The Water Dancer

Last updated
The Water Dancer
The Water Dancer (Coates novel).png
First edition cover
Author Ta-Nehisi Coates
Audio read by Joe Morton [1]
Cover artistCalida Garcia Rawles [2]
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Genre Historical fiction, science fiction
Publisher One World
Publication date
September 24, 2019
Media typePrint (hardcover)
Pages407
ISBN 978-0-399-59059-7
813/.6
LC Class PS3603.O17 W38 2019

The Water Dancer is the debut novel by Ta-Nehisi Coates, published on September 24, 2019, by Random House under its One World imprint. It is a surrealist story set in the pre-Civil War South, concerning a superhuman protagonist named Hiram Walker who possesses photographic memory, but who cannot remember his mother, and, late in the novel, is able to transport people over long distances by using a power known as "conduction". This power is based in the power of memory and storytelling and can fold the Earth like fabric and allows him to travel across large areas via waterways. [3]

Contents

The novel debuted at number one on The New York Times fiction best-seller list and was selected for the revival of Oprah's Book Club.

Plot

Hiram Walker was born into slavery during the Antebellum South on a declining tobacco plantation in Virginia named Lockless. He is the mixed-race son of a white plantation owner and a black mother who was sold away by his father when Hiram was young. The local community consists of the enslaved ("the Tasked"); the landowners ("the Quality"); and the low-class whites ("the Low"). Hiram has an extraordinary photographic memory but is unable to remember his mother. However, in one instance when Hiram is driving across a bridge he suddenly has a vision of his mother dancing. When the vision ends, his carriage has fallen into the water. His (white) half brother drowns, but Hiram is transported out of the water. He learns that his miracle survival was a result of a superhuman ability he has called conduction, which transports himself and others across impossible distances. This conduction is triggered by powerful memories: those of his mother. He eventually becomes involved with the Underground Railroad. Hiram escapes to Philadelphia, where he encounters Box Brown and Jarm Logue. He eventually comes to meet a famous member of the Underground named Moses, who also has the power of Conduction. Moses is later revealed to be Harriet Tubman.

Background

Coates began writing the novel around 2008 and 2009. He had recently finished his first memoir, The Beautiful Struggle, and was encouraged by his agent to write fiction. At the time, Coates was extensively researching slavery and the Civil War. At the end of The Water Dancer, Coates adds an author's note, listing Peter and William Still as the inspiration for the characters in the White family. Coates was influenced by author E. L. Doctorow and "how he almost reinvented history; he made history his in a certain kind of way". Coates cited Doctorow's novels Ragtime (1975) and Billy Bathgate (1989) as early influences and recalled later reading The Waterworks . He was also influenced by his childhood love of comic books and, in general, the concept of heroes. While researching the Civil War, he was frustrated with how "a lot of the people who were held up as heroic were in fact straight-up white supremacists." Coates worked on the novel for a decade in "various degrees". [4]

Reception

The Water Dancer received favorable reviews, with a cumulative "Positive" rating at the review aggregator website Book Marks, based on 42 book reviews from mainstream literary critics. [5] The novel debuted at number one on The New York Times fiction best-seller list for the week ending September 28, 2019. [6] The novel was selected by Oprah Winfrey as the first book for the revival of her Oprah's Book Club on Apple TV+. She called it "one of the best books I have ever read in my entire life. Right up there in the Top 5." [7] [8] [9]

Publishers Weekly gave the novel a rave review, writing, "In prose that sings and imagination that soars, Coates further cements himself as one of this generation's most important writers, tackling one of America's oldest and darkest periods with grace and inventiveness. This is bold, dazzling, and not to be missed." [10] David Fear of Rolling Stone gave the novel a rave review, saying it exceeded expectations for a debut novel and writing, "What's most powerful is the way Coates enlists his notions of the fantastic, as well as his fluid prose, to probe a wound that never seems to heal. [...] There’s an urgency to his remembrance of things past that brims with authenticity, testifying to centuries of bone-deep pain. It makes The Water Dancer feel timeless and instantly canon-worthy." [11] Dwight Garner of The New York Times gave the novel a positive review, calling it "a jeroboam of a book, a crowd-pleasing exercise in breakneck and often occult storytelling that tonally resembles the work of Stephen King as much as it does the work of Toni Morrison, Colson Whitehead and the touchstone African-American science-fiction writer Octavia Butler." [12] Kirkus Reviews gave the novel a favorable review, but felt it was "less intensely realized" than Colson Whitehead's The Underground Railroad (2015). [13]

Constance Grady of Vox praised the "clarity of Coates's ideas and the poetry of his language" but largely panned the novel as a "mess" with monotonous characters and lacking a strong plot development to make up for it. She criticized the movement between the plot-driven and allegorical storytelling modes as "whiplash-inducing". [14] Shah Tazrian Ashrafi of The Daily Star , while complimenting its "lyrical prose", felt that the novel "left [him] craving more action and high-geared moments of grief, suspense, climax, and character development." [15]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cory Doctorow</span> Canadian-British blogger, journalist and author (born 1971)

Cory Efram Doctorow is a Canadian-British blogger, journalist, and science fiction author who served as co-editor of the blog Boing Boing. He is an activist in favour of liberalising copyright laws and a proponent of the Creative Commons organization, using some of its licences for his books. Some common themes of his work include digital rights management, file sharing, and post-scarcity economics.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">E. L. Doctorow</span> Novelist, editor, professor

Edgar Lawrence Doctorow was an American novelist, editor, and professor, best known for his works of historical fiction.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Edwidge Danticat</span> Haitian-American writer (born 1969)

Edwidge Danticat is a Haitian-American novelist and short story writer. Her first novel, Breath, Eyes, Memory, was published in 1994 and went on to become an Oprah's Book Club selection. Danticat has since written or edited several books and has been the recipient of many awards and honors. As of the fall of 2023, she will be the Wun Tsun Tam Mellon Professor of the Humanities in the department of African American and African Diaspora Studies at Columbia University.

<i>The Road</i> 2006 novel by Cormac McCarthy

The Road is a 2006 post-apocalyptic novel by American writer Cormac McCarthy. The book details the grueling journey of a father and his young son over a period of several months across a landscape blasted by an unspecified cataclysm that has destroyed industrial civilization and almost all life. The novel was awarded the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction in 2006. The book was adapted into a film of the same name in 2009, directed by John Hillcoat.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Adam Johnson (writer)</span> American novelist and short story writer (born 1967)

Adam Johnson is an American novelist and short story writer. He won the Pulitzer Prize for his 2012 novel, The Orphan Master's Son, and the National Book Award for his 2015 story collection Fortune Smiles. He is also a professor of English at Stanford University with a focus on creative writing.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ta-Nehisi Coates</span> American writer and journalist (born 1975)

Ta-Nehisi Paul Coates is an American author, journalist, and activist. He gained a wide readership during his time as national correspondent at The Atlantic, where he wrote about cultural, social, and political issues, particularly regarding African Americans and white supremacy.

<i>Castle</i> (TV series) American crime comedy-drama TV series (2009–2016)

Castle is an American crime mystery/comedy-drama television series that aired on ABC for a total of eight seasons from March 9, 2009, to May 16, 2016. The series was produced jointly by Beacon Pictures and ABC Studios.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Oprah's Book Club 2.0</span> Award

Oprah's Book Club 2.0 is a book club founded June 1, 2012, by Oprah Winfrey in a joint project between OWN: The Oprah Winfrey Network and O: The Oprah Magazine. The club is a re-launch of the original Oprah's Book Club, which ran for 15 years and ended in 2011, but as the "2.0" name suggests, digital media is the new focus. It incorporates the use of various social media platforms and e-readers that allow for the quoting and uploading of passages and notes for discussion, among other features.

Susan Elia MacNeal is an American author best known for her Maggie Hope mystery series of novels, which are set during World War II, mainly in London.

<i>Between the World and Me</i> 2015 book by Ta-Nehisi Coates

Between the World and Me is a 2015 nonfiction book written by American author Ta-Nehisi Coates and published by Spiegel & Grau. It was written by Coates as a letter to his then-teenage son about his perception of what the feelings, symbolism, and realities associated with being Black in the United States are. Coates recapitulates American history and explains to his son "racist violence that has been woven into American culture." Coates draws from an abridged, autobiographical account of his youth in Baltimore, detailing his beliefs about what are the ways in which, to him, institutions like schools, the local police, and even "the streets" discipline, endanger, and threaten to "disembody" black men and women.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cynthia Bond</span> American author and former actress

Cynthia Bond is an American author and actress. Her debut novel Ruby spent six consecutive weeks on the New York Times Bestseller list, and was chosen as a selection for Oprah's Book Club 2.0. She was born in Hempstead, Texas, and now lives in Los Angeles. Bond won a journalism scholarship to Northwestern University she then studied at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York City. Bond was a PEN Rosenthal Fellow for Emerging Writers. Bond is also on staff at the Paradigm Malibu Adolescent Treatment Center.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Brit Bennett</span> American writer

Brit Bennett is an American writer based in Los Angeles. Her debut novel The Mothers (2016) was a New York Times best-seller. Her second novel, The Vanishing Half (2020), was also a New York Times best-seller and it was chosen as a Good Morning America Book Club selection. The Vanishing Half was selected as one of The New York Times ten best books of 2020 and shortlisted for the 2021 Women's Prize for Fiction.

William Paul Coates is an American publisher, printer and community activist. In 1978 he founded the Black Classic Press (BCP), an imprint devoted to publishing obscure and significant works by and about individuals of African descent, particularly previously out-of-print books, and he also established the printing company BCP Digital Printing in 1995. He is the father of award-winning author and journalist Ta-Nehisi Coates.

<i>We Were Eight Years in Power</i> 2017 collection of essays by Ta-Nehisi Coates

We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy is a 2017 collection of essays by Ta-Nehisi Coates originally published in The Atlantic magazine between 2008 and 2016 over the course of the American Barack Obama administration. It includes the titles that launched his career: "The Case for Reparations" and "The Black Family in the Age of Mass Incarceration". Each of the essays is introduced with the author's reflections.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jaquira Díaz</span> Puerto Rican writer

Jaquira Díaz is a Puerto Rican fiction writer, essayist, journalist, cultural critic, and professor. She is the author of Ordinary Girls, which received a Whiting Award in Nonfiction, a Florida Book Awards Gold Medal, was a Lambda Literary Award Finalist, and a Barnes & Noble Discover Prize Finalist. She has written for The Atlantic, Time (magazine), The Best American Essays, Tin House, The Sun, The Fader, Rolling Stone, The Guardian, Longreads, and other places. She was an editor at theKenyon Reviewand a visiting professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.In 2022, she held the Mina Hohenberg Darden Chair in Creative Writing at Old Dominion University's MFA program and a Pabst Endowed Chair for Master Writers at the Atlantic Center for the Arts. She has taught creative writing at Colorado State University's MFA program, Randolph College's low-residency MFA program, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Kenyon College. Díaz lives in New York with her spouse, British writer Lars Horn, and is an Assistant Professor of Writing at Columbia University.

Yvvette Edwards FRSL is a British novelist born in London, England, of Caribbean heritage. Her first novel, A Cupboard Full of Coats, was published in 2011 to much acclaim and prize nominations that included the Man Booker Prize longlist and the Commonwealth Book Prize shortlist. Edwards followed this debut work five years later with The Mother (2016), a novel that "reinforces her accomplishment". She is a contributor to the 2019 anthology New Daughters of Africa, edited by Margaret Busby.

Trent Dalton is an Australian journalist and author.

Oprah's Book Club is a streaming television talk show produced for Apple TV+ and hosted by Oprah Winfrey.

The Oprah Conversation is an interview talk show by Oprah Winfrey that premiered on Apple TV+ on July 30, 2020.

<i>The Sweetness of Water</i> 2021 novel by Nathan Harris

The Sweetness of Water is the debut novel by American novelist Nathan Harris. It was published by Little, Brown and Company on June 15, 2021. It won the Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence and was longlisted for the 2021 Booker Prize.

References

  1. Canfield, David (September 24, 2019). "Listen to Joe Morton read Oprah's Book Club pick The Water Dancer". Entertainment Weekly . Retrieved October 2, 2019.
  2. de León, Concepción (February 12, 2019). "A First Look at the Cover of Ta-Nehisi Coates's Forthcoming Novel" . The New York Times . Retrieved October 1, 2019.
  3. Quinn, Annalisa (September 26, 2019). "In 'The Water Dancer,' Ta-Nehisi Coates Creates Magical Alternate History". NPR . Retrieved October 2, 2019.
  4. Cybil (September 1, 2019). "Ta-Nehisi Coates Wades Into Literary Fiction with 'The Water Dancer'". Goodreads . Retrieved October 2, 2019.
  5. "The Water Dancer". Book Marks . Retrieved September 23, 2021.
  6. "Combined Print & E-Book Fiction - Best Sellers". The New York Times . October 13, 2019.
  7. Morgan, David (September 23, 2019). "Oprah's new book club pick: Ta-Nehisi Coates' debut novel "The Water Dancer"". CBS News . Retrieved October 1, 2019.
  8. Rahmanan, Anna Ben Yehuda (September 23, 2019). "Oprah Winfrey Selects 'The Water Dancer' by Ta-Nehisi Coates As First Pick For New Book Club". Forbes . Retrieved October 2, 2019.
  9. Hipes, Patrick (March 25, 2019). "Apple Shows Off Original Series For First Time With Sizzle Reel – Watch". Deadline Hollywood . Retrieved March 27, 2019.
  10. "Fiction Book Review: The Water Dancer by Ta-Nehisi Coates". Publishers Weekly . June 11, 2019. Retrieved October 2, 2019.
  11. Fear, David (September 24, 2019). "'The Water Dancer': Ta-Nehisi Coates' American Odyssey". Rolling Stone . Retrieved October 1, 2019.
  12. Garner, Dwight (September 20, 2019). "With 'The Water Dancer,' Ta-Nehisi Coates Makes His Fiction Debut" . The New York Times . Retrieved October 1, 2019.
  13. "The Water Dancer by Ta-Nehisi Coates". Kirkus Reviews . July 1, 2019. Retrieved October 2, 2019.
  14. Grady, Constance (September 24, 2019). "Ta-Nehisi Coates is a great writer. His new book The Water Dancer is not a great novel". Vox . Retrieved October 2, 2019.
  15. Ashrafi, Shah Tazrian (April 16, 2021). "To drown is to be free in Ta-Nehisi Coates's 'The Water Dancer'". The Daily Star . Archived from the original on June 24, 2021. Retrieved 2021-06-20.