OPEN WATER: A Novel

by Maria Flook

In Open Water, Maria Flook explores the charged and eerie shoreline of Newport, Rhode Island, where Willis Pratt squanders his days running small cons. But his heart's not in it - he's obsessed with fishing-boat tragedies from his childhood and with Holly, a pretty new neighbor who is charged with arson.
Their romance is interrupted when Willis is called home to care for his dying stepmother, Rennie, whose biological son wants to place her in a care facility. Willis is determined to guarantee his stepmother the death she desires, but when he arrives, Rennie sees that it is he who needs caring for - Willis quickly gets hooked on her prescription morphine.
This is Maria Flook's natural ground, a harsh and sensual terrain where family debt and carnal knowledge intersect.
Open Water is a confirmation of Maria Flook's remarkable talent. Caught up in the novel's unremitting current, its characters are propelled to a resolution that no one left on shore could have imagined.

327 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1995

About the author

Maria Flook is the author of the novels Family Night (which received a PEN American/Ernest Hemingway Foundation Special Citation) and Open Water, as well as a collection of stories, You Have the Wrong Man, and a memoir, My Sister Life: The Story of My Sister's Disappearance. Her work has appeared in The New York Times Book Review, The New Yorker, The New Criterion, TriQuarterly, and More Magazine among others. She is a 2007 John Simon Guggenheim Foundation Award recipient, and is currently Distinguished Writer-in-Residence at Emerson College in Boston. More information about Maria Flook can be found at www.mariaflook.net.

Reviews

[Arhlene · Rating 2 out of 5]

Meh. Not very believable.

[Kim · Rating 4 out of 5]

Odd characters, but endearing.