The Properties of Water

by Ann Hood

Dedicated wife and mother Josie Hunter finds her seemingly idyllic life threatened by a random act of violence, the return of her estranged older sister, and the emergence of an attractive childhood sweetheart. Reprint.

Genres: Fiction

288 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1995

About the author

Ann Hood is the editor of Knitting Yarns: Writers on Knitting and the bestselling author of The Book That Matters Most, The Knitting Circle, The Red Thread, Comfort, and An Italian Wife, among other works. She is the recipient of two Pushcart Prizes, a Best American Spiritual Writing Award, a Best American Food Writing Award, a Best American Travel Writing Award, and the Paul Bowles Prize for Short Fiction. She lives in Providence, Rhode Island.

Reviews

[Amy Rosenkoetter · Rating 4 out of 5]

As often happens with similar books, I liked it better than I expected to. Even though it is set in the 1990s, it carries the texture and sensibilities of the 1950s or 70s due to Josie, the main character. Josie trudges through time like a turtle desperately running through tar straining to catch up to her husband, daughters, and even her parents as they keep living in linear fashion. Josie, on the other hand, keeps her head so far turned toward the past that I kept expecting her to turn into a pillar of salt. She spends most of her life trying frantically to freeze-dry time and hang it on her wall, but in doing so keeps herself cycling and recycling through the past. She seems continually bewildered by the present, as if she merely turned her head a moment only to find when she turned back that life had suddenly leaped forward a decade.

I felt really sorry for Josie and her children, disliked her husband intensely, was amused at her mother and eccentric aunts, and heartened at her wayward sister. The cast of characters was very well fleshed out and blended pretty seamlessly. I found the story (just a month in the life) to be beautifully and honestly written. Some of the honesty was raw and brutal - like Josie's feelings at how she was treated by her family after she had been attacked at the mall. I had strong feelings of anger at the injustice she was shown, but it turned out to be a critical piece that showcased poignantly the family dynamics better than any expository text would have.

There are a couple of mysteries that I would have liked explained such as where Maggie was going when she was ditching school, but all in all, I thought it was pretty good. I would read her again.

[Treasure Island Books · Rating 3 out of 5]

Just finished this one after reading her previous book, Ruby. I liked this one. A major flaw was in the proofreading. At one point the main character's husband was referred to as Tim when he had been called Will in the rest of the narrative. I think Ann Hood must have been a really precocious child; all the children in her books seem to be miniature adults with adult sensibilities. I liked the way Hood switched from the life stories of Josie, Claire, Maggie, and Kate without giving them entire chapters. It felt natural. I didn't expect to like this story as it was described as dark, but the plot kept me turning the pages and wanting to read more books by this author

[Kasia · Rating 5 out of 5]

The true beauty of life is the way if ebbs and flows like a river, a tiny pebble in its path can take the water on a new glorious course and where it goes no one knows. In her sixth novel Ann Hood displays her magic touch for creating people and places that haunt the reader for a long time. I have noticed the melancholic tone in her books, the sad pangs and situations where people are hurt emotionally make up big chunks of her books but she doesn't forget to write in some hard earned salvation to their problems, that is also why I enjoy her novels.

The polluted town of East Essex, Rhode Island is a place that Josie Jericho Hunter calls home. A mother of two, teenage Maggie and young Kate, wife to a mall store manager Will, she cannot imagine her life in any other place, no matter how much more exotic. She lives near a polluter river by a soap making factory and her days pass by as she business herself cutting out the latest recipes for enchiladas from cooking magazines, tends to her children's finicky wants, plays the doting wife and mother, and visits her parents house that is near by. With her father's recent Alzheimer's and her mothers plans to sell her childhood home Josie is thrown in for a loop. Her comfort zone is being stripped away to expose an empty vacant lot that she will have to cushion and fill up on her own in order to fill the growing gap in her heart. Unexpectedly her sister Michaela returns home from the other coast, the hippy child with long hair and mismatched clothing, she brings back bitter memories of Josie's childhood as the usually independent sister is back with her secrets and no one knows why but they know that sometimes is brewing under her cool demeanor.

Josie starts to forget what makes her happy. She is lost in the world of pleasing others, trying to satisfy her husband and his wondering eyes, she slowly loses her magic over him when she gets mugged and no one believes her. Changed and saddened she forgets to pick up her kids form work, to cook dinner, she wonders around the town unable to help anyone and especially herself. Josie must also face the fact that her husband might no longer love her and what it means to her and her family. The ordeals she went though were an intense experience especially with her children involved. As past family secret are slowly starting to spill up, the water from the river starts rising above the banks and floods the city over. Together the family must gather the courage to help the flood victims and to patch up their own problems and for once to realize that people are more similar than different.

This book was so much more, the people and things going on made my head spin and made for an incredibly fast read, I couldn't tear myself away and read this in two sittings but few loose ends were untied and I wished that certain characters had more of a resolution. This said I am extremely pleased for having found this book as it was an enriching experience, an Ann Hood experience as I call it as she satisfies my blue tooth for heart churning tales.

- Kasia S.

[Peter Panic McDaniel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Once ages ago I read a short story collection by the same author and was infatuated with all the portrayels of the lonely isolated housewife set in Rhode Island. Each and every character was beleiveably feminine and distraught and always in some sort of depressed denial of their life. One woman baked when stressed another knitted. I slowly realizing that while reading it I was very much like some of the characters and almost felt proud. Years later I finally found another book by the same author and was horribly disappointed with this effort. Maybe it's an early peice but it just doesn't have the same feeling of isolation as did her short stories.

Josie is a housewife who after a traumatic experience realizes the little bubble of a life she built for herself isn't that great and slowly works her way to attempting to fix it. While the first half dulled my senses, by the time she had the accident I almost started to sympathize with her and think how human she really was. Unfortunatelyby the end everything had to peice together and my hope for a tragic ending was dismissed.

But thankfully this has piqued more of an interest of finding more of her titles. Perhaps with each passing story I'll find the female version of a Murakami that I've been searching for.

[Arlene · Rating 1 out of 5]

Maybe it was just me but I could not make myself get into this book. I read more than my 50 page limit but when it seemed like pain instead of pleasure to plod on, I just gave up. From the general ratings obviously I am in the minority in my opinion of this book.

[Judy · Rating 1 out of 5]

I know, I have been binging on Ann Hood's novels recently! When I go to the library today, I will find something different. I did not enjoy this book; it was confusing and the characters were not likable. There were too many of them and too many subplots, and the connection between the characters' relationships and the water crisis of East Essex was unclear. Reading this novel brought home to me how much Ann Hood's writing skills have improved over the years.

[Dionne · Rating 5 out of 5]

A story that hooked me and made me relate and laugh and cry the way Hood often does. I'm not sure if her stories are relatable because of their place (RI is my home), but I find myself looking for more of her work in bookstores and libraries.

[Anne Fortier · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love Ann Hood but the book was mostly sad.

[Lily Tamplin · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book is about Josie Hunter, a wife and a mother of two daughters who lives in the town East Essex of Rhode Island near the towns soap factory and polluted river. Josie is a very busy woman, between having to cater to her daughters every needs, a husband who wants to make love every night (and she may be losing the love she once had for him), her troubled child sister, Michaela, coming back home (after living in New York for a number of years), her father devolving Alzheimer’s and her mother selling her home which happens to be the home Josie was born and raised in. on top of all this, Josie gets her car, and dignity taken from her. Nobody in her family believes that she is in fact telling the truth about the whole ordeal. This worsens her already struggling relationship with her family, especially her husband. She now is almost certain that the speculations towards losing love towards her husband could be true.

Personally I wouldn’t recommend it to anybody. I wouldn’t dare give someone a headache like that. To be completely honest, I was really excited about this book. The blurb made it seem like it’d be a wonderful book, but I was so wrong. If I had to recommend it to someone, it’d be to someone who would like to waste their time, or was extremely bored and needed something to do. It’s just one of those books that’d you’d read, then forget you had even read it. The plot was awesome, but the way it was written was not. This book seems like a movie based on a book would be; expected it to be really good, then is in reality horrible. Again, I really wouldn’t recommend this book to anybody, unless the person has an unlimited amount of free time on their hands and would like to waste it by reading this book.

I absolutely hated this book. It was probably one of the most confusing books I’ve ever read. The author would have two characters start a conversation, then go into one of the characters thoughts while they were having a conversation. Now don’t get me wrong, I love hearing what the characters think, but kneed at least some kind of indicator as to when this would happen. Another reason, the book is really slow, and I mean REALLY slow, then at the end it’s rushed. The plot was good, but the way it was told was horrible. Nothing really important happened until I was well over halfway through the book. Not to mention, at the end something’s weren’t even resolved! Some things that happened were just thrown over the shoulder like they never even happened! So overall, terrible book. Hard to read, even harder to finish it.

[Grace · Rating 3 out of 5]

At first, I wasn't sure if there was an overall point to Ann Hood's "The Properties of Water." I was okay with this because it seemed like a book about the mundane life of a suburban housewife named Josie, her husband Will, and their two daughters Maggie (a teen in full angst mode) and Kate (the precocious and utterly adorable five year old).

However, it becomes clear that things are not as they appear to be in Josie's life as she continues to love a man who is no longer in love with her, struggles to understand what is going on with her teenage daughter, tries to come to terms with her aging parents' decision to sell their home because it is no longer safe for her father suffering from Alzheimer's Disease, and as she compares her and her wild child sister to the perfect cousins with their perfect children and lives.

Overall, it is an engaging story with three dimensional characters that change from the beginning of the book to the end. I feel that there were too many central characters to the story and none of them really got the page time they deserved in such a short book (just under 300 pages). Adding text to the story would have helped to give more meat to the characters as well as given author Ann Hood time to wrap up gaping holes in the story - such as how everyone in the family (aunts, cousins, etc) was at her parents' house welcoming her sister home after many years away and the only reason why Josie found out about it was because she showed up there after being attacked in the mall parking lot. No one thought or noticed she was missing and she is the main character in the story. Even her own mother admitted she didn't even notice Josie's absence and I felt that little nugget of inner thought should have been explored more.

Story holes and all, this was an quick and engaging read that I would recommend to anyone looking for a realistic female centered fiction book.

[Elysabeth · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've read other things by Hood (Ruby, Somewhere off the Coast of Maine), and REALLY enjoyed them. I didn't DISLIKE this book, but I didn't particularly love it. It started off strong, and finished well, but the middle got lost and bogged down by the 5+ narrators, all with their own separate troubles, none that have come together. .

I think she mostly lost me post-attack, where every single person in her family and her life (including her parents??!, and her America's Most Wanted-obsessed husband?!?!) thought Josie was making up that she was assaulted. And then, the assault story was basically abandoned and never resolved. Bah. Frustrating.

[Frances Kehlbeck Civello · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wish I had started reading Ann Hood's books in chronological order. Her early work is very good...but it pales in comparison to her more recent fiction.

I started with The Knitting Circle, an amazing tapestry of complex characters, joy and raw grief. In comparison, Properties of Water is, well, shallow. It's a good summer read, with well-constructed characters. It held my interest. But it just didn't hold a candle to The Knitting Circle.

[Ann Sandhorst · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read Ms. Hood's book, THE OBITUARY WRITER first and loved it so I was intrigued to read her earlier works. This one had a good story but the it jumped around too much. It should have had chapters for this purpose. Also, there were some misused apostrophes and glaring spelling errors which invalidated the reading experience for me.

[Donna · Rating 3 out of 5]

Josie 's life is in turmoil after a random act of violence. Her supposed perfect life falls apart with her family , a cheating husband, a rebellious teenager, and aging parents.
I recently read one of Ann Hood's latest novels. This was one of her firsts. The style of her writing has improved through the years.

[Dundee Library]

Hood's small town female characters are well developed but their problems are closer to home — infidelity, sisterly rivalry, and cold feet at an impending marriage. Hood employs a little more introspection and personal drama in her stories.

[Denise · Rating 3 out of 5]

I did not think this was her best effort; I enjoyed her later title Ruby a lot--very quirky and funny/sadat the same time.

[Lin Cunningham · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is another great book by Ann Hood!

[Deb (Readerbuzz) Nance · Rating 4 out of 5]

My kind of novel. Women's fiction at its best.