Gain Access Gathering The Water Constructed By Robert Edric In Manuscript

is a sad and dark novel that lingers in the mind long after finishing it, The grief in it is sometimes overwhelming, but it is a realistic historical novel, I would read more by Robert Edric after finishing this, Dark and Bronteesque. It is, northern England, and Charles Weightman has been given the unenviable task of overseeing the flooding of the Forge Valley and evicting its lingering inhabitants.
Weightman is heartily resented by these locals, and he himself is increasingly unconvinced both of the wisdom of his appointment and of the integrity and motives of the company men who posted him there.
He finds some solace, however, in his enigmatic neighbour, Mary Latimer, Caring for her mad sister, Mary is also an outsider, and a companionship develops between the two of them which offers them both some comfort and support in their mutual isolation.


As winter closes steadily in and as the waters begin to rise in the Forge Valley, it becomes increasingly evident that the manmade

deluge cannot be avoided not by the locals desperate to save their homes, nor by the reluctant agent of their destruction, Weightman himself.


In a masterful new novel, Edric captures powerful human emotions with grace and precision, The hauntingly resonant backdrop to this story of David and Goliath marks Edric's dramatic return to historical literary fiction.
Sadly, I can't think of anything good to say about this book,
It was miserable, depressing and unbelievably bleak,
The people in the book who were losing their homes deserved compassion, but they were never described in such a way as to make them real or human enough for me to make a connection with them or their plight.

The gradual decline of the main character seemed forced, and his whole situation somewhat unbelievable,
I finished the book in the hope there would be some redeeming element to it, . . but for me there simply wasn't, This was the first time I read something from Robert Edric and I loved every page of it.
In a setting reminiscent of Wuthering Heights, you could feel the anguish and doubt expressed the characters and the whole book is pervaded by a quiet sadness.
Loved it. Este livro desiludiume imenso. Depois de ler o resumo da capa, fiquei curiosa com o livro e anos se passaram até o conseguir comprar a um preço simpático.
Li imensos elogios ao estilo de prosa do autor e vim a descobrir que este livro tinha ficado na longlist para o Booker Prize.
Assim que o vi na Fnac, nem pensei duas vezes, Mas que triste desilusão, O livro não conta mais que o dia a dia de uma espécie de inspector de barragens, que se instala num vilarejo prestes a ser submergido pela nova barragem lá construída.
O vilarejo fica num ermo de fim do mundo, onde apenas uma habitante não lhe é hostil, e todo o livro é assim, sem nenhum evento de interesse, nada.
A tal prosa maravilhosa devese ter perdido toda na tradução, porque não lhe vi rasto.
Another book from theBooker longlist, this is a historical novel set in West Yorkshire in, I have not previously read Edric, who seems to have been quite highly regarded at the time but has rather fallen off the radar more recently.


The narrator Charles Weightman is an outsider sent in by the Board who have been building a new reservoir, who arrives after the dam has been built to monitor the evacuation and the filling of the reservoir.
There is not much of a plot beyond the filling of the reservoir and the evacuation of the poor inhabitants of the drowned valley, but the book is strong in atmosphere and human interest is provided by the story of Weightmans past a fiancée that fell ill and died shortly before their planned wedding, and his relationship with Mary Latimer, a widow who has returned to her childhood home having rescued her sister Martha from an asylum, partly in a failed attempt to raise the value of the house, which is now largely dilapidated.


The book is an easy read, but I am not entirely clear what made it a Booker candidate maybe Edrics earlier books are more striking.

This is a somewhat puzzling book, The prose is exquisite and the picture Edric paints of the bleak Pennine landscape is perfect he has an eye and a word for everything which makes the hills mysterious and forbidding and exciting.
But to what end There is little in the way of plot the novel is a collection of almost random episodes in the brief history of a man sent in the midth century to a remote valley to oversee the eviction of the homesteaders so that a new reservoir may be created for the town of Halifax.
It is a novel which is at once satisfying and disappointing, Someone, somewhere, wrote that Edric's style is to mirror the unconnectedness of life, to point out that things happen in a random way irrelevant to a central theme or narrative.
That is certainly the overall impression created in this novel, Yet it is in many ways gorgeous the imagery is brilliant and the writing spare and powerful.
I shall read it again, for sure, A chance purchase at the airport for a short flight back home, this book impressed me by the story and its psychological depth and absolutely gorgeous language.
Great find! Charles Weightman is appointed by the board to oversee the flooding of a valley that will form a new reservoir for Halifax.
A lonely man, a lonely job, a lonely place, Given to me to read for my book group, the blurb on the back of this, and the Caspar David Friedrich inspired/copied illustration on the cover gave me some hope.


Alas, no, it wasn't to my tastes, This is a tale from the mid Nineteenth Century of an engineer overseeing the flooding of a valley in 'The North', and the resistance of the locals to all this.
No, in truth I'm not wholly sure what the point of it all was, I found it relentlessly grim the ending particularly so with a writing style veering somehow between young adult simplicity and unnecessary descriptiveness.
But all it was describing was wet grey cold scenery yeah, we get it and uninteresting characters.
Admittedly there were only two characters of any depth, everyone else was a simpleton stereotype, Gathering the Water explores a remote Northern valley in the weeks before it is flooded forever, It reads like an allegory a water board employee dips into the enclosed lives of the inhabitants, having neither the power to help them nor the ability to influence his shadowy employers.
His meticulous reports are ignored he is told to abridge them and he duly fabricates them and immerses himself in the brooding landscape.
The image of a rising tide, an unstoppable flood, insinuates itself throughout the novel, Some stories of the landscape which have been buried underground are revealed as the water level rises.
We sense Mr Weightman's increasing sympathy with the villagers and the dialogue reveals the gulf that separates him from the inhabitants.
The novel works both as a portrait of Victorian northern life and as a model for the pointlessness of many modern day Kafkaesque jobs.
Corruption, madness, hypocrisy and ignorance emerge, leading to its tragic conclusion, It's a rare and special novel it most resembles novel Waterland by Graham Swift, as a portrait of a landscape and its inbred people.
It's a novel that can't be easily summarised images linger on after you've read it, longlisted for the Man Booker prize, thoroughly recommended.
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