Salt Water: A Novel - Hardcover

Simmons, Charles

3.43

1,095 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 081182182X ISBN 13: 9780811821827

Publisher: Chronicle Books Llc, 1998

View all copies of this ISBN edition:

In the summer of 1963 I fell in love and my father drowned....
?So begins this sweet, ominous new novel by Charles Simmons. Set against an idyllic landscape of water, sand, and sky, it recounts in exquisite detail the momentous events of a boy's 16th summer that reveal to him the dark facts of adult passion. On Bone Point, an island off the New England coast, the boy's long, lazy days of boating and swimming are sharpened by a growing awareness of his charismatic father's infidelities. Add to this the presence of a flirtatious middle-aged woman and her beautiful 20-year-old daughter, who have rented the guesthouse, and the tale is set in motion. This tautly constructed novel is both startling and haunting-an irresistible story of memory, desire, and suspense.

"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.

Review:

Charles Simmons seeds his narrative with clues from the very beginning. First, there is the epigraph from Ivan Turgenev's classic First Love, a tale of obsession, betrayal, and death, followed by the sobering first sentence, "In the summer of 1963 I fell in love and my father drowned." By the time Zina, the 20-year-old object of the young narrator's affection, appears, all the foreshadowing is tidily in place--Michael and his father have already had one brush with mortality in the water as they swim out to a sandbar and are nearly carried away by the tide. When Zina and Michael's father first meet, another warning bell goes off. "I could see right away he liked her. When he didn't like someone he smiled and said nothing. It was clear that she liked him too. Father was very handsome." Readers familiar with Turgenev's story will know what happens next; those who aren't will have to wait awhile to have their suspicions confirmed. In the meantime, Simmons paints a subtle, heartbreaking portrait of one last summer of innocence and of a paradise about to be lost.

From the Back Cover:

In the summer of 1963 I fell in love and my father drowned....So begins this luminous story of a young man's passage through the dark turns of adult passion. A contemporary retelling of Turgenev's classic tale "First Love", SALT WATER is set against a summer landscape of water, sand, and sky, and relates in seductive detail the momentous events that changed a family forever.

On an isolated island off the Atlantic coast, fifteen-year-old Michael and his parents begin their customary lazy vacation. When two exquisite flirts shatter the calm, Michael experiences the provocative mysteries and the consequences of various kinds of love -- romantic and sensual, paternal and filial.

William Faulkner Award-winning author Charles Simmons explores the very heart of the human need to be wanted, the intricacies of the father-son bond, and a boy's adolescence in all of its desires, confusion, and heartbreak.

"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.