The Disobedience of Water: Stories and Novellas [Hardcover]

Sena Jeter Naslund (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 1, 1999

From the acclaimed author of Sherlock in Love (Godine, 1994) comes a new collection of finely perceived, beautifully crafted stories evoking all the passion and heartbreak, intelligence and unapologetic humanity of Naslund's earlier work.

The stories in The Disobedience of Water explore the boundary conditions between self and others. Social realities racial and ethnic tensions, sexual harassment and abuse provide the backdrop for struggles that ultimately take place in the heart. While Naslund's characters accept that their inner tides cannot be brought into obedience, sometimes, in the act of recognizing the force of their own hopes, needs, and fears, they learn to navigate those waters.

These are, in the broadest sense of the word, love stories: of finding, discovering, and admitting love and forgiveness, whether a daughter s love for her father in the face of perceived betrayal, or a wife s love of her friend and her husband in the half-light of infidelity. In the long title story, which takes the form of a painfully revealing letter to an almost-lover, the narrator winds through swirling eddies of memory and language to deliver her present and past lives, and the loves that have informed them. Written with a masterful sureness of hand and heart, The Disobedience of Water will set a new milestone in Sena Jeter Naslund's career as one of our most rewarding new writers of fiction.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The eight lyrical stories and novellas in this collection should buoy Naslund's reputation, already riding high for her 1994 novel Sherlock in Love, even higher. Plot matters less to Naslund than voice, sympathy, setting and tone: hospitable readers will be won over right off by "Madame Charpentier and Her Children," which describes a woman beginning anew after a friend's suicide: "It was autumn and we had already gone back to teaching, but the grip of the university was still loose and the feeling of summer cradled us." In "The Shape You're In," a 25-year-old artist flees Atlanta and her disturbed ex-lover to what she hopes will be a new life in Montana. Sarah discovers, however, that her Southern habits have followed her west: "Like many Southerners, she knows there is a kind of protection in politeness. It has a kind of beauty of its own, too." The title story draws its power from an unconsummated love affair whose memory hangs as powerfully as any unconsummated relationship over the narrator, a single mother. She concludes, "I will know one thing about the heartAthat it can break endlessly." Almost every entry here finds fluidity and confidence in its prose. In Naslund's tightly observed worlds, quiet betrayals resonate long after their occasions have faded. (Apr.) FYI: Naslund's next novel, Ahab's Wife, is due out in the fall.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Naslund's Sherlock in Love (LJ 9/15/93) was an elegant riff on the Holmesian theme, but though these stories are elegant, too, one wouldn't necessarily expect them as a follow-up. They're a bit quirkier, a bit more modern, but just as satisfying in their own way. Naslund's protagonists are often in the process of being redefined, sometimes by themselves, more often by outsiders. The little girl named Tink in "I Am Born," who has observed her doctor father helping a young black girl give birth, is aghast when the new mother wants to name her child Tink, too, andAbetrayal of betrayalsAher father not only agrees but expects her to be grateful. In "The Shape You're In," a young woman flees a certifiably insane boyfriend for a job teaching in the wilds of Montana, where she must contend with wild animals of both the four-footed and two-footed male variety. Some of these stories don't quite coalesce, but on the whole this is satisfying reading.ABarbara Hoffert, "Library Journal"
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 212 pages
• Publisher: David R Godine; 1 edition (March 1, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1567920713
• ISBN-13: 978-1567920710
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.8 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,294,877 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Sena Jeter Naslund is the author of the novels Four Spirits and Abundance, A Novel of Marie Antoinette and a short story collection, The Disobedience of Water. A native of Birmingham, Alabama, she is a winner of the Harper Lee Award; Distinguished Teaching Professor and Writer in Residence at the University of Louisville; director of the Spalding University brief-residency Master of Fine Arts in Writing program; former poet laureate of Kentucky; and editor of The Louisville Review and the Fleur-de-Lis Press.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

31 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A collection that pushes and pulls, April 27, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Disobedience of Water: Stories and Novellas (Hardcover)

The stories contained in _The Disobedience of Water_ are about emotions, how they control us and shape our lives. The characters Naslund creates are rich with conflicting feelings about faith, love, and friendship. They're at once kind and cruel, moral and amoral, as these waves of emotion build and break. Naslund's courageous honesty will change the way you think about love, life, and art, while her beautiful, Southern style will leave you waiting for more.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Disturbing, provocatively interesting, February 18, 2002

By 

Randy Haukom (Minneapolis, MN United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Disobedience of Water: Stories and Novellas (Paperback)

While almost the entire book left me wondering why, as I sifted through stories of dysfunction and melancholy, I kept reading and at times marveled at the range of experiences Sena Jeter Naslund's characters encountered. The final story, Disobedience of Water, made me feel so much better about the book. A strong ending for what seemed a troublesome ensemble of stories. I recommend this book, with caution, as some may find some content questionable or uncomfortable. But it will broaden your horizons!

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Physical experience, March 20, 2007

By 

Marsha Raymond (St. Petersburg, Florida USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Disobedience of Water: Stories and Novellas (Paperback)

Each of these short stories leave you with a sense of the physical, whether good or ill (and even the disturbing moments are memorable). You cannot be lifted by these offerings and set down anything other than full. Sometimes I felt as though I was peeping through a keyhole at something so personal that I could almost hear my (dead) mother warn me to "mind my own business"... and other times I could swear that I felt the touch of soft, mountain breezes and knew I was safe in my place as reader. If you loved Ahab's Wife and Naslund's way of stringing words together, read this book... or better yet, read it twice to make sure nothing was lost. Beautiful.