THE KNOWLEDGE OF WATER [Import] [Paperback]

SARAH SMITH (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 480 pages
• Publisher: ARROW BOOKS LTD (2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0099410834
• ISBN-13: 978-0099410836
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.1 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #9,305,912 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I'd take this book to a desert island, October 3, 2000

By 

"wilfulcait" (Bowie, MD United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Knowledge of Water (Mass Market Paperback)

I just finished Sarah Smith's The Knowledge of Water. Absolutely incredible, with passages at the end that are worth reading, and reading again, and then stopping to savor. It's a book about passion, and in particular the passion for one's art, one's calling, and how people honor that passion in the context of a whole life -- not "fit it in," because passion cannot be accommodated, does not fit comfortably around the edges -- and it's about how expectations twist people's lives. And it's about women, their expectations for themselves, men's expectations, about the choices they make, about what it does to a person to give up her truth in order to do the laundry and buy the groceries and raise the children.

There are no bad guys in this book. There is a pianist who loves a man, but who for days leading up to her first public performance forgets to write to him. There is a doctor who gets caught up in saving his hospital and forgets that he has left his bride-to-be in a cheap hotel. There is, yes, a wedding that comes off in a paragraph, because the story is not about weddings but about marriage, of which the wedding is only an incidental part. There are discussions of love and risk and art and truth and forgery. I think -- although I won't know for years -- that this book will bear reading and re-reading, and may be one of the ten books that I would take to a desert island.

I was reading this book in Penn Station, waiting for a train, and had to sit down on the floor because I was so far into the book that I was beginning to lose track of where I was.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Engrossing, thought-provoking, and a good read., December 31, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: The Knowledge of Water (Hardcover)

I found The Knowledge of Water to be an absorbing blend of mystery, period history and romance; but before you write it off as a bodice-ripper, let me add that the characters are well developed and believable, and the thorny women's issues are thought-provoking and timely. The result is good, entertaining brain food.
My only regret is that I read this volume before the first one in the series, The Vanished Child. Although I plan to go back and read it now, I fear Knowledge of Water gives away too many of the surprises from the first novel.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Forgeries, January 30, 2006

By 

Linda Pagliuco "katknit" (CT, United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: The Knowledge of Water (Mass Market Paperback)

The Knowledge of Water is the second part of a trilogy, and meant to be read as such. It's interesting to see how an author can take the same set of characters, add some new ones, and further develop their personas around a completely different plot. The Vanished Child was about guilt and survival. Knowledge is about forgeries, layer upon layer of them. On the surface is the question of artistic dishonesty. Who is the forger of the works of the great Mallais? Slightly deeper is the question of identity, and to what extent an individual should be willing to compromise him/herself in the name of love. The broadest question is that of the rights and abilities of early 20th century women - who loses more by suppressing their talents, the women themselves or society as a whole? Who has the right to decide their fates?

Swirling around Reisden and Perdita as they struggle with these issues are the rapidly rising waters of the Seine and the intentions of a killer.

As other reviewers have noted, the center of the story does slow to a crawl as the various characters work their way through their choices to come to ultimate decisions. Patience is rewarded, however, by surprises in the final 20 pages.

On to the third and final volume of this series.....