We Live in Water
By Jess Walter
Published: 2013 Harper Collins
Review by Debra L Scott, 3/18/2013
Short Story collections can go good or bad. Jess Walter has put together a collection that is all good. Not that the stories are feel-good, or comfortable, or even have happy endings. They are well-written good. The subject matter may be disturbing for yuppie, ivory tower types but will ring true for those who call the streets home or walk the streets as a profession. it’s about human choices; choices that needed to be made that might seem wrong to most, or those who simply did what they must because life didn’t give them any other choice. There are also those who try new choices, and those who no longer choose. It’s about expectations, and why the phrase ‘did not meet expectations’ sits on a midline, with reality falling both below and above the line.
The book cover for We Live In Water, is of a flooded town with a school bus submerged to the top of its windows. One might expect, as I did, stories about the Katrina disaster or even Hurricane Sandy. It’s not. It is about the substrata of American life that most of us prefer to thrust back into the deep nether regions of our consciousness. “Oh I get it,” you say, “so it’s going to be about the poor downtrodden sop in the gutter and how miserable his life is?” Wrong again. Walter writes the story between the lines, the one you don’t see as you dole out a buck to a panhandler or wrinkle your nose at the compulsive gambler. Do you think those needle marks on the junkie’s arm will never be yours, or picture a work-release prisoner in a road crew picking up trash? Jess Walter’s stories are the ones these unfortunates tell each other, the only people that will comprehend why life went that way.
About the cover art, there is some water involved somewhere, but it’s not what you think.
Word Seeds 