The plot is a dual timeline that parallels one another. The first timeline is modern day with a photographer and her famous yet emotionally damaged poet husband and young child going on a boat trip with her brother-in-law and his newish girlfriend. She is using the opportunity to work on a photo assignment of a historical double murder that took place centuries ago. During the trip, she notices the closeness developing between her husband and the girlfriend. The second timeline is the events leading up to the double murder. This book was very hard to put down and I was absorbed into the story from the get go. I would have loved to have had a few more poems set when Kasienka and her mum were in Poland. I think it would have added a great contrast between the different cultures. It is with this diary that the second voice is heard. The diary is written long after the events on Smuttynose, after Maren has returned to Norway and is in the final days of her life. The diary recounts the history of Maren; her marriage and relocation to Smuttynose; the struggles of her new life and her recounting of the events the night of the murders. The diary gives you a real feel for Maren as an individual and especially what life must have been like for a lonely, foreign fisherman's wife on such a desolate island.

People who have ever felt at a loss with themselves. People who like to adopt happiness as their revenge. People who thought their first kiss way awkward *cringe*. People who always leave the best stories at a sleepover for when the lights are out. The 19c woman's diary makes for tedious reading--interesting at first, but the tragic ending (and not to give anything away, there are tragic endings for both narratives) is telegraphed quite early..... The suspicion that her husband is having an affair burgeons into jealousy and distrust, and ultimately propels Jean to the verge of actions she had not known herself capable of-actions with horrific consequences. Women. Boating. Island descriptions. Blah blah we're in the present now blah blah so I hope you were paying attention. The verse works well because it forces you to pay attention to every word. With prose, it is so easy to skim and still get the gist of the plot. This book has a plot, but the story is definitely about the trajectory of Kasienka as a character. She begins as a scared girl and matures, with each challenge teaching her something valuable about who she is becoming. She faces down the Popular Girl, develops shy affection for a boy in Year 9, and even struggles with keeping a secret from her mother that could tear them asunder. Because everything is narrated in her poetry, we only ever get a sense of Kasienka—the other characters are more like shadows of themselves than real people—but that’s enough.

Preview Book

I always find it difficult to come up with a number for books such as this one because obviously the issues and situations that are dealt with in this book are extremely harrowing and, sadly, common in present day Britain. Woven into the plot is Maren’s first-hand story. She describes the passage to the Isles of Shoals, the isolated lifestyle on Smuttynose Island, and finally the gruesome murders. I wonder this: If you take a woman and push her to the edge, how will she behave?" The question is posed by Jean, a photographer, who in 1995 arrives on Smuttynose Island, off the coast of Maine, to research a century-old crime. As she immerses herself in the details of the case-a fit of passion that resulted in the deaths of two women-Jean herself becomes caught in the grip of an intense emotion. I need to finally brush off my prejudice against books that are written in verse. Every single time I raise a sceptical eyebrow in their direction - completely unable to believe that this is anything more than just lazy storytelling - and every single time I find myself impressed. The Weight of Water was no exception. This is a delightful, if somewhat heartbreaking, little story that took me just over an hour to read. If we had gone to school together I bet we’d be the best of friends and we’d stay up all night, swapping stories and drinking pop and being giddy.

Jean Janes is researching the Smuttynose Murders. Bringing along her husband and daughter, she charters her brother-in-law’s boat to take photos and get a feel for the island. She pulls letters, journals, and information about the trial which are archived in the historic city of Portsmouth. Jean steadily unravels the story leading up to the murders, as well as the suspecting infidelity of her husband. Ugh. This book intertwines two stories. One is the murder of two women and happens in a previous century. The other is about a photographer sent to where the women were killed to take pictures for a magazine assignment. The older story works well and I even liked the weird way the author intertwines the two stories where one flows into the next with only a paragraph break. The problem is that the more contemporary story falls completely apart at the end. There's a build up full of the photographer's regrets and if only's but I don't see how anything she did caused what happened in the end. Rachel and Talia Fontenot are sisters born into brutal, rural poverty in southeastern Louisiana in the 1960s. Raised by relatives, they become fiercely devoted to one another until tragic circumstances intervene. They are separated, Talia disappearing into a life of drugs and petty crime, Rachel fleeing to New Orleans. Years later, Rachel is living in New Orleans and married to the CEO of the Southeast’s largest provider of long-term healthcare. She lives what appears to be a perfect life, yet she struggles with anxiety, prescription drug abuse, and grief. You were so sad and you were so lonely and you were so insecure and you were OK with letting people

The weight of water

Interwoven with the modern story is the saga of what happened on the island in 1873 when two women were brutally murdered with an ax. This part of the novel, told in a memoir by another woman who hid in a cave after the murders, is even more intense than Jean’s marital woes. I don’t want to spoil any of the delicious narrative surprises Shreve has in store, so I’ll just say that there’s insanity, jealousy and incest at work on the island in 1873—problems that continue to resonate and haunt characters 100 years later. The book was adapted for a film of the same name, directed by Kathryn Bigelow and released in 2000. Debate about the identity of the Smuttynose murderer continues to this day, rekindled by the publication of The Weight of Water. "The facts are out there for speculation," Shreve says, "The book is something separate from that debate."

The story revolves around Kasienka and her mother who move into the city where there Dad escaped (escaped doesn't sound appropriate but oh well) It is her tale of drama that comes with moving into a new school, falling for a guy who doesn't treat her bad and her search for her dad. A murder of two women took place over 100 years ago on the island of Smutty Nose in the Isles of Shoals. Maren Hanvent moves to this very remote, sparse island with her fisherman husband. They are followed by her sister and brother with his wife, living lives full of hardship off the coast of Maine.In The Weight of Water, Anita Shreve tells a story of pain, jealousy, and passion. Her characters and their closest relationships--with siblings, with partners--are trapped in isolated and claustrophobic spaces. Shreve tells the story of the murders of two Norwegian immigrant women on Smuttynose Island off the coast of New Hampshire in the late 19th century. She explores the 19th Century events in the context of a contemporary photographer's trip to the island to capture the location for a magazine story about the killings. The photographer travels to the island in a small sailboat with her husband, daughter, brother-in-law and his girlfriend. In the course of her research for the photo-shoot, she happens upon a previously unknown document, a letter from the one woman in the family who survived the killings. Shreve alternates sections of this letter, which describes what led up to the murders and what happened on the night they occurred, with the main structure of the book which moves fluidly between the interactions among the family of the photographer and the details of the history of the murder as it was revealed in the trial. In this way, Shreve allows the painful unfolding of events in the two different eras to play out alongside one another.

The Weight of Water is a 1997 novel by Anita Shreve. Half of the novel is historical fiction based on the Smuttynose Island murders, which took place in 1873. There are two stories intertwined here. There is a modern day story told in the first person by a photographer visiting the Isles of Shoals off the coast of New Hampshire. She is photographing the islands where a double murder took place in 1873 and is staying on a boat with her husband, her young daughter, her brother-in-law and his girlfriend and we see the often tetchy interaction between them in the close quarters. The second story is told in the first person by the only survivor of the nineteenth century double murder. This is in the form of a lost manuscript that the photographer finds during her research. As Jean, the journalist’s, research into the ill-fated family are appearing in her own family, trapped as they are on the small boat in close quarters with one another. Her husband the poet, whose glory days are gone, he can no longer write. The younger brother, captain of the small craft, in love with a woman who doesn’t love him. And Adaline, somewhat of a beautiful enigma, set between the two brothers. The approaching storm is a catalyst for a modern-day tragedy.Life is lonely for Kasienka. She misses her old home in Poland, her mother's heart is breaking, and at her new English school friends are scarce. But when someone new swims into her life, Kasienka learns that there is more than one way to stay afloat.