the experience. I would not recommend Waterland to English learners. If English is not your first language, I suggest reading it in translation instead.