The Water Dancer - Ta-Nehisi Coates

I honestly think it’s impossible to write a review that is going to do justice to this book, not in a complete way anyway. I don’t even know how to start writing my review, as I’m still unpacking this story in my own head, going back to reread paragraphs, researching things I know I should have known before, but am glad I have now learnt. So I will just start by saying that if you only read one novel this year, read this one. My heart cracked and broke so many times during the narrative, I fell in love with the characters, and I honestly didn’t want the book to end, even though I knew it had to.

If you have read any of Ta-Nehisi Coates’ work before, you know how warm, engaging, honest, and beautiful his writing style is. And this style translates perfectly into fiction: The Water Dancer is lyrical, beautifully written, and draws the reader into a story of slavery, of resistance, and of survival. There is also the magical element of conduction through memories and pain that is a main part of the story, a metaphor for the legacy of slavery that still is deeply entrenched in this country today. The author weaves this magical element into the reality of the everyday evils of slavery spectacularly well.

The Water Dancer is the story of Hiram Walker, ripped from his mother’s arms as a child, and also ripped from any memories of her. He grows up on the estate where he was born, serving his half-brother and father, until he discovers an internal power he never knew he had, and one that he cannot understand. This discovery leads him to the Underground Railroad, to a vast network of men and women fighting for freedom and the abolition of slavery, and back to the estate where he was born again.

I always wondered whether I would become more cynical, less caring as I grew older, lose the empathy that would reduce me to tears and break my heart every time I would hear, see, read about something that involved pain, death, horror, evil etc. I’m glad it remains with me, that my heart still breaks, unhardened over time, despite the very real scars of my own pains. Even before having children the idea of someone losing or forcibly being separated from their children would hurt my insides, and nowadays is also fueled by a rage within that I don’t know how to calm. One of the main topics in The Water Dancer is the separation of families: parents, children, husbands, wives in such a thoughtless, cruel manner, but a manner that was the norm in the US at that time. Black people, whether slaves or free, were commodities to the ruling white people, owned and discarded in a way one would use a tool or a utensil. This type of heedless cruelty burns a hole through generations, scars them, and leaves a mark even today. These stories need to be written, and we need to read them, talk about them, and breathe them. Slavery may have been abolished in 1865, but this country was built upon the cruelty unleashed by the white man on black and indigenous people, and the legacy of that evil is still very prominent today. The Water Dancer is fiction, but heavily based on the reality of slavery. Hiram probably existed, as did Sophia, Thena, Corinne, etc.

This is one of those books that I am going to read and read again over the next few years. This review is a little all over the place because I literally could not put this book down, and my mind is still with Hi and Sophia, still in Virginia, and will probably take a few days to come back fully to the present day. I had high expectations for this novel before I read it, but they were blown out of the water, and it was more, much more than I even expected.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the advance copy of this must read novel.