We Are Water: A Novel
Lamb’s much-anticipated new novel explores the secrets of a Connecticut family on the occasion of mother Annie’s remarriage to another woman. An artist who has found great success recycling junk into angry visual art, Annie is ambivalent about marrying Viveca, the art dealer responsible for her success. Meanwhile, Annie’s ex-husband, Orion, struggles to accept Annie’s remarriage and remake himself after messing up his career as a psychologist. And their kids are not exactly all right either. But, in classic Lamb fashion, this is less a story about the drama of the present or any of the various hot-button issues Lamb invokes (gay marriage, Christian Fundamentalism, Obama’s presidency) than it is a lesson about how the traumas of the past play themselves out in the present, and how moral courage and religious faith are the key to overcoming that which haunts us. Here the old wounds are deep indeed—abandonment, addiction, decades-old racial conflict, and lots of child abuse—and Lamb does not hold back describing them in all their messiness. As he did in his Oprah-endorsed blockbusters She’s Come Undone (1992) and I Know This Much Is True (1998), Lamb avoids irony and tends to spoon-feed his readers rather than let them find their own meanings in the text. But few authors are as compassionate toward their characters or as stirring in their redemption narratives. Librarians should expect heavy demand.       HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: The publisher’s publicity campaign will match in intensity the public library response to a new book by a library favorite. --Brendan Driscoll