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Watermark
`Watermark' tells the story of Veronica a young woman living on the edge of desire and reason in an unnamed Irish city. As with his three earlier books, Sean O'Reilly proves himself here to be a genuine prose stylist, possessed of a uniquely dark and powerful vision of our contemporary culture. A virtuosic performance combining formal experimentation with brave and beautiful storytelling, `Watermark' seals O'Reilly's reputation as one of Europe's most exciting young writers.
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First published December 31, 2005
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
July 27, 2021
It’s exciting to see an artist pushing against the bounds of form. Sometimes it’s transcendent, other times tawdry; the fixation on humiliation in a sexual context becomes tedious, but the experiments with form and structure and language kept me hooked.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
May 6, 2018
From my review in the TLS of Sean O’Reilly’s Watermark:
The novella is interesting in that it makes no concessions to standard story-telling devices and stylistic conventions: the narrative jumps between first, second, and third person; sentences begin or end in the middle, or else run on unbroken; past and present tenses melt together. Punctuation is loose to the point of being almost ornamental.
Watermark is about Veronica, who has only one real interest: whether fellating a stranger or role-playing with her boyfriend, what she wants – yearns for – is sex, particularly with her ex-boyfriend, Martin. Their relationship is recounted in a series of graphically described and sometimes brutal sexual encounters (including anal rape – “I’m too small there, she said. He held her down”).
Martin’s departure has left Veronica mad with longing. She wonders if she should have told him of an early sexual experience in which boys touched her using the rotting parts of an animal found dead in the woods. As I write in my review, "Luckily for Veronica, she lives in a town whose population almost unanimously share her obsessions." At the local shop she talks openly about her desires, and village tough-guy Moore offers his services between open-air sessions with madwoman Gretta, who can be seen “on her knees with her face in Moore’s groin, sucking blindly extracting”. At home her house-mate Donal sends his girlfriend to Veronica’s bed to deliver oral sex before eventually making the trip himself. Strangers from pubs and shops take Veronica home to fuck her and drink her pee.
Although Cathy’s husband rushes to cup Veronica’s breasts and whisper smut in her ear, nothing can rebuild the shattered illusion.
O’Reilly in interviews has discussed his interest in pornography, but it is unclear from Watermark what purpose he expects it to serve, either socially or artistically, and the strange break represented by Cathy throws a veil of uncertainty over the whole venture, one from which the increasingly fantastic – and sexual – text can’t ever seem to recover.
The novella is interesting in that it makes no concessions to standard story-telling devices and stylistic conventions: the narrative jumps between first, second, and third person; sentences begin or end in the middle, or else run on unbroken; past and present tenses melt together. Punctuation is loose to the point of being almost ornamental.
Watermark is about Veronica, who has only one real interest: whether fellating a stranger or role-playing with her boyfriend, what she wants – yearns for – is sex, particularly with her ex-boyfriend, Martin. Their relationship is recounted in a series of graphically described and sometimes brutal sexual encounters (including anal rape – “I’m too small there, she said. He held her down”).
Martin’s departure has left Veronica mad with longing. She wonders if she should have told him of an early sexual experience in which boys touched her using the rotting parts of an animal found dead in the woods. As I write in my review, "Luckily for Veronica, she lives in a town whose population almost unanimously share her obsessions." At the local shop she talks openly about her desires, and village tough-guy Moore offers his services between open-air sessions with madwoman Gretta, who can be seen “on her knees with her face in Moore’s groin, sucking blindly extracting”. At home her house-mate Donal sends his girlfriend to Veronica’s bed to deliver oral sex before eventually making the trip himself. Strangers from pubs and shops take Veronica home to fuck her and drink her pee.
Only her childhood friend, Cathy, seems to find Veronica’s behaviour strange, questions her lack of a job, lack of direction, lack of self-control.
In a sense, Cathy’s one appearance just over halfway through undoes everything the text has worked thus far to create. Before their conversation, Veronica exists in a fictional world that may at least be experienced on its own terms, a realm in which she is just one urine-soaked erotomaniac among many. After Cathy draws back the curtain on a more familiar reality, however, we have no choice but to see Veronica within a context of normality, where she is potentially a sad, even pathetic, figure.
Although Cathy’s husband rushes to cup Veronica’s breasts and whisper smut in her ear, nothing can rebuild the shattered illusion.
O’Reilly in interviews has discussed his interest in pornography, but it is unclear from Watermark what purpose he expects it to serve, either socially or artistically, and the strange break represented by Cathy throws a veil of uncertainty over the whole venture, one from which the increasingly fantastic – and sexual – text can’t ever seem to recover.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews