Customer Reviews

Water Dogs: A Novel

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Maine, in the winter. It's not exactly the happy vacationland we associate with the state during the sunny and warm months, so all the more reason to set a novel in the light-challenged snow of January or February. And light really is noteworthy here, because this brilliant first novel by Lewis Robinson, "Water Dogs", is presented in muted hues. That, in itself, helps the characters rise to passion.

Those pesky twenty-somethings are growing up and with it comes paintball tournaments, early adult love, reflections of adolescence and, yes, intrigue. Robinson deftly splays his characters across sofas, beds and time and the result is as crisp a novel as the snow undertow. The story unfolds neatly, and his narrative always runs in a smooth fashion.

"Water Dogs" is not to be read on the beach. It's a fireplace and blizzard type of book, and one I highly recommend. This is my first introduction to Lewis Robinson and I hope to read more of his works.

A favorable review in the New York Times Review of Books led me to read this novel. It is hard to determine how, but Lewis Robinson puts you in the run down home and in the Maine woods and bays in the dreary Maine winter. Reading this novel, you can see the snow falling and put on a sweater to warm yourself in a house with the thermostat set no higher than sixty. The mystery of the disappearance of a young man during a fierce paintball contest is thoroughly engrossing. Robinson's character development and plot pacing make this a worthwhile book. While it is a page turner, it also has depth and is a cut above the mass market paperbacks you buy at the airport.

The book revolves around the lives of a family of twenty-somethings and their friends. While you find yourself wishing they'd get some direciton in life, you also find yourself there with them. Robinson puts you in their world and gets you inside their heads and hearts.

This book is art and fine literature. I hope we see more from this author. This is his first novel. He had previously published a collection of short stories.

Everyone who reviews this book seems to have some connection with Maine so I might as well say mine. We own a home in central Maine and have vacationed there for over thirty years. We are "from away." My daughter is a Bowdoin graduate, who coincidentally worked in animal shelters in town and got to know a fair number of local people while studying there. She and her fiance, also a Bowdoin graduate whose family now makes theiir home in the vicinity found the book captivating.

The book is moody and believable and a fine mystery. You will find yourself wanting to get back to it when you put it down. You will also get the sense that you reading something worthwhile.

Water Dogs by Lewis Robinson, his first novel following his very successful collection of short stories has all of the ingredients for success. It is beautifully written. Beyond that, the suspense holds a reader's interest, building carefully to a remarkable and believable conclusion. The page by page development of the main characters reveals Robinson's grasp of the subtleties of family, especially sibling relationships, young love and an appreciation of nature in its most awesome features. Robinson reveals himself to be an accomplished writer who is to be watched for further, even more mature work. New Englanders, and especially visitors to Maine will find it an especially good read.

The characters in Water Dogs move through the snow, taking unexpected and unhurried turns, but there's never a moment that the reader isn't fully awake and engaged. There's a kindness and patience that Lewis Robinson shows towards his characters so that as the reader--I wanted desperately to know what's going to happen and still to take it slowly, to savor the ride. Just the quality of the writing is plenty, but there's such a compelling story and the love you feel for these Maine folks that live on past the book.

I was a big fan of Robinson's first effort, Officer Friendly. I'm sorry I can't say the same about Water Dogs. The characters are thin, unremarkable, and the plot is serviceable at best. Midway through, I found myself asking "Who cares?--a death knell for the reading experience. Still, I think Robinson has the stuff of a fine writer. I just wish he would stop holding back.

Understated is nice; boring is not.

This book is so beautifully written that I wanted to read it slowly and savor every moment. But the suspense drove me on; I wanted to learn what happened to these people I came to care so much about.
Mary Ann Murphy

This book was such a good read. For me the brilliance was in the details. For example. my above review title is a book which the protagonist sees on a bedside table, giving the reader an amusing sense of the occupant of the room. Robinson then goes on to note all the books down the hall in his girlfriend's room so we are able to fill in many of the blanks as to who she really is. Starkly portrayed with both compassion, warmth and humor are the complications of local life in Maine (or anywhere) in the cold, dark times. Water Dogs is shortish, pithy and wonderful. I loved it.

In the late 19th century a group of writers, known as "local colorists," sought to portray the lives of New England rural folk for city dwellers, and chief among them was the Maine author Sarah Orne Jewett. In his novel "Water Dogs," Maine author Lewis Robinson reveals that he too is a local colorist, intent on portraying life in Maine, albeit an updated version, for people "from away." The novel refers regularly to particular places in Maine, some of them real, some not. An inhabitant of midcoast Maine will easily recognize such landmarks as Brunswick's Parkview Adventist Hospital, the cobblestones of the Old Port in Portland, and "Tavis Falls," a generic depressed Maine mill town.

In addition to its preoccupation with geography, "Water Dogs" contains a series of Maine sketches: a winter paintball game; some incidents involving freezing water and hypothermia; an island shack used by urchin divers; a religious proselytizer holding forth in a grange hall, among others. And, as the cover makes clear, the story takes place in the winter, when it snows and snows. These Maine vignettes and the mantra of place names do not, however quite make a novel. The narrative, a mystery complete with false leads and an unlovable suspect, is thinly plotted. Its main characters are three twenty-something siblings living on their own in the family home, a decidedly un-Hawthorne-like "Manse." Their mother seems to keep her distance and their father, known as "Coach" and an evident role model for Littlefield, his unpleasant eldest child, is dead. We know we're not in Sarah Orne Jewett territory because the characters call each other "dude," have a lot of time of their hands, and drink prodigious quantities of the local beer. They also talk too much, and the novel's dialogue is often banal.

The novel becomes briefly interesting when it veers inland to Tavis Falls for some Franco-American working class local color, but it doesn't stay there long, maybe because that's Carolyn Chute territory. While they're in Tavis Falls, Bennie, the protagonist, and his (Bowdoin-educated, we're told) girlfriend take a booth in the local greasy spoon. No one talks to them. The waitress speaks in monosyllables as Bennie natters on about pie choices. "'The pecan pie any good?' Bennie asked. `Nope,' said the waitress.'" Maybe Bennie should take the hint. Sometimes taciturn is good.