To Heaven by Water: A Novel [Paperback]

Justin Cartwright (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 4, 2009

With the subtlety of Ian McEwan and the pathos of Kazuo Ishiguro, a wise, compassionate novel about age, loss, and moving forward. As he moves toward old age, David Cross finds himself living an unexpected new life. Having lost his wife, Nancy, to illness, and retired from his job as a prominent television news anchor, David is working out in the gym and becoming very thin. His children, Ed and Lucy, embarking on careers and lives on their own, suspect him of being on the lookout for a new woman. He cannot tell them that he is, in some ways, happier than he was before Nancy died.

As Ed and his dancer wife, Rosalie, struggle to conceive a child and Lucy seeks refuge from a chaotic ex-boyfriend, all of them are now forced to face their lives without the woman who was the center of the family. With their personal lives spinning out of control, they each must find a way to hold firm. And when David goes to see his estranged brother deep in the African desert, he will come to an unexpected, meaningful, and life-affirming epiphany.

Filled with rich characterization, warm humor, and shocking surprises, To Heaven by Water is a masterwork of great subtlety, a moving novel from a keen observer of life as we live it now.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Praise for the work of Justin Cartwright: 'A quiet masterpiece' Los Angeles Times 'Cartwright makes the reader pause, gasp and wonder. This is what great fiction should do, and it certainly does here' Eileen Battersby, Irish Times 'It is simply a great, many-layered novel that does exactly what art should do: bring coherence to life' Boston Globe --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

About the Author

Justin Cartwright's novels include In Every Face I Meet, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize; the acclaimed bestseller The Promise of Happiness; White Lightning, which was shortlisted for the Whitbread Novel Award; and the 1999 Whitbread winner Leading the Cheers. H is most recent novel, The Song Before It Is Sung, was published by Bloomsbury in 2007 and won the prestigious London Jewish Council Award for Literature. He was born in South Africa and now lives in London.

Product Details

• Paperback: 305 pages
• Publisher: Bloomsbury USA; Original edition (August 4, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1596916214
• ISBN-13: 978-1596916210
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,123,240 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Magnificent, August 10, 2009

By 

John Fraser "John" (St Albans) - See all my reviews

This review is from: To Heaven by Water: A Novel (Paperback)

I should confess to being a bit of a fan of Cartwright's and particularly of his last novel, the Song Before it is Sung. But while that was an audacious historical novel set around 30s Oxford and the Stauffenberg plot, a glance at the back cover of his new book showed a far less ambitious novel fixated on domestic London life. I wasn't sure what to expect...

But in a way, it's the everyday setting that makes it all the greater an achievement. A smaller canvas, maybe, but there are no tricks and conceits to carry the writing along - it has to survive line by line without dramatic historical events to help it on its way. And Cartwright is masterful at it. He is one of those writers whom one reads while constantly thinking aloud to oneself: how can he know this about people - about relationships - about life? How can he be so perceptive? There's a wisdom to the writing, often manifested in a beautiful and sometimes deceptively simple turn of phrase, that gets to immediately to the point: be it describing Gordon Brown perfectly in three words, or explaining the guilt one might feel after the death of a loved one. It seems to me the most emotionally charged of his novels and it also includes, which i wasn't expecting, some jaw-droppingly dramatic moments which really keep the pages turning.

In summary, a wonderful book that I will treasure.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars "All I can tell you Lucy is that you and Ed are everything to me", September 17, 2009

By 

Michael Leonard "MikeonAlpha" (Silver Lake, Los Angeles, USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: To Heaven by Water: A Novel (Paperback)

Set in inner London this marvelously erudite contemporary novel is about the upper-middle class Cross family and how they manage to tackle life with its infinite numbers of expressions, beliefs and delusions. Set against the backdrop of a newly appointed Prime Minister Gordon Brown, "who seems to be like something discovered when a glacier moves," Cartwright's new and dynamic London is pulsating with energy and a sort of fluid and hip sexuality. Certainly retired television presenter David Cross is in thrall to it, just as comfortable wandering the streets of Soho as he is living in the family home in Camden. Ed, David's son thinks his father is encumbered with his past, "a Bactrian camel, staggering along laden with all sorts of goods nobody needs or wants anymore." For David, however this is a time of renewal. His wife Nancy, only recently passed on from cancer, has enabled David to begin a new lease of life. Fanatically training at the local gym, he's become super thin and now sports trendy African bangles his brother has sent him from Africa. In his own mind he is more himself than he has been for nearly forty years. One night at the Royal ballet with Ed and his daughter-in-law Rosalie, he sees the gorgeous vision of Darcey Bussell in her farewell performance, the ballerina turning David trance-like. It is this vision that frames David`s emotional state and unfurls many of the assumptions that he has made about his marriage to Nancy and about his children.

In alternative chapters Cartwright unfurls the desires, needs and insecurities of David, Ed, Rosalie and David's daughter the twenty-six year old Lucy who a specialist in roman coinage who currently feels wary and abandoned and worries about being alone and isolated after breaking up her boyfriend Josh, with his penchant towards abusive behaviour. Rosalie, an ex-ballet dancer, almost "Darcy Bussell en pointe" in her looks is a woman who is gravity defying, desperate to become pregnant. Most shockingly, Ed refuses to accept the reality of his situation. While Rosalie has a very clear idea of how her life should proceed, constricting the poor Ed feels constricted, falling into a sexy affair with Alice, a girl from his office. Alice meet for quick drink. Buoyed by all of the sexual possibilities, sex with Alice is uncomplicated and fun, while sex with Rosalie has become a sort of marital rite, even an obligation.

Meanwhile, David experiences a familiar comfort, desperate to spend his remaining years in some way free of the material. He gives both his son and daughter a declaration of unequivocal love. Thus far in his life, he has successfully been comforted with his past, although his wife Nancy had an affair, she was more than willing to give him and her children support, to protect them all from the evils of the world. The generational wheel turns very quickly, even as the author includes a back-story of David's recollection of life in 1966 where he was never as happy as that summer in Rome and his friendship with Richard Burton "his eyes glistening with anguish." Along with his best friend Adam, this was the summer that formed their lives, where he too would be a professional actor and live in a vivid charged world. But everything gets tangled up in his doomed affair with a young blonde-headed Jenni who "attaches to him with the sensuous, slightly sinister insistence of a python."

But life is never as ordered as we would like. Certainly to David, the vortex effect of mortality all seems arbitrary and unfathomable. Meanwhile, the poor Rosalie suffers in silence, her childlessness almost biblical to her, with Ed aching to free himself the shackles of IVF, "this little place with its excruciatingly limited horizons and its banality." Then there's Lucy who is concerned that her father is going to sell their family home in Camden which she still thinks of the house as home. Lucy feels she should have been consulted before it was sold and sees this as a betrayal by her father. All have a manic edge an manic edge to their lives and a hint of desperation and all are craving the human texture, and are all part of its rich tapestry.

Then the revelations and the small, intimate betrayals come thick and fast and their lives are at once accelerated into chaos, but Cartwright handles it all with literary panache and in a characteristically British way, demonstrating a retributive cost. Full of meaningless provocations and loaded exchanges, these people are smart and educated and are quick to judge others. Besides there differences, there's this constant sense the Cross family are of one flesh with a shared understanding. The petty judgments and surprising treacheries thrust this novel forward to its conclusion and the family inevitably close rank against the mendacity of the outside world. The author's beloved London plays it's own part, a city layered in a kind of savvy and irony and tradition, and also that of a changing England with its immigration, multiculturalism and its blurred class distinctions. This novel abounds with power and zest, the Cross family's life and David's own choices deeply reflective of Cartwright's own rigorously intellectual debate on the struggles of modern life and the search for some sort of spiritual enlightenment in the contemporary age. Mike Leonard September 09.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Books set in England, May 24, 2010

By 

Susan V. Milliken "Mystery Lover" (Concord, NH) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: To Heaven by Water: A Novel (Paperback)

This book was interesting for it's family dynamics and friendship relationships. There was a lot of swearing and "bad" language that seemed unnecessary in the context of the story. The part that takes place in Africa is interesting, but a bit disjointed. Altogether, I really didn't enjoy this book very much.