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by Anne Spollen
According to 15-year-old Magdalenas mother, the world is strange, beautiful, and watery—full of secrets and discoveries known only to mother and daughter. But when her mother dies suspiciously, it becomes an arid world of anxiety, sexual confusion, and desperate loneliness, where an imaginary family of bickering fish torment her. Magdas only outlet is the beautiful but destructive fires she starts in the marshes near her house. As her father and aunt try to pull her into a mundane world of school, schedules, and stepmothers, the voices of the fish in her head tempt her toward insanity. Magda must plot a course between her mothers fatal madness and her fathers soul-destroying normalcy.
The Shape of Water is a darkly lyrical and surprising tapestry of mundane and imaginative worlds. Magda untangles family secrets, struggles to cope with profound loss, and finally discovers a stable place in the world—without compromising herself.
"Starred Review. This enchanting novel starts quietly, draws the reader in and weaves a seductive spell that holds until the last page." - Kirkus Reviews.
This information about Shape of Water was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Anne Spollen is the mother of three children. Her fiction and poetry have appeared in numerous anthologies and journals and have been nominated for Pushcart prizes. The Shape of Water is her first novel for teenagers. It began as a short story in Orchid: a Literary Review. She lives in New York.
Life is the garment we continually alter, but which never seems to fit.
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