With the subtlety of Ian McEwan and the pathos of Kazuo Ishiguro, a wise, compassionate novel about age, loss, and moving forward. As he moves toward old age, David Cross finds himself living an unexpected new life. Having lost his wife, Nancy, to illness, and retired from his job as a prominent television news anchor, David is working out in the gym and becoming very thin. His children, Ed and Lucy, embarking on careers and lives on their own, suspect him of being on the lookout for a new woman. He cannot tell them that he is, in some ways, happier than he was before Nancy died.
As Ed and his dancer wife, Rosalie, struggle to conceive a child and Lucy seeks refuge from a chaotic ex-boyfriend, all of them are now forced to face their lives without the woman who was the center of the family. With their personal lives spinning out of control, they each must find a way to hold firm. And when David goes to see his estranged brother deep in the African desert, he will come to an unexpected, meaningful, and life-affirming epiphany.
Filled with rich characterization, warm humor, and shocking surprises, "To Heaven by Water "is a masterwork of great subtlety, a moving novel from a keen observer of life as we live it now. Justin Cartwright's novels include "In Every Face I Meet," which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize; the acclaimed bestseller "The Promise of Happiness"; "White Lightning," which was shortlisted for the Whitbread Novel Award; and the 1999 Whitbread winner "Leading the Cheers." His most recent novel, "The Song Before It Is Sung," was published by Bloomsbury in 2007 and won the prestigious London Jewish Council Award for Literature. He was born in South Africa and now lives in London. As he moves toward old age, David Cross finds himself living an unexpected new life. Having lost his wife, Nancy, to illness, and retired from his job as a prominent television news anchor, David is working out in the gym and becoming very thin. His children, Ed and Lucy, embarking on careers and lives on their own, suspect him of being on the lookout for a new woman. He cannot tell them that he is, in some ways, happier than he was before Nancy died.
As Ed and his dancer wife, Rosalie, struggle to conceive a child and Lucy seeks refuge from a chaotic ex-boyfriend, all of them are now forced to face their lives without the woman who was the center of the family. With their personal lives spinning out of control, they each must find a way to hold firm. And when David goes to see his estranged brother deep in the African desert, he will come to an unexpected, meaningful, and life-affirming epiphany.
Filled with rich characterization, warm humor, and shocking surprises, "To Heaven by Water "is a masterwork of great subtlety, a moving novel from a keen observer of life as we live it now. "A family regroups after the death of its nurturing matriarch in this tender, unsparing novel by Whitbread Award winner Cartwright. Nearly a year after Nancy Cross's death, her children still feel off-balance without her. Her son Ed, 32 years old and a rising star at a London law firm, is increasingly oppressed by wife Rosalie's obsession with having a baby and drifts into a casual affair. Daughter Lucy, 26, is cataloguing Roman coins at an auction house and trying to shake off a creepy ex-boyfriend. They both wish their father David, a recently retired TV anchorman, would stop working out obsessively and behave more like a widower. David can't tell his children that he is 'in some ways happier now that their mother is dead.' He loved Nancy, but 'he limited the range of his heart deliberately' after a summer in Rome during the 1960s that ended with the drowning of the girl he was sleeping with. Memories of that summer recur throughout; David had a small part in a film of Dr. Faustus starring Richard Burton, and he sometimes feels that he too sold his soul for material success he doesn't entirely value. As events come to a crisis in London, David heads to the Kalahari Desert, where his older brother Guy has for years been seeking spiritual transcendence. But this is not a novel about leaving the world behind; Guy is in fact something of a nut, and David returns to find Rosalie pregnant, Ed in a new job in Geneva and Lucy promoted at the auction house, making a life with a sweet new boyfriend she plans to marry. A baptism and an embrace from David's closest male friend end this moving tale, replete with the autumnal understanding that our lives arefashioned from compromise and from adjustments to those we love-and no less valuable for all that. There's not a wasted word or a false emotion in this elegant, meditative work from a mature master."--"Kirkus Reviews"
