Author | Anita Shreve |
---|---|
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Genre | Historical fiction |
Publisher | Little, Brown and Company |
Publication date | 1997 |
Media type | Print (Hardcover and Paperback) |
Pages | 256 pp |
ISBN | 0-316-78997-6 |
OCLC | 34633469 |
813/.54 20 | |
LC Class | PS3569.H7385 W43 1997 |
The Weight of Water is a 1997 bestselling novel by Anita Shreve. Half of the novel is historical fiction based on the Smuttynose Island murders, which took place in 1873.
The book was adapted for a film of the same name, directed by Kathryn Bigelow and released in 2000.
In March 1873, two Norwegian-born women who lived on the desolate Smuttynose Island, one of the Isles of Shoals off the coast of Maine and New Hampshire, were brutally murdered. Maren Hontvedt, a sister of one of the victims, survived by hiding in a sea cave until dawn. The murdered women were her older sister Karen Christensen and Anethe Christensen, their sister-in-law. A man named Louis Wagner was tried and hanged for their murders, mostly on circumstantial evidence. His conviction has been argued about, as some people think he could not have done it.
More than a century later, Jean Janes, a magazine photographer working on a photo essay about the murders, returns to the Isles with her husband Thomas and five-year-old daughter. Thomas is an award-winning poet who has been struggling with alcoholism and not writing much. Hoping to have a small vacation, they travel on a boat skippered by Thomas' brother Rich, who has brought along his girlfriend Adaline.
Jean becomes immersed in the details of the 19th-century murders after discovering a purported memoir of Maren in the library. Gradually, tensions increase among the group on the sloop, with unspoken emotions surfacing. Jean begins to suspect an affair between Thomas and Adaline.
The novel is split into two parts: the present day, told from Jean's point of view and in the present tense; and 1873, told in first person from Maren's point of view, her "memoir".
Kirkus Reviews wrote "...Shreve (Resistance, 1995, etc.) deftly juxtaposes a strained modern marriage and a century-old double murder". [1]
A film adaptation of the same name, directed by Kathryn Bigelow, was released in 2002. It starred Sean Penn, Catherine McCormack, Elizabeth Hurley and Sarah Polley.
Kathryn Ann Bigelow is an American filmmaker. Covering a wide range of genres, her films include Near Dark (1987), Point Break (1991), Strange Days (1995), K-19: The Widowmaker (2002), The Hurt Locker (2008), Zero Dark Thirty (2012), and Detroit (2017).
The Isles of Shoals are a group of small islands and tidal ledges situated approximately 6 miles (10 km) off the east coast of the United States, straddling the border of the states of Maine and New Hampshire.
Susan Shreve is an American novelist, memoirist, and children's book author. She has published fifteen novels, most recently More News Tomorrow (2019), and a memoir Warm Springs: Traces of a Childhood (2007). She has also published thirty books for children, most recently The Lovely Shoes (2011), and edited or co-edited five anthologies. Shreve co-founded the Master of Fine Arts (MFA) in Creative Writing program at George Mason University in 1980, where she teaches fiction writing. She is the co-founder and the former chairman of the PEN/Faulkner Foundation. She lives in Washington, D.C.
Strange Days is a 1995 American cyberpunk thriller film directed by Kathryn Bigelow, written by James Cameron and Jay Cocks, and produced by Cameron and Steven-Charles Jaffe. It stars Ralph Fiennes, Angela Bassett, Juliette Lewis and Tom Sizemore. Set in the last two days of 1999, the film follows the story of a black marketeer of recordings that allow a user to experience the recorder's memories and physical sensations as he attempts to uncover the truth behind the murder of a prostitute.
Anita Hale Shreve was an American writer, chiefly known for her novels. One of her first published stories, Past the Island, Drifting, was awarded an O. Henry Prize in 1976.
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Smuttynose Island is one of the Isles of Shoals, located 6 miles (10 km) off the coast of New Hampshire, but actually in the state of Maine, in the United States. It is part of the town of Kittery, in York County. It was named by fishermen, seeing the island at sea level and noticing how the profuse seaweed at one end looked like the "smutty nose" of some vast sea animal.
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The Weight of Water is a 2000 mystery thriller film based on Anita Shreve's 1997 novel The Weight of Water. Directed by Kathryn Bigelow, the film stars Elizabeth Hurley, Catherine McCormack, Sean Penn, Josh Lucas, Vinessa Shaw, Katrin Cartlidge, Ciaran Hinds, and Sarah Polley. The film was shot in Nova Scotia. Although it premiered at the 2000 Toronto International Film Festival, it was not released in the United States until November 1, 2002.
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Louis H. F. Wagner was a German-born fisherman who arrived in the United States around 1865. Eight years later he was accused of the axe murders of two Norwegian women, Anethe Matea Christensen and Karen Christensen, on Smuttynose Island in the Isles of Shoals of Maine and New Hampshire. Later convicted of the March 6, 1873, crime, he was sentenced to be hanged. After a failed escape attempt, Wagner became the fourth to last person to be executed by the State of Maine.
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