It’s dark and gloomy. Gusty winds blowing and icy drops of rain smashing against the window. It’s only morning on a Saturday but it seems to be one that needs to be spent indoors. Familiar scene? Worry not. Just grab Sara Gruen’s “At the Water’s Edge,” and you would soon wish for more such days. Before I continue with my review, here’s a summary of the book from the author’s website:
In this new novel from the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Water for Elephants, Sara Gruen again demonstrates her talent for creating spellbinding period pieces. In At the Water’s Edge, she tells the gripping and poignant story of a privileged young woman’s moral and sexual awakening as she experiences the devastations of World War II in the Scottish Highlands.
Madeline Hyde, a young socialite from Philadelphia, reluctantly follows her husband and their best friend to the tiny village of Drumnadrochit in search of the Loch Ness monster—at the same time that a very real monster, Hitler, wages war against the Allied Forces. Despite German warplanes flying overhead and scarce food rations (and even scarcer stockings), what Maddie discovers—about the larger world and about herself—through the unlikely friendships she develops with the villagers, opens her eyes not only to the dark forces that exist around her but to the beauty and surprising possibilities as well.
Anyone who has read “Water for Elephants” (I doubt there are many who haven’t) knows how Gruen can weave a tale. Apart from that, and the word “water” there are a few things that are similar between the two novels. Clearly, Gruen has a yen for the fantastical along with deeply flawed characters whose stories are told in a somewhat sepia-toned background. “At the Water’s Edge” is set against the backdrop of WWII. Young men are dying by the hundreds, and food is scarce. But life remains unruffled for Madeline or Maddie, her husband Ellis, and their friend Hank, the rich socialites of Philadelphia. Their mornings are non-existent, afternoons are a haze of cigar smoke and long lunches, culminating in whiskey-drenched late night parties. It seems everything is rosy until we get to know about Ellis’ differences with his father. What appears to be a mad caper that originated from a whim, soon unravels into something deeper. Maddie, Hank, and Ellis set off on a wild, indefinite trip to Scotland to prove the existence of the Loch Ness monster. It is here that their lives are changed forever.
Admittedly, the premise seems too quirky to form the heart of an entire novel. But we soon realize that their search reveals monsters of a different kind. Maddie begins to see that her marriage to Ellis was based on fragile threads spun out of lies. Ellis, on the other hand, is perpetually on his own trip as he soothes his frayed nerves with whiskey and drugs. Left to her own devices, Maddie begins to discover her own self. She befriends Meg and Anna, the housekeepers at the Fraser Arms, where she is staying. They help her in her social awakening, so to speak, by teaching her everything right from just boiling water to making beds. Maddie admits,
“Although I was close to useless to begin with, I was a willing student and they were patient with me. I soon learned how to scrape, not peel, carrots and potatoes, and how to cube turnips.”
It’s not long before she falls in love with Angus, the innkeeper, and learns that Ellis was never really in love with her at all. From there on, things go on a spiral before taking a turn for the worse.
In Sara Gruen’s hands, the novel is safe in its readability as the pages move at a blistering pace. It’s truly a book you can’t tear your eyes away from. But sometimes that’s just not enough. The book’s pitfalls are in its multifarious topics. The war, Maddie’s coming-of-age, Ellis’ addiction, Angus’ story, the supernatural sightings, all of which sometimes seem crammed together in a small space. For instance, there are long passages, where Maddie despairs on the effects of war, which abruptly appear like pages attached from a different book. Then there is Ellis’ constant threat to prove Maddie’s “insanity.” The odd incident of Meg’s abuse. And of course, the ending which is happy ever after, a bit deflating for me.
But back to our rainy day. A Sara Gruen in your hand is worth two of those.
Verdict: Great entertainer
Rating: 3.8/5
A version of this review also appears in Pure M online magazine
