The Weight of Water by Sarah Crossan, published by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc in 2011.
Strange how you don’t plan to read a book but it draws you in to its inner world and consumes your time.
Intrigued by the cover and the title of this book, I took it off the shelf to flip through.
An hour and a half later I had read it through – unintentionally. When I look back to think what it was about, the story is simple enough but emotionally complex.
Taking the view of the child in a marital break-up, Sarah Crossan manages to beguile us into the tale by an understory of bullying, teen romance, and racial difference. The overarching theme is of relationships, The book takes us from separation, desperation, hope, despair and brings a gleam of new hope toward the end.
In between we are introduced to how people handle change and cultural adaptation. This is achieved through the eyes of a child and her own consequential life as an innocent player.
The device to write the story is prose poetry, a method which totally befits the telling of a story by a thirteen year old girl. Uncomplicated sentences. Statements of thought from the heart. Observational cadence. It works.
Definitely worth a read, especially as an example of a different way to approach story.
Check it out here. You won’t be disappointed.