The Waterline - Hardcover

Olshan, Joseph

3.88

40 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0385265050 ISBN 13: 9780385265058

Publisher: Doubleday, 1989

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The author's third novel, following "Clara's Heart" and "A Warmer Season". An unsupervised infant is drowned and seven-year-old Billy, the last person to see him alive, is blamed. Billy's parents try to protect his innocence, but the tragedy widens the cracks in their already shaky marriage.

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From Publishers Weekly:

A mixture of the trite and the true, alternating glib psychologizing with perceptive insights, Olshan's third novel (after Clara's Heart ) has commercial potential despite several striking flaws. In successive chapters, Susan and Michael Kaplan narrate the events of a summer day when their seven-year-old son Billy, fishing at a lake near their Westchester home, witnessed the drowning of a younger child. Their marriage strained by the resulting tension, the Kaplans eventually divorce--an event that seems motivated mainly by less credible than due to plot manipulation. Looking back on this traumatizing period, Billy, now in his 20s, narrates the third chapter, in the form of a monologue addressed to the dead boy--a patently contrived device. Related episodes concern Susan's emotionally disturbed sister Tina, whose mental instability Billy feels he has inherited. It is in the sections dealing with Tina that the novel's power lies; her phobia and its effect on Billy is much more convincingly rendered than the drowning incident, which is marred by his parents' failure to get psychological help for Billy when the child is clearly disturbed. Again stretching credibility is Billy's compulsive soul-baring to a woman he encounters while swimming. Olshan's prose style is sometimes facile, sometimes pedestrian. At its best it retains the promise of his earlier work. Major ad/promo; author tour.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal:

Seven-year-old Billy Kaplan, the only witness to the drowning of a two-year-old neighbor, assumes guilt for the child's death even though it was an accident. How these feelings affect Billy as he grows up, and how they ultimately break his family apart, is told in turn by each parent and by Billy. This gives the story an interesting twist, as each parent tries to vindicate his/her actions in response to Billy's feelings of guilt. As an adult, Billy meets and falls in love with Sarah, whose unconditional love helps Billy relinquish his feelings of guilt. This is an absorbing story of a family torn apart by an unfortunate accident. Recommended.
- Mary L. Holshouser, U.S. Court of Appeals Satellite Lib., East St. Louis, Ill.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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