Waterland (novel)
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First edition
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| Author | Graham Swift |
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| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Publisher | William Heinemann |
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Publication date
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1983 |
| Media type | Print (hardcover) |
| Pages | 310 pp |
| ISBN | |
| OCLC | 10052188 |
| 823/.914 19 | |
| LC Class | PR6069.W47 W3 1983b |
Waterland is a 1983 novel by Graham Swift. It is considered to be the author's premier novel and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize (a prize Swift finally achieved with Last Orders).
In 1992, the book was made into a film.
The title of the novel refers to its setting in The Fens in East Anglia. Waterland is concerned with the nature and importance of history as the primary source of meaning in a narrative. For this reason, it is associated with new historicism. Major themes in the novel include storytelling and history, exploring how the past leads to future consequences.
The plot of the novel revolves around loosely interwoven themes and narrative, including the jealousy of his brother for the narrator's girlfriend/wife, a resulting murder, the abortion the girl undergoes, her subsequent inability to conceive, resulting in depression and the kidnap of a baby.
This personal narrative is set in the context of a wider history, of the narrator's family, the Fens in general and the eel.
Tom Crick, fifty-two years old, has been history master for some thirty years in a secondary school in Greenwich, in a sense the place where, in a world that sets its clocks according to Greenwich Mean Time, time begins. Tom has been married to Mary for as long as he has been teaching, but the couple have no children. The students in Tom's school have grown increasingly scientifically oriented, and the headmaster, a physicist, has little sympathy for Tom's subject. One of Tom's students, Price, questions the relevance of learning about historical events. The youth's scepticism causes Tom to change his teaching approach to telling tales drawn from his own recollection. By doing so, he makes himself a part of the history he is teaching, relating his tales to local history and genealogy. The headmaster, Lewis, tries to entice Tom into taking an early retirement. Tom resists this because his leaving would mean that the History Department would cease to exist and be combined with the broader area of General Studies. Tom's wife is arrested for snatching a baby. The publicity that attends her arrest reflects badly on the school, and Tom is told that he now must retire. In response, he uses his impending forced retirement as an excuse to unfold a story to his students. The pivot of Waterland focuses on both the past in 1937, and the present time thirty years after - all related through the eyes of Dick.
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