Water is a novella by award-winning, best-selling Irish author, John Boyne. Not long after her husband Brendan is put in Midlands Prison, and with many people believing she was complicit in his crimes, Vanessa Garvin flees Dublin and goes into self-imposed exile in an austere cottage on an island off the Galway coast. She shaves her head and uses a version of her maiden name: Willow Hale.

Her elder daughter has died; her younger daughter intermittently blocks her on social media, when she can check it via the town’s unreliable Wi-Fi; she’s visited by an imperious cat that she’s later told not to feed:
“‘You can’t feed him,’ she tells me. ‘He has irritable bowel syndrome.’
‘He wasn’t wearing a medical bracelet,’ I reply, ‘Anyway, I’ve only given him a few bits and pieces. Some leftover chicken. A few saucers of milk.’ ‘
And he’s lactose intolerant.’”

Willow remains stand-offish with the locals to ward off closer exchanges, but some of them are fairly persistent; she believes they don’t know who she is, but later learns that she’s not as anonymous as she thought. She spends her time sleeping, going for long walks, watching nature, listening to small-minded locals, swimming, reflecting on what has happened and if she should have seen it.

She has interesting theological and philosophical discussions with the young Nigerian priest; she observes the interactions between the townspeople. Two of those she meets, she feels she could trust with the recent events in her life that brought her here. The exact circumstances, both of her husband’s incarceration, and her daughter’s death, are gradually revealed.

Encounters with some of the islanders have her recalling certain episodes, interactions and comments made: “It’s those f***ing men. They still run everything and look out for each other, no matter what. I hate them. Don’t you? And it’s women like us who allow it to happen. Because staying quiet is easier than causing a fuss, isn’t it? Sometimes I think we’re just as bad as they are.”

Despite the grave subject matter, Boyne manages to include some, often dark, humour. Ultimately, Willow concludes: “we are none of us innocent and none of us guilty, and we all have to live with what we’ve done for the rest of our lives and that the only way through this terrible thing, if we are to survive it at all, is to be kind to each other and to love one another.”

Boyne’s descriptive prose is often exquisite: “You wear your loneliness like an overcoat”; the observations he gives his characters are succinct and insightful: “There are widows. And widowers. And orphans. But there is no word to define a parent who loses a child. The language is missing a noun.” A short read that certainly packs a punch.

This unbiased review is from an uncorrected proof copy provided by NetGalley and Random House UK Transworld.