The Forms of Water [Paperback]

At the age of eighty, Brendan Auberon—formerly of the Order of Our Lady of the Valley, now confined to a nursing home—has one last wish: to see his 200 acres overlooking what used to be Paradise Valley, before the villages were drowned to provide water for the city of Boston. Now, Brendan’s memories drift beneath the surface of the Stillwater Reservoir. When Brendan dupes his nephew, Henry, into hijacking the nursing home van for the journey, what begins as a lark becomes an adventure infinitely more complex.Andrea Barrettis the author ofArchangel,The Air We Breathe,Servants of the Map(finalist for the Pulitzer Prize),The Voyage of the Narwhal,Ship Fever(winner of the National Book Award), and other books. She teaches at Williams College and lives in northwestern Massachusetts.“Barrett returns with her specialty—a story about the tangled web of a family told in prose that's spun smooth as silk.... The strength this time around lies in Barrett's fine writing and the haunting power of the water, rising to fill that reservoir. It was a real event, but like the best of fiction writers, Barrett makes it more than real.”“Barrett combines family dissension and adventure with healthy doses of faith and optimism. The result is a satisfying analysis of family dysfunction in the spirit of Sue Miller.”“The writing is careful and coherent, and the characters are wonderful.”“Of all the writers in the present generation, I can think of no one who's better at exploring the crystalline structures of human relations than Andrea Barrett. The lady has a very powerful miscroscope.The Forms of Wateris just lovely—deeply funny, deeply serious, wise.”“Moving.... Barrett's imagery is oddly memorable....The Forms of Wateris crafted with care.”“Subtle and strong.... Barrett's talents shine.... Barrett not only gets the geographic terrain rightló×