Review: An Indie Gem!
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 02 8, 2012
"There's a skin on water," she said. She made me look at the surface. It bulged, rose up from the rim of the glass. I touched it. Immediately the skin tore apart, the paperclip fell through the glass of water to the bottom. We live on that skin. With all the security of our lives, we live on that skin. We all live on that surface. Ruffle it and we sink.Zeno dreams of becoming a filmmaker, but his job at an exclusive lakeside retreat serving Nazi officers and Hungary's elite leaves little time for filming. Zeno begins to sneak off into the nearby forest to practice his craft. And that's when he meets Catherine Steiner, the wife of a Hungarian businessman who brings his mistresses to the lake whenever he visits. Zeno is drawn to Catherine, though she is twice his age, so he follows her to Budapest, taking a job as her husband's valet. Drawn into the Steiners' world, Zeno becomes a keeper of secrets for this powerful family. But when the Germans invade Budapest, Zeno understands the limits of the Steiners' power, and realizes it is up to him to save Catherine from the Nazis.What struck me most about The Skin of Water was how beautifully constructed it is. Throughout the entire narrative G.S. Johnston evokes a feeling of borrowed time, moments savored because they are so fleeting, moments that were not supposed to happen, but they did.  Zeno and Catherine live in these moments even as all of Hungary lives on borrowed time, waiting to be invaded either by the Germans or the Russians.The Skin of Water is beautifully written, professionally edited, and a far worthier read than much of what you might pay five times as much for from a traditional publisher.