What the World Will Look Like When All the Water Leaves Us [Paperback]

Laura van den Berg (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1, 2009

“Laura van den Berg finds the tension between science and magic and walks it like a tightrope. . . . It is a fantastic and fascinating world, full of discoveries and moments of wonder, a book meant for the explorer in all of us.”—Hannah Tinti, author of The Good Thief

Containing work reprinted in Best Non-Required Reading 2008, Best New American Voices 2010, and The Pushcart Prizes 2010, the stories in Laura van den Berg's rich and inventive debut illuminate the intersection of the mythic and the mundane.

A failed actress takes a job as a Bigfoot inpersonator.  A bontanist seeking a rare flower crosses path with a group of men hunting the Loch Ness Monster.  A disillusioned missionary in Africa grapples with grief and a growing obsession with a creature rumored to live in the forest of the Congo.  And in the title story, a young woman traveling with her scientist mother in Madagascar confronts her burgeoning sexuality and her dream of becoming a long-distance swimmer.

Rendered with precision and longing, the women who narrate these starkly beautiful stories are consumed with searching -- for absolution, for solace, for the flash of extraordinary in the ordinary that will forever alter their lives.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In her affecting debut collection, van den Berg taps into her characters' losses with an impressive clarity. Each of these stories is meticulously crafted, and often the protagonist is recovering emotionally from a staggering life's blow. In Goodbye My Loveds, two siblings are reeling from the death of their parents, scientists fatally snake-bitten in the Amazon; a sister leaves college to take care of her 12-year-old brother and recognizes the need to suppress her own needs in order to help her brother face their new lives. In the beautifully elegiac Where We Must Be, a failed actress gives up on L.A. and finds work as Bigfoot in a theme park; her love affair with a young neighbor dying of cancer underscores the preciousness of time's passing. In the title story, a young woman learns to face her fears while spending time with her scientist mother observing endangered lemurs in Madagascar. These tales are the work of a notable author finding her voice. (Oct.)
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From Booklist

*Starred Review* Lonely, abandoned, and adrift young women undertake missions esoteric, ludicrous, and risky in van den Berg’s exceptional debut. As compelling as her characters and their predicaments are, it’s van den Berg’s startling insights into the alliance between the human psyche and the mysteries of nature in a time of environmental mayhem that give these short stories their glimmering power. Jean, an aspiring and desperate young actor, plays Bigfoot in a renegade recreational park. Shelby tries to care for her increasingly bizarre little brother after their famous scientist parents die in the Amazon while searching for the “sasquatch of Brazil.” Botanist Emily searches for a rare wildflower in Inverness. Catherine is in the Congo where war, AIDS, and floods conjure up the lake monster mokele mbembe. A man searches for the mishegenabeg, the legendary giant serpent of the Great Lakes. A teenager dreams of becoming a long-distance swimmer as her scientist mother comes undone while studying the doomed lemurs in Madagascar’s pillaged forests. Van den Berg summons monsters born of awe, fear, and guilt, while her burdened but determined characters struggle in a sea of need and indifference. Stunning, desolate, and unforgettable. --Donna Seaman

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Product Details

• Paperback: 194 pages
• Publisher: Dzanc Books (October 1, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0976717778
• ISBN-13: 978-0976717775
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.4 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #89,114 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

My first collection of short stories, "What the World Will Look Like When All the Water Leaves Us," was published by Dzanc Books in 2009. The collection was a Barnes & Noble "Discover Great New Writers" selection, longlisted for The Story Prize, and shortlisted for the Frank O'Connor International Award. Of "What the World Will Look Like When All the Water Leaves Us," Barnes & Noble generously wrote: "The mysteries of science and the mysteries of the heart--perhaps nowhere have they been so provocatively linked as in this debut short-story collection." In a starred review, Booklist called the collection "stunning, desolate, and unforgettable," while the Louisville Courier-Journal said, "the beauty of [van den Berg's] writing is matched only by the fierce emotional empathy for her characters." Also: there are monsters! Bigfoot and the Loch Ness, for example, both make appearances. And while I wrote these stories either in Florida (where I'm from) or Boston (where I went to graduate school), the settings range from the Congo to Madagascar to Inverness, Scotland. One of my favorite things about writing fiction is the freedom to go anywhere and do anything without ever leaving my desk. For now that desk is located in Baltimore, where I am at work on new stories and a novel, Find Me.

If you like checking out literary magazines and anthologies, you can find my stories in Conjunctions, Ploughshares, One Story, American Short Fiction, Boston Review, Best American Nonrequired Reading 2008, Best New American Voices 2010, and The Pushcart Prize XXIV: Best of the Small Presses. If you want to learn more about What the World Will Look Like When All the Water Leaves Us or get in touch, please visit my website and blog for news, events, and contact information: http://www.lauravandenberg.com.

Though my new work does not contain monsters, I still write with two ceramic Loch Ness Monsters on my desk. I rub their little green heads when I get stuck. Hopefully they will guide me through more books and until then, thank you for reading this one.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Fresh and Entertaining, January 1, 2011

By 

Bob (OH United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: What the World Will Look Like When All the Water Leaves Us (Paperback)

Perhaps one of the core narratives through this collection is love, lost love, women trying to own their lives through the natural and cultural world after relationships go south for any number of reasons. But that's too simplistic. The quasi fantastical and mythic search for mystery larger than us, and in the world around us, is brought down to human size, with all the misery, desire, loss, and uncertainty attached. These characters are human, rich and earthy. A solid debut collection.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Beautiful Book, December 18, 2010

By 

Ampersand Books - See all my reviews

This review is from: What the World Will Look Like When All the Water Leaves Us (Paperback)

"It was late, 4 A.M., and I'd just finished the story for the third time. I turned back to the title page, "We Are Calling to Offer You a Fabulous Life," and just sat there, not thinking of anything in particular. Instead, I sat there in the sleeping house, doing my best to chain-smoke myself into a coma, and rolled the feeling of the story back and forth. It was smooth and delicate, with just the right pacing, nothing too high or low. It was the delicacy that grabbed me. Laura van den Berg certainly has hands for the delicate things -- things like longing and loss and being compassless in a strange land -- things that any writer with clumsier hands destroys in the telling."
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3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Extraordinary Debut, February 18, 2010

By 

A Reader (New York, NY USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: What the World Will Look Like When All the Water Leaves Us (Paperback)

Lost souls live in these stories. And like the great Joy Williams, what is remarkable is van den Berg's achievement in fully immersing us in her characters' worlds, illuminating what we might think of on first glance as mundane and turning them into treasures. For these characters, elements of the fantastic wait in every corner as they search to find some form of peace with their lives, and I was happy to follow them, experiencing their discoveries and their surprises, their disappointments and their restless determination, their off-kilter worlds that were both familiar and foreign, and simply marveling at the beauty and precision of the prose, which hits the heart. I did not want their journeys to end. This book, for this reader, is the best debut I've encountered in a very long time; and Laura van den Berg is a writer to pay attention to in the coming years.