Life Without Water - Softcover

Peacock, Nancy

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0553379291 ISBN 13: 9780553379297

Publisher: Bantam, 1998

Synopsis

This is the kind of book that you read, love and then give to a friend saying, "You have to read this...
In a powerful and acute debut, highly acclaimed author Nancy Peacock gives us a young narrator who is both knowing and innocent, trusting and fearful: a girl named Cedar, who reflects on her childhood in the wake of the Vietnam war. As she and her young mother Sara both come of age, Cedar explores the intense bond--and discovers the boundaries--of their mother-daughter relationship. Living as hippies in an abandoned farmhouse in North Carolina, Sara and Cedar survive a number of romantic and domestic misadventures, first with Cedar's father Sol, and later with a group of friends living together in a commune-style home. Lyrical, bittersweet and utterly unforgettable, Life Without Water uniquely captures this time--and its joys, hazards, complexities and disappointments.

About this title

Review:

Nancy Peacock's brief first novel manages to cover a lot of geographic and emotional ground. Essentially a coming-of-age novel about a girl named Cedar whose parents have tuned in and dropped out to an abandoned North Carolina farmhouse named Two Moons, Peacock's book presents a deft social history of the 1960s and early 1970s seen through a sly and precocious child's eyes. Sol and Sara, Cedar's parents, eventually split up--a good thing, since Sol is a lazy and incorrigible pothead--and mother and daughter take off on a cross-country odyssey (in a Volkswagen van, naturally) that takes them to Taos. There Sara meets a handsome artist who accompanies them back to Two Moons. A pastoral idyll ensues until an amorous and amoral female house guest appears on the scene. The characters in this unassuming book carry monikers like Norther, Roxy, and Topaz, and their dreamy, short-lived ideals typify an era that many 50-somethings would rather forget.

From Kirkus Reviews:

First-novelist Peacock offers a canny child's-eye view of a euphoric but ultimately fragile experiment in communal living. The narrator, Cedar, was born in 1969 in North Carolina. Her mother Sara, devastated at the time by the recent death of her brother Jimmie in Vietnam, had succumbed to the seductions of bandana-wearing Sol and had moved with him into an abandoned house without plumbing, where the two lived off the proceeds of Sol's dope dealing. Sol draws on the walls and paints the floor like a rainbow, and when Cedar is born, he has 60 friends over to celebrate. When Cedar is four, Sara puts her mattress in the van and she and Cedar leave--the house is cold and Sol passes out too often. Heading into Taos, the van breaks down, and handsome Daniel gives Sara and Cedar a lift. He has a girlfriend but falls for Sara anyway, and soon the trio is headed back to North Carolina, to the house that they're sure Sol couldn't have kept up on his own. Acquaintances Woody and Elaine and their two kids move in, too. Elaine bakes, Woody makes pots, and the children become best friends, and Sara is pregnant with Daniel's baby. Then Woody invites griping, unpleasant Topaz to stay, and suddenly Daniel is reading poetry to her, and then he's moved into her bedroom. Sara takes to her own bed, where she's nursed by Cedar; Daniel skulks in Topaz's room, sneaking down at night to steal food. And then Topaz is pregnant. She departs, and Daniel wants back into the family, but the house burns down and everyone's idyll is over. College-age Cedar's recollections are both wise and forgiving and add up to a complex blend of undiluted nostalgia for those anarchic days with the warmth of her extended family, and a clear-eyed view of the complexities within that edenic world. In an accomplished debut, a dead-on rendition of the idealism and the emotional flux of an untraditional household. -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: Bantam
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0553379291
• ISBN 13: 9780553379297
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 224