Customer Reviews

Three Women At The Water's Edge

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Nancy Thayer brings to life three women, each at an important turning point in her life. Each faces a life-changing situation that will cause her to utilize her strongest survival skills as she seeks to find happiness and satisfaction amongst the debris.

At the heart of this story is twenty-nine year old Daisy, the devoted mother of two young children and pregnant with her third child. She devotes her days to making her young children happy, but her husband finds her growing frumpy and desserts her for a younger, professional woman unencumbered by diapers, formulas, and Captain Kangaroo. Daisy's daily travails as she struggles with rejection, single-parenthood, and reduced income are brutally true-to-life for anyone who has been there, done that. And her troubles, like a stone thrown into a river, cause ripples in the lives of her mother and her younger sister.

Her mother, Margaret, is approaching 50 and wants to enjoy the freedom of an empty nest. After a lifetime of being the perfect cookie-baking, nose-wiping mother, she walks out of her seemingly-happy marriage to seek her own identity. She is eager to grasp glamour and the pleasures of a self-centered life as opposed to being everyone's shoulder to cry on as she has always been.

Daisy's younger sister, twenty-four year old Dale, is feeling the joy of first love with its intense longing and lust accompanied by her deep-seated fear of what happens when love ends.

Each woman must take the plunge into unchartered waters and find a way to live that will be rewarding. Nancy Thayer writes with such frankness and honesty that you will stand up and cheer at some parts and be ready to throw dishes at the wall in other parts. But most of all, you will be touched by three women who take life as it comes with its unexpected slaps in the face and its unasked for detours. Will they succeed? Watch them as they live each mind-boggling day and decide individually what makes a life really worth living.

I just wanted to write in and say that I bought this book years ago and loved it and I loaned it to my sister. I never got it back. I bought another copy of the book and I eventually loaned it to a friend. She "conveniently" lost it too. I think she really just loved it and didn't want to part with it, just like my sister. I am now buying my third copy because I can't bear to be without it either.

I read Three Women at the Water's Edge for the first time in my 30's, and have read it many times since. At 53, I have just finished reading it again. Over the years I've been able to identify with Dale, Daisy, and now Margaret. Nancy Thayer has been able to capture the intensity of women's feelings and emotions at three different life stages with an accuracy that is truly incredible. Her descriptions of the sensual pleasures in a woman's life are perfect, from the overwhelming intensity of first love, to the feel and smell of holding a newborn baby, to the calm and inner peace of a woman sitting alone in front of the fireplace in the first home she's ever owned by herself. I've read every book Nancy Thayer has written, and I've loved them all, but this one is the masterpiece. Every woman should have the experience of reading this book.

When I first discovered Three Women at the Water's Edge my children were small and I related exactly to the character with the three small children. My friend and I could not get over how Nancy Thayer accessed exactly the feeling of overwhelming love, frustration, isolation, and responsibility of being with three small children each day, every day. The smallest physical details, every feeling, were exactly on target. Years later I reread this book and related to the mother, starting a new life of her own and wanting to be there for her daughters but not wanting to get overwhelmingly involved in the responsibility of their personal lives again. It just amazed me that the author could so target the emotions of a woman at different stages in her life. Time and again I would think, "Yes, this is how I feel." I'm so grateful for authors who can put my hopes, fears, inadequacies, and strengths into words.

I bought this book on a recommendation from a friend and while it wasn't quite what I expected it to be, it was still very good reading. If you like to read books on relationships between mother and daughter and sisters, this is a good book to pick up. There is Margaret, the mother who has discovered new-found freedom at the age of 48 (which is very young!), her two daughters, Daisy and Dale. Daisy, pregnant with her third child, goes through a divorce that literally shakes her world upside down. Dale, in the throes of first true love, makes a tenative step into making a committment ... though she is afraid that her mother and sister's divorces may cause her to go down the same stumbling road later on in life.

It is a wonderfully written book full of insightful thoughts and discoveries. Margaret discovers that she could no longer be like the woman she was in Liberty, Iowa, where she dispensed free advice along with cookies and milk. Now, she's preserving the self she has disovered in the year since her divorce and move to Vancouver, Canada. She really embodies the joy and freedom of being one's own self, not responsible to any one else. It's a grand feeling ... it's something that I've discovered through my own divorce. The only difference is, Margaret feels no need to get married again, whereas I did get married.

Daisy is the one character that has come a long ways since the beginning of the book. Her trials and tribulations as a young and single mother are too vividly descriptive and true. But she comes through it and discovers a whole new personality that she didn't have before. She really gave new meaning to the word "sacrifice." Out of all the characters, she is my favorite.

Dale ~~ she is in the midst of the passionate throes of true love and at the same time, she's afraid to make a committment to her lover, Hank, because she's afraid she's doomed to repeat her mother and sister's mistake. Then she realizes that letting go of her fear and stepping through the changes in life really enhances her love.

This is an unique book ~~ one for mothers and daughters to share. I enjoyed it though it wasn't what I quite expected. However, I read it and wouldn't put it down till the last page was turned. I don't think others will regret reading it too.

2-15-02

I had to literally force myself to put this book down in order to get any work done on the weekend I bonded with it. All three women spoke to me in their unique ways - I understood each one, sympathized with each one, and felt that I was living inside the skin of each one. Nancy Thayer is my favorite author - she is so detailed in her descriptions of her characters' lives and she knows exactly how women feel in all kinds of live's situations. I lived inside each woman in this book as their stories unfolded - it was wonderful and I have reread it many times. I have also recommended it and lent it to my daughters and friends - they have all enjoyed it and we have had many good discussions surrounding Daisy, Dale and Margaret. This is not a book to be missed

I finished reading Three Women this morning and felt obliged to write my review right away.
This novel is written for women and many will read it and be able to identify with the trials of marriage, child rearing, broken relationships and the mental suffering and unhappiness we all go through.
Centered around the Wallace family, we are introduced to Margaret, the mother who in her late forties has come to grips with the person she wants to be, and makes herself through lots of courage, into that very person. We meet Daisy the housewife and her older daughter whose life is on the verge of collapse when her career-oriented husband leaves her for a more sophisticated woman as she tries to fend for herself with two young children and a baby on the way. Then we are led into the life of Dale a teacher......Margaret's younger daughter who is unmarried so far but very much in love with a fellow-teacher and so afraid of being burnt as she watches on at her sister's fate.
This is a good book for all women regardless of age, as in each of these three women, there is something we can all take note of, and learn from their experiences. I recommend this as a nice Mother's Day gift.

Nutface
April 5th, 2002

I discovered Nancy Thayer when her novels were being condensed for "Redbook Magazine," when that publication was still featuring outstanding fiction for women in every issue. I was immediately struck by her narrative voice, and the way she dealt with issues that face many women over the course of a lifetime: love, sex, marriage, children, divorce, and death.

"Three Women at the Water's Edge" can almost be seen as an work based on the archetypal stages of women: mother, maiden, and crone, but with a twist. Margaret, the mother, has been given a second change at life -- she divorced her plodding, old-fashioned, and frankly dull husband, physically transformed herself from "Mrs. Santa Claus" to a glamorous middle-aged woman, and moved to Vancouver from the states. In the process Margaret bewilders her oldest daughter, Daisy, and eventually charms her youngest daughter, Dale, who was always "daddy's girl."

Daisy is dumpted by her materialist YUPPY husband (the book was written in 1980) when she is pregnant with their second child. Daisy is a woman who took to marriage and motherhood like the proverbial duck to water..like many of Thayer's heroines, she passionately loves her children, probably more than she loves her husband, but his betrayal of her is shattering. Overweight when she got pregnant with her latest child, she buys into her husband's assessment that she is now dull and unattractive. The youngest daughter, Dale, is a teacher who goes to teach in a faraway town & falls in love with a local man. The divorces in her immediate family keep her unable to commit to a man who is truly her soul mate.

Thayer skillfully relates the stories of the three women, and how each works out her own destiny by accepting that a new life is possible and then acting upon it. Dale's story is perhaps the most predictable, and Margaret's the least so, with Daisy's somewhere in between. None of the characters are cliches, not even Daisy's rather miserable husband.

I wish that Ms Thayer had continued to write books in this same vein. "Stepping," "Morning," "Bodies and Souls," and "Nell" are all books in the tradition of "Three Women at the Water's Edge." Her later works have not IMO been quite as satisfactory, as they lack the narrative power & depth of the earlier books. Ms Thayer has long deserved to be more than a mid-list author --and it is possible that her later works have been an attempt to make her more mainstream. I for one hope she returns to her roots!

This is a wonderful book about family relationship, change, courage and love. Also very truthful, I can just see these women, I can relate to them, I feel like one of them. I read this book more than once. I am an immigrant, reading is not easy for me, however the charachters are international.

There are plenty of plot synopses and recommendations here, all of them accurate and helpful, but I would like to point out how hilarious this book is. The three women are self-aware, and as they struggle with transformation, they do it with an eye to how ridiculous they might appear. There is something so touching in their dignity and bravery and intelligence. I think I first read this book fifteen years ago, and continue to recommend it to friends, and I am delighted that it's still in print.