Waterland (1983)

UK
Novel
Author: Graham Swift

And so it begins - ‘ And don’t forget,’ my father would say, as if he expected me at any moment to up and leave to seek my fortune in the wide world, ‘whatever you learn about people, however bad they turn out, each one of them was once a tiny baby sucking his mother’s milk…’ - at the end, looking back. Tom Crick, history teacher, storyteller, Fenlander, narrates us through the story of his life, and his parents’ lives, and their parents’ lives, and… Epic, thoroughly detailed, masterful, compelling, brilliant; we are gripped from that baby’s first nibble. He paints a picture of this flat, desperate place - the Fens - of growing up, of adolescent sexual curiosity, of jealousy of murder, of incest. And further back he goes, to the dawn of time, and back again; back and forth, forth and back. He dips in and out of his life, and his ancestors' lives, contrasting the phlegmatic ambitionless Cricks with the ceaseless aspirations of the Atkinsons. And then they meet, two contrasting families, and he is begotten. A masterpiece.