Customer Reviews

Watermark

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

A friend who helped out with some of the judging tasks for thepast year's Lambda Rising Awards told me this book missed being afinalist by the narrowest of margins. I was frankly skeptical -- Ithought it was some sort of Lifetime Achievement bias. After all, Ms. Kallmaker is prolific and her work is beloved.

I shot my mouth off too much and my friend insisted I read the book. It knocked me for a loop. It had been a very long time since a book made me cry, not once, but over and over. From the first page of Rayann's inner dialogue I couldn't help but wonder what if it was me having to watch my beloved partner die by inches? What if it was me?

The emotional power of this book is raw and unvarnished and yet not mawkish or melodramatic. To balance the moving yet depressing passages in Rayann's life we are introduced to Teresa, who encounters Rayann in the midst of her grieving process -- the angry stage.

Teresa is young and untouched by the deeper conflicts of life. Life just hasn't started happening to her yet. She encounters this complete witch of a woman and for the first time realizes that life is unfair and can be unkind. Her life veers in a new direction because of the encounter.

The two meet again and two very different experiences are woven into a single story. Teresa falls in love with the suffering Rayann, but doesn't know why Rayann is suffering. Rayann is still grieving and yet has to acknowledge a sexual attraction that seems like infidelity.

Even at the end, we're not sure these two women will live happily ever after. They've both been through too much and too recently. Rayann is in the final stage of grief - acceptance. She hears her lover's voice less and less and she loves Teresa more and more. Even then she still isn't sure she will ever love anyone the way she loved her dead partner. Teresa falls in love again with the newly healing Rayann, a different person than she has known. She struggles to deal with feeling like second best.

I simply did not expect this kind of writing and moving prose in a romance novel. Watermark transcends the genre and would have deserved a Lammy nomination...

I can't recommend this book enough to women who want not just a good read with passion and humor, but also want to read with their minds and experience what Ms Kallmaker so beautifully portrays.

I still wonder, having finished the book several months ago, what if it were me?

Forget thinking about this book as a romance -- it isn't. It's a story of a young woman being blindsided by an older woman's grief, and an older woman grieving for her dying partner.

It's an outstanding story with only a chance at happiness by the end. The older woman is still fighting guilt every time she enjoys anything -- especially sex. The younger woman is only beginning to understand what she has never experienced. They both are too frightened to believe they have a future.

This novel floored me. And it helped me. I've been that older woman and that younger woman.

If you want to enjoy this book, change your expectations. I read it when it first came out and was disappointed -- I wanted a nice, neat, happy romance. That is not what this book is about. There is a romance, but it ends ambiguously. The primary theme of this book is grief and moving on. It's mostly a novel, not a romance. I read the followup short story in Kallmaker's Frosting on the Cake, and that's what made me re-read this book. With the right expectation I was blown away by how powerful the prose is and how incredibly moving many of the scenes are. The characters are slices right out of life and they are as complicated and flawed and heroic as any Kallmkaer has ever done. I am so glad I re-read this book. Now all I can say is BRAVA!

For long time fans of Touchwood, Watermark is a heartbreaker. It is a fine example of Kallmaker's skill at characterization that we want to read the story of Lousia's death and RayAnne's grief and survival.

Kallmaker's writing continues to improve and Watermark is no exception in that trend. The apparent inconsistancy in Tucker's age orginates in Touchwood which was Kallmaker's second novel. His age changes inappropriately to the six months of that story with a reference toward the end of his being ten. So his age in the Watermark is correct to his first age stated in Touchwood.

In fairness to the readers who don't quite like Louisa in Touchwood, note that we don't hear Louisa's thoughts or know her feelings except from what she finally tells Ray. --I've often wondered if Kallmaker didn't give inner voice to Lou because she didn't feel comfortable speaking for a woman 20 yrs her senior.-- I think all of Kallmaker's books since Touchwood include more of the internal view of both lead characters --like Watermark did with Teresa and Rayanne-- If Louisa seems less rich a character for some readers, it might be more for this reason.

Each of Kallmaker's romances manages to address different elements of life in the lesbian nation. I've not found a Kallmaker book that isn't worth buying and reading. The idea of a sequel to a book about falling in love is always problematic because there must be some conflict or problem to make a story. I grant you that part of me wishes that Louisa had lived at least another 12 years, well and happy and enjoying her relationship with Ray. It is interesting and even amusing to see how RayAnne has grown in the last ten years (a testament to her healthy relationship with Lou) and heart-warming to see Ray's old friends -- Judy and Dee-- are still together. The image of Louisa's Watermark on Ray is a very poignant one. L for Louisa, L for Lesbian ...

Keep writing Ms. Kallmaker

This book was so sad and I cried and cried. I thought about it for days afterward. Images from it haunted me and scared me. I help my girlfriend a little bit tighter and wondered what it would feel like on some ordinary day to get a phone call like the one that Rayann did.

But like Rayann, after time went by, I began to get past all the grief, and I realized that Terese is witty and smart, honest and rash, flawed and lovable. Very, very different from the first great love of Rayann's life. Like Rayann, it just took me some time to see it. Once I did, I fell for Terese in a big, big way.

This is an unusual romance novel, but ultimately it gave me what I always look for in a love story: belief that love is real and we all deserve to have it in our lives. That feeling is why I read romance novels.

This book was exactly what I needed when I read it. Coping with the loss of someone very close to me was wearing me down and a friend gave this book to me to read. I am a big romance reader, but did not get this one (by one of my favorite writers) because I thought it would be depressing. I could not believe at first how comforting it was to read and cry and have that gentle assurance that life goes on and there is hope, no matter how tenuous, for happiness in the end. Yes, this book was very different from other books by Karin Kallmaker, but I found the writing as powerful as anything she's ever done. This "romance" didn't stop at the heart; it got right down into a woman's soul.

Like other reviewers I was caught off guard by how serious and wrenching this "romance" from Karin Kallmaker was. Nevertheless, I think Iit is one of her finest books. Reading it made my partner and I discuss some very scary subjects, including how we want the other to go on if one of us died. These are important things to discuss and I am thankful to the author for writing this book. I don't want to imply that's it's a total downer -- it's entertaining, quite funny at times and emotionally draining, too.

I love Touchwood. I read it over and over. I was hoping there would be a sequel and when I found out what happens in Watermark I didn't want to like it. I thought it would be a depressing book, that I would really miss Louisa, but as I read I found Louisa in every painful moment. The measure of Rayann's grief is a tribute to the depth of the love they shared. Having just read Touchwood before Watermark, I found them consistent, by the way. I couldn't find Tucker's age in Touchwood given, but he first appears as a little boy peering between his father's legs. I took him for 4 or 5--especially when he plays Go Fish with Rayann later in the book. I missed Louisa, but I laughed with Teresa. It was an personality study. It was not what I expected from Kallmaker romance. It was more like a novel I guess and I was surprised at how much it made me cry. It was a cathartic read. I want to know what happens with Rayann and Teresa.

I always hear lots of complaints about the lack of quality of lesbian romances, but it seems that given a book of high quality writing, like this one, people still want a big happy ending without any mess from real life. Well I was pleased even though the ending was ambiguous for Teresa and Rayann. Mostly because the writing was so beautiful and this book is as close to life as a 'romance' can get. I really did not want things to turn out the way they did for Louisa but life is like that. It was unexpected from Kallmaker, who I think defaults to making readers laugh and sigh. She made me cry instead. Which is good for me once in a while.

I go through life day to daythinking that no one believes that we really love each other. This book is my truth that we do andI gave it to some family members who didn't want to believe. It helped change their minds. Our relationship are just as powerful and when we lose a loved one we suffer just like anyone else. Maybe even more because of what we go through to be together.