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The Shape Of Water (2008)

by Anne Spollen(Favorite Author)

3.87 of 5 Votes: 3

ISBN

0738711012 (ISBN13: 9780738711010)

languge

English

genre

Young Adult Fantasy & Science Fiction

publisher

Flux

review 1: I really wanted to LOVE this book. Loved the artwork, borrowed it, and loved the writing. That's the thing about this book. Spollen has really vivid and lyrical writing that's beautiful to read and hear in your head. She makes allusions to water (duh) and nature in a very enchanting way. There's alot of beautiful writing, but there's no story. All the characters, except maybe (that's a very small maybe, bee-tee-doubleyew) Magda, are very flat and unlikable. The story of Madga's grief and how relationships are developed are very feeble as compared to the poetry of the language. That's the problem with lyrical books. You can have no plot, but you need a story. There's isn't a great one in this one, leaving the writing bloated and the reader baffled and empty. Please don't ev... moreen ask about the Fish Family in Magda's head. It was downright infuriating and it DIDN'T work.
review 2: I liked this book. Well, what I really liked was the writing, those long passages describing how Maggie saw and experienced the world. Then I started feeling . . . confused. The book veered from introspective and fanciful to straight up soap opera fodder. Aside from a couple of tragic parental deaths, which can be overlooked given the nature of the story, there was the aunt's secret son (who apparently had no issues about his mother abandoning him as a baby, even though her [flimsy] reasons for doing so sounded exactly like what I experience every day with my infant son, and probably what lots of other mothers experience too), Maggie's closeted lesbian friend who tries to hit on her, and the to-be stepbrother's attempted suicide. Some people might enjoy such drama, but for me it was a bit much. less

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