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All the Water I've Seen Is Running
Former high school classmates reckon with the death of a friend in this stunning debut novel. Along the Intracoastal waterways of North Florida, Daniel and Aubrey navigated adolescence with the electric intensity that radiates from young people defined by otherness: Aubrey, a self-identified "Southern cracker" and Daniel, the mixed-race son of Jamaican immigrants. When the news of Aubrey’s death reaches Daniel in New York, years after they’d lost contact, he is left to grapple with the legacy of his precious and imperfect love for her. At ease now in his own queerness, he is nonetheless drawn back to the muggy haze of his Palm Coast upbringing, tinged by racism and poverty, to find out what happened to Aubrey. Along the way, he reconsiders his and his family’s history, both in Jamaica and in this place he once called home. Buoyed by his teenage track-team buddies―Twig, a long-distance runner; Desmond, a sprinter; Egypt, Des’s girlfriend; and Jess, a chef―Daniel begins a frantic search for meaning in Aubrey’s death, recklessly confronting the drunken country boy he believes may have killed her. Sensitive to the complexities of class, race, and sexuality both in the American South and in Jamaica, All the Water I’ve Seen Is Running is a novel of uncommon tenderness, grief, and joy. All the while, it evokes the beauty and threat of the place Daniel calls home―where the river meets the ocean.
272 pages, Hardcover
First published June 22, 2021
181 people are currently reading
3244 people want to read
About the author
Elias Rodriques
5 books35 followersElias Rodriques was born in Kingston, Jamaica, and split his young years between Jamaica, New York, and North Florida. His essays have been published in venues like The Guardian and The Nation, and his first novel, All the Water I’ve Seen is Running, is due out from Norton in June of 2021. He is also an assistant editor at n+1. He currently lives in Philadelphia and will become Assistant Professor of African American Literature at Sarah Lawrence in the fall of 2021.
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May 30, 2022
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3 ¼ stars
Written in an exceedingly lyrical prose All the Water I've Seen Is Running is a subtle and ultimately moving debut novel about friendship, grief, and reconciliation. While All the Water I've Seen Is Running will not necessarily appeal to those who are looking for a story-driven read, if you are looking for a quiet yet scintillating character study, you should consider picking this one up. Elias Rodriques' stirring meditations on loss and identity, as well as his ability to capture in startling detail the landscapes his characters inhabit, make for an evocative read. The narrative has this almost-cinematic quality to it that gave me some serious A24 coming-of-age film vibes. Rodriques' elegiac style brought to mind authors such as Ocean Vuong, Tomasz Jedrowski, Philippe Besson, and Dantiel W. Moniz, so if you enjoy any of their work chances are you will enjoy All the Water I've Seen Is Running. Whereas I loved Rodriques' language, his ability to capture with crystal clarity the scenes or moments he writes of, I did feel that his novel was missing a certain je ne se quoi, and I think that it had to do with the relationship that is meant to be at the very heart of its narrative.
After graduating from high school, Daniel, our narrator and protagonist, is all-too-eager to leave Florida behind. As the mixed-race queer son of Jamaican immigrants, Daniel's childhood and teenage years were underscored by a sense of otherness. Years later, Daniel lives and works as a teacher in New York, barely keeping in touch with his mother, who has returned to Jamaica, or any of his old friends. When he learns that Aubrey, his high-school best friend, died in a car crash, Daniel feels the urge to return to Palm Coast. There he spends a few days with his former crowd but he's unsure whether he wants them to learn about his sexuality. As he reconnects with them he finds himself looking back to his time with Aubrey. We learn that Aubrey, who was white and often described herself as a ‘redneck' or a ‘cracker', could be cruel and impulsive. She was also quite capable of saying offensive, racist, and/or generally insensitive things. Others provide their own recollections of Aubrey and of their salad days, giving us some insight into the dynamics that were at play at their high school. While the flashbacks don't reveal anything truly significant or earth-shattering they do provide us with snapshots of an important period of Daniel's life. Rodriques conveys the loneliness and longing that come about when you feel or are made to feel different from those around you. During these flashbacks, we also learn of Daniel's difficult childhood, in particular of his time with his father.
The story doesn't drop any huge bombs. Once back in Palm Coast Daniel questions some of his friends about Aubrey, as he lost touch with her soon after high school and now that she is dead he's filled with guilt (for not including her in his ‘new’ life) and sadness (he doesn't know what she's experienced over the last few years, whether she'd changed, and if so, how).
Most of the scenes within this novel brought to mind long tracking shots. For instance, we have this scene in which Daniel is in the car with Desmond, who used to be one of his track-team buddies, that probably takes up over 10% of the overall narrative. Daniel observes the passing landscapes and talks off-and-on to Desmond. Interspersed throughout this extended car drive are also some flashbacks in which we read about some of their shared history.
While Daniel's uneasy relationship with his family is alluded to, the narrative never truly delves that deeply into it. He tells us that his mother has only just recounted to him some of her family history...but we don't really learn much about it. This felt like a wasted opportunity as I think it would have made Daniel and his family more believable and multi-dimensional.
While the conversations and arguments that occur within this novel always struck me as authentic, the personalities of these characters never come into real focus. We are given brief glimpses into their high school experiences that simply paint them as being rather generic teens (boyhood 101). In the ‘present' they mainly discuss Aubrey, revealing little about themselves. Funnily enough, Aubrey, who is meant to be this charismatic sort of figure, felt more like an idea of a certain type of high school girl than an actual person. I did not care for her and I had a hard time understanding what drew her and Daniel together other than the fact that they both have ‘troubled' families (which is not all that rare sadly...). Although Daniel claims that he loves her, I just didn't ‘feel' that love (again we are being ‘told’ things). Aubrey seems to function as a plot device through which Daniel can embark on this long retrospective that makes him reassess what he wants and who he was/is.
The last chapter in this novel felt really unnecessary (mild-spoilers ahead i guess): after a whole novel being narrated by Daniel himself we suddenly switch to a different perspective, that of a character that had up to that point played up to that point a minor, one could say even inconsequential, role in Daniel’s story.
While I may not have felt particularly invested in the characters, and I did find Daniel's characterisation to be vague, I liked Rodriques' prose, the realistic rhythm of his dialogues, and his sharp eye for description (one could really picture the places/environments he writes of). I believe that this is a promising debut and I look forward to read whatever Rodriques writes next.
ARC provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.
3 ¼ stars
Written in an exceedingly lyrical prose All the Water I've Seen Is Running is a subtle and ultimately moving debut novel about friendship, grief, and reconciliation. While All the Water I've Seen Is Running will not necessarily appeal to those who are looking for a story-driven read, if you are looking for a quiet yet scintillating character study, you should consider picking this one up. Elias Rodriques' stirring meditations on loss and identity, as well as his ability to capture in startling detail the landscapes his characters inhabit, make for an evocative read. The narrative has this almost-cinematic quality to it that gave me some serious A24 coming-of-age film vibes. Rodriques' elegiac style brought to mind authors such as Ocean Vuong, Tomasz Jedrowski, Philippe Besson, and Dantiel W. Moniz, so if you enjoy any of their work chances are you will enjoy All the Water I've Seen Is Running. Whereas I loved Rodriques' language, his ability to capture with crystal clarity the scenes or moments he writes of, I did feel that his novel was missing a certain je ne se quoi, and I think that it had to do with the relationship that is meant to be at the very heart of its narrative.
After graduating from high school, Daniel, our narrator and protagonist, is all-too-eager to leave Florida behind. As the mixed-race queer son of Jamaican immigrants, Daniel's childhood and teenage years were underscored by a sense of otherness. Years later, Daniel lives and works as a teacher in New York, barely keeping in touch with his mother, who has returned to Jamaica, or any of his old friends. When he learns that Aubrey, his high-school best friend, died in a car crash, Daniel feels the urge to return to Palm Coast. There he spends a few days with his former crowd but he's unsure whether he wants them to learn about his sexuality. As he reconnects with them he finds himself looking back to his time with Aubrey. We learn that Aubrey, who was white and often described herself as a ‘redneck' or a ‘cracker', could be cruel and impulsive. She was also quite capable of saying offensive, racist, and/or generally insensitive things. Others provide their own recollections of Aubrey and of their salad days, giving us some insight into the dynamics that were at play at their high school. While the flashbacks don't reveal anything truly significant or earth-shattering they do provide us with snapshots of an important period of Daniel's life. Rodriques conveys the loneliness and longing that come about when you feel or are made to feel different from those around you. During these flashbacks, we also learn of Daniel's difficult childhood, in particular of his time with his father.
The story doesn't drop any huge bombs. Once back in Palm Coast Daniel questions some of his friends about Aubrey, as he lost touch with her soon after high school and now that she is dead he's filled with guilt (for not including her in his ‘new’ life) and sadness (he doesn't know what she's experienced over the last few years, whether she'd changed, and if so, how).
Most of the scenes within this novel brought to mind long tracking shots. For instance, we have this scene in which Daniel is in the car with Desmond, who used to be one of his track-team buddies, that probably takes up over 10% of the overall narrative. Daniel observes the passing landscapes and talks off-and-on to Desmond. Interspersed throughout this extended car drive are also some flashbacks in which we read about some of their shared history.
While Daniel's uneasy relationship with his family is alluded to, the narrative never truly delves that deeply into it. He tells us that his mother has only just recounted to him some of her family history...but we don't really learn much about it. This felt like a wasted opportunity as I think it would have made Daniel and his family more believable and multi-dimensional.
While the conversations and arguments that occur within this novel always struck me as authentic, the personalities of these characters never come into real focus. We are given brief glimpses into their high school experiences that simply paint them as being rather generic teens (boyhood 101). In the ‘present' they mainly discuss Aubrey, revealing little about themselves. Funnily enough, Aubrey, who is meant to be this charismatic sort of figure, felt more like an idea of a certain type of high school girl than an actual person. I did not care for her and I had a hard time understanding what drew her and Daniel together other than the fact that they both have ‘troubled' families (which is not all that rare sadly...). Although Daniel claims that he loves her, I just didn't ‘feel' that love (again we are being ‘told’ things). Aubrey seems to function as a plot device through which Daniel can embark on this long retrospective that makes him reassess what he wants and who he was/is.
The last chapter in this novel felt really unnecessary (mild-spoilers ahead i guess): after a whole novel being narrated by Daniel himself we suddenly switch to a different perspective, that of a character that had up to that point played up to that point a minor, one could say even inconsequential, role in Daniel’s story.
While I may not have felt particularly invested in the characters, and I did find Daniel's characterisation to be vague, I liked Rodriques' prose, the realistic rhythm of his dialogues, and his sharp eye for description (one could really picture the places/environments he writes of). I believe that this is a promising debut and I look forward to read whatever Rodriques writes next.
ARC provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.
May 7, 2021
Opening up a book without any advance expectations is a little like the famous Forrest Gump line: “Life’s like a box of chocolates, you never know what you’re going to get.” But Elias Rodriques is the real deal. Melancholy at times, rhapsodic at other times, this is the tale of Daniel, a long-distance runner (both literally and metaphorically) who loses his core self when he escapes a downtrodden town in Florida to make a life for himself in New York.
What brings him back is the untimely death of a redneck girl named Aubrey, who gave Daniel a sense of worth. The son of a father and older brother who both beat him and loved him, so that the beating and loving became intertwined in his mind, Daniel is both Black and gay—or at the least, bisexual. He is an outsider with secrets that have to be guarded.
But he has his “peeps” – teammates who cheered him, fought him, teased him, and in a very real sense, saved him. Daniel reflects, “They guarded me because they weren’t sure they were going to get out of Palm Coast themselves. But if I escaped, we all did.” They know Daniel through and through, and they accept him, even when he frustrates them.
Elias Rodrigues has the patois down pat. The lilting dialogue is a pleasure to read. Daniel thinks, “Been fronting so long, I done forget everything. Then Aubrey died and I started thinking about home…just one generation later, we gone from rivers to fridges, dirt paths to roads, and I’m up there in the biggest city on Earth, running around and I ain’t know if I’m country or I’m city.”
This is not a book with a lot of action. The journey Daniel takes is mostly internal, populated with track-team buddies Twig and Desmond, Des’ girlfriend Egypt, and Jess, a chef and friend of Aubrey. The advance blurbs play up that the crux of the story is Daniel’s confrontation of the man who was in the truck with Aubrey when she was killed. In reality, there IS no crux – this is a journey of a young man who is not at peace with himself who is grappling with his family’s Jamaican history and folklore, his impoverished Palm Coast abusive childhood, his new life in New York, and what it really means to feel at home – physically and within himself. Home is where the river meets the ocean. Thank you to W.W. Norton for sending me a copy of a book I might not have discovered on my own in exchange for an honest review. I rate it 4.5, rounded up.
What brings him back is the untimely death of a redneck girl named Aubrey, who gave Daniel a sense of worth. The son of a father and older brother who both beat him and loved him, so that the beating and loving became intertwined in his mind, Daniel is both Black and gay—or at the least, bisexual. He is an outsider with secrets that have to be guarded.
But he has his “peeps” – teammates who cheered him, fought him, teased him, and in a very real sense, saved him. Daniel reflects, “They guarded me because they weren’t sure they were going to get out of Palm Coast themselves. But if I escaped, we all did.” They know Daniel through and through, and they accept him, even when he frustrates them.
Elias Rodrigues has the patois down pat. The lilting dialogue is a pleasure to read. Daniel thinks, “Been fronting so long, I done forget everything. Then Aubrey died and I started thinking about home…just one generation later, we gone from rivers to fridges, dirt paths to roads, and I’m up there in the biggest city on Earth, running around and I ain’t know if I’m country or I’m city.”
This is not a book with a lot of action. The journey Daniel takes is mostly internal, populated with track-team buddies Twig and Desmond, Des’ girlfriend Egypt, and Jess, a chef and friend of Aubrey. The advance blurbs play up that the crux of the story is Daniel’s confrontation of the man who was in the truck with Aubrey when she was killed. In reality, there IS no crux – this is a journey of a young man who is not at peace with himself who is grappling with his family’s Jamaican history and folklore, his impoverished Palm Coast abusive childhood, his new life in New York, and what it really means to feel at home – physically and within himself. Home is where the river meets the ocean. Thank you to W.W. Norton for sending me a copy of a book I might not have discovered on my own in exchange for an honest review. I rate it 4.5, rounded up.
July 27, 2021
The Florida panhandle might as well be Mars to me, but this book opened up that world in ways that felt very intimate. The language, the violence, the poverty, the racism course through this story of a black man who returns home after the death of a woman he loved. The story is incredibly complicated and the dialect and dialogue sometimes confused me, but the power of the intimacy made this hard to put down.
October 13, 2021
From President Obama’s 2021 summer reading list, a wonderfully told story of a young Jamaican-American man’s coming to terms with the poverty and violence of his earlier life as he reconnects with his high school friends. Especially strong use of dialogue and sense of place.
April 25, 2021
In his debut novel, ALL THE WATER I’VE SEEN IS RUNNING, Elias Rodriques explores themes of identity and memory. After learning that his best friend, Aubrey, died in a car accident, Daniel breaks up with his boyfriend and travels back to the town where he grew up. Exploring the eastern coast of Florida, he visits friends from school and searches for the cause of his friend’s death. Daniel is between worlds and can’t seem to find space for himself. He’s the descendants of African’s brought to Jamaica as slaves, Indians who were shipped by the British to the Caribbean when slavery ended, and Lebanese immigrants. Daniel searches the coast for explanations about his friend’s life, and his own.
This book is poetic and moving. While not plot driven, this book is centered around tone, emotion, setting. The waters of Florida are characters themselves in this novel. As the novel progresses, secrets are revealed among friends. The story builds to a reckoning; a local who escaped to New York City and has returned.
Jumping between present day, Daniel recounts aspects of his life in Jamaica, New York City, Florida. He recalls events between his family that he seems to have repressed for years. As he returns to the “Redneck Riviera,” the memories flow back to him, years of abuse and trauma.
Race and class are also dissected in this novel of black and white characters. All of the friends are poor and lack the opportunity to leave for a better life. Some resent being stuck there, while others have accepted the place as their home.
This book does not have a strong plot, but the mood drives the reader to continue with Daniel’s journey. The author doesn’t use quotation marks which add to the poetic, atmospheric quality of the book. I really enjoyed this novel and thought it was a beautifully written exploration of trauma and identity.
This book is poetic and moving. While not plot driven, this book is centered around tone, emotion, setting. The waters of Florida are characters themselves in this novel. As the novel progresses, secrets are revealed among friends. The story builds to a reckoning; a local who escaped to New York City and has returned.
Jumping between present day, Daniel recounts aspects of his life in Jamaica, New York City, Florida. He recalls events between his family that he seems to have repressed for years. As he returns to the “Redneck Riviera,” the memories flow back to him, years of abuse and trauma.
Race and class are also dissected in this novel of black and white characters. All of the friends are poor and lack the opportunity to leave for a better life. Some resent being stuck there, while others have accepted the place as their home.
This book does not have a strong plot, but the mood drives the reader to continue with Daniel’s journey. The author doesn’t use quotation marks which add to the poetic, atmospheric quality of the book. I really enjoyed this novel and thought it was a beautifully written exploration of trauma and identity.
August 28, 2021
Elias Rodriques' All the Water I've Seen is Running is a beautifully written story of returning to and confronting our pasts.
Daniel, a Jamaican immigrant, grows up in rural, Northern Florida as a star track athlete and one of the few Black kids in his high school. While in school he befriends Aubrey, a white self-proclaimed "redneck" and forms an uncategorizable bond that sticks with him. Years later Daniel is a teacher in Brooklyn, an out gay man in a relationship with a man, and learns that Aubrey has died in a drunk driving accident. He returns to Florida and reconnects with the people of his past life and confronts who he was and what it means for who he is today.
Rodriques' writing is incredible. When I say this book is beautifully written, I mean it. But the story itself makes little sense. I still don't quite understand why, in the first few pages, Daniel breaks up with his boyfriend after he learns of Aubrey's death. And I am still uncertain of what the meaning of his relationship with Aubrey was. The story is clearly about reconnecting with our pasts but the way Daniel ends up doing this is without explanation: why does he feel such a connection with a girl from high school who he hasn't seen in years? The book tries to explain this but it doesn't succeed. All the Water I've Seen is Running is a beautiful book and makes me long to read more from Rodriques but just not this book.
Daniel, a Jamaican immigrant, grows up in rural, Northern Florida as a star track athlete and one of the few Black kids in his high school. While in school he befriends Aubrey, a white self-proclaimed "redneck" and forms an uncategorizable bond that sticks with him. Years later Daniel is a teacher in Brooklyn, an out gay man in a relationship with a man, and learns that Aubrey has died in a drunk driving accident. He returns to Florida and reconnects with the people of his past life and confronts who he was and what it means for who he is today.
Rodriques' writing is incredible. When I say this book is beautifully written, I mean it. But the story itself makes little sense. I still don't quite understand why, in the first few pages, Daniel breaks up with his boyfriend after he learns of Aubrey's death. And I am still uncertain of what the meaning of his relationship with Aubrey was. The story is clearly about reconnecting with our pasts but the way Daniel ends up doing this is without explanation: why does he feel such a connection with a girl from high school who he hasn't seen in years? The book tries to explain this but it doesn't succeed. All the Water I've Seen is Running is a beautiful book and makes me long to read more from Rodriques but just not this book.
June 13, 2021
The narrator of this so-so novel, Daniel, breaks up with his boyfriend and takes a trip back to his Florida hometown after learning of the untimely death of his high school girlfriend. Author Rodriques' novel is mostly very well written, although punctuated at times with weird staccato-like sentences that stutter quickly past multiple events to move the action forward quickly and other times with languid descriptions of events and friends. This is not a plot-driven novel, more a meditation on the narrator's upbringing, family, and high school friends. The major event is his confrontation of the man driving the car during the crash that led to his girlfriend's death and any tension there peters out quickly. The second to last chapter is a moving natural end to this pensive novel but an additional chapter is added on unnecessarily, with a completely different narrator, which is jarring. The lack of quotation marks for conversations makes it sometimes difficult to discern whether the narrator is speaking aloud or thinking instead. Altogether, this novel is a mixed bag.- if you like mostly well-written slow-moving meditations on life in a racist Florida backwater town where the narrator seems not to have matured at all in the time that he left and returned, then this is book will hit your sweet spot.
December 24, 2021
Stunning. Not since Ocean Vuong's On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous has a young writer knocked me out with such magnificent and visceral prose. Admittedly, the beautiful cover is what initially drew me to this novel but when I found out there was queer representation in a Southern setting, I knew this was for me. The first hundred pages lulled me into a sort of meditative submission before Rodriques simply blew me away with the last 155 pages exploring themes of found family, generational trauma, grief, finding where you belong and the painful process of uncovering and accepting who you truly are while yearning for other kindred wanderers who are willing to do the same.
The most overwhelming element of this debut novel is Rodriques' mastery of the lyrical and majestic prose balanced with its relatable and realistic dialogue. The juxtaposition of this gritty, authentic vernacular with the most elegant and immersive descriptions of the Florida landscape created a distinct style to the novel that I am desperate for more of. The world the author grounds his story in feels as raw and tangible as it does wistful and dreamlike. I could feel the Southern mud between my toes and sense the spray of the ocean on my skin. Rodriques allows the reader to not only witness in vivid clarity what these characters are doing but to experience it viscerally along with them. Add Elias Rodriques to ALL the lists. 'One to watch', 'Impressive Debut Novelist' and 'Auto-buy Author'. He is now one of those few writers who I will ardently seek out and attempt to read everything they ever write.
The story is of a young mixed race boy from Florida who returns to his small hometown after escaping to New York City for college. He once again flees the most recently crafted iteration of himself and even his relationship to attend his highschool girlfriend's funeral back home and discover what happened to her and what led to her ultimate demise. To do so, he is forced to reconnect with a motley crew of former friends and piece together how Aubrey came to her untimely end while the rest of them have somehow survived. Daniel, our lead protagonist, seems oddly obsessed with his ex and wrestles with some survivor's guilt while also realizing that, even as a gay man, he truly did love and care about Aubrey. When we leave people behind in our lives, do we then have to stop loving them? Or are they always subconsciously alive and well as a developmental part of our past and actively functioning foundation of our present?
Rodriques also employs a motif in Daniel's traumatic childhood of break-ins and robberies that, I think, informs his reaction to Aubrey's death. It's as if someone has ransacked Daniel's past to drag up dormant feelings and reopen supposedly long-healed wounds. In the wreckage of this girl's death he is faced with the detritus that it has unearthed and to deal with a past he thought he had escaped. Daniel has to reckon with the consequences of the loose ends he so often leaves in his tendency to cuts ties and run from one identity to the next. Even to go back and face his former life, he leaves his relationship callously in an apparent effort not to have to accommodate more than one version of himself at a time. He has to confront and reconcile with all his facets before he can find any sort of peace with Aubrey's death and the emotional clarity to fully embrace and own his own life.
The plot is loose and initially slow-moving to a point that may frustrate or bore some but the gorgeous use of language alone should compel the reader to make it past the first hundred pages, when the action picks up and answers are uncovered. The mystery of Aubrey's death is not truly a mystery as much as it is just something that Daniel is desperate to work out. This isn't a propulsive or plot-driven narrative but rather an emotional journey and a mesmerizing meditation on grief, love, family and friendship. There are glorious moments of catharsis and healing in this novel that will undoubtedly stay with me for a very long time.
I truly loved this novel like a long-lost friend. After a string of frustratingly "okay" books lately, it has reawakened my love of reading and reinvigorated my passion for great writing. Rodriques has reminded me to treasure my connections with others but most especially the one I have with myself. I'm so grateful to have found this book and to be able to carry its beauty with me into my own life.
The most overwhelming element of this debut novel is Rodriques' mastery of the lyrical and majestic prose balanced with its relatable and realistic dialogue. The juxtaposition of this gritty, authentic vernacular with the most elegant and immersive descriptions of the Florida landscape created a distinct style to the novel that I am desperate for more of. The world the author grounds his story in feels as raw and tangible as it does wistful and dreamlike. I could feel the Southern mud between my toes and sense the spray of the ocean on my skin. Rodriques allows the reader to not only witness in vivid clarity what these characters are doing but to experience it viscerally along with them. Add Elias Rodriques to ALL the lists. 'One to watch', 'Impressive Debut Novelist' and 'Auto-buy Author'. He is now one of those few writers who I will ardently seek out and attempt to read everything they ever write.
The story is of a young mixed race boy from Florida who returns to his small hometown after escaping to New York City for college. He once again flees the most recently crafted iteration of himself and even his relationship to attend his highschool girlfriend's funeral back home and discover what happened to her and what led to her ultimate demise. To do so, he is forced to reconnect with a motley crew of former friends and piece together how Aubrey came to her untimely end while the rest of them have somehow survived. Daniel, our lead protagonist, seems oddly obsessed with his ex and wrestles with some survivor's guilt while also realizing that, even as a gay man, he truly did love and care about Aubrey. When we leave people behind in our lives, do we then have to stop loving them? Or are they always subconsciously alive and well as a developmental part of our past and actively functioning foundation of our present?
Rodriques also employs a motif in Daniel's traumatic childhood of break-ins and robberies that, I think, informs his reaction to Aubrey's death. It's as if someone has ransacked Daniel's past to drag up dormant feelings and reopen supposedly long-healed wounds. In the wreckage of this girl's death he is faced with the detritus that it has unearthed and to deal with a past he thought he had escaped. Daniel has to reckon with the consequences of the loose ends he so often leaves in his tendency to cuts ties and run from one identity to the next. Even to go back and face his former life, he leaves his relationship callously in an apparent effort not to have to accommodate more than one version of himself at a time. He has to confront and reconcile with all his facets before he can find any sort of peace with Aubrey's death and the emotional clarity to fully embrace and own his own life.
The plot is loose and initially slow-moving to a point that may frustrate or bore some but the gorgeous use of language alone should compel the reader to make it past the first hundred pages, when the action picks up and answers are uncovered. The mystery of Aubrey's death is not truly a mystery as much as it is just something that Daniel is desperate to work out. This isn't a propulsive or plot-driven narrative but rather an emotional journey and a mesmerizing meditation on grief, love, family and friendship. There are glorious moments of catharsis and healing in this novel that will undoubtedly stay with me for a very long time.
I truly loved this novel like a long-lost friend. After a string of frustratingly "okay" books lately, it has reawakened my love of reading and reinvigorated my passion for great writing. Rodriques has reminded me to treasure my connections with others but most especially the one I have with myself. I'm so grateful to have found this book and to be able to carry its beauty with me into my own life.
July 31, 2024
Dnf
Couldn't get into the story, the characters or the writing style.
Couldn't get into the story, the characters or the writing style.
February 23, 2021
I liked the idea of this book but wasn't so into reading it. It was an interesting setup: a gay man remembering the girl he almost-but-not-quite dated in high school, going back to the town he escaped from and finding that even though he hid a lot from his high school friends, the relationships were real.
But the implementation was boring. It was full of reminiscences out of chronological order, all about Daniels childhood, his high school years, his mother's childhood, and it was too much for me to keep track of. The book didn't feel like it had a plot until 2/3 of the way through, and the characters didn't feel vivid to me. The lack of quotation marks made it hard to follow, though I acknowledge that I was reading an electronic ARC and other editions may be different.
But the implementation was boring. It was full of reminiscences out of chronological order, all about Daniels childhood, his high school years, his mother's childhood, and it was too much for me to keep track of. The book didn't feel like it had a plot until 2/3 of the way through, and the characters didn't feel vivid to me. The lack of quotation marks made it hard to follow, though I acknowledge that I was reading an electronic ARC and other editions may be different.
January 21, 2022
I thought this was ok. The narrative was missing a little something for me- I wanted it to have a little more substance- and people were talking in a car for a loooong time, which got stagnant for me- but there were also super beautiful things about this book and Rodriques conjures vivid sensory Florida ambiance. The 21st century lyrical pensive queer family-history novel (a la Ocean Vuong) is a genre I definitely get down with, and this book certainly had all the trappings, but the foundation didn’t hold as strong. Still worth a read and I’m interested to see what Rodriques does next.
February 20, 2021
This is a very slow, reflective story about our main character, Daniel, dealing with his grief after a high school friend dies. His memories and reflections touch on issues of race, ethnicity, class, sexuality, and identity. However, at times it did feel like a drag as there was little to no plot.
August 29, 2021
An ambitious novel, it started strong, but the verbose descriptions reduced the space for the complex issues R. tried to cover. Ultimately, I slogged through the last pages and found myself wanting to skip whole paragraphs of illustrations which only served the overwrought nostalgia.
June 14, 2021
This is what you get when a first time novelist takes on a world of serious issues all through a cast of characters all under 30. And with a basically non-existent plot.
July 15, 2021
3.5 stars for the first three fifths, 4.5 stars for the final two fifths.
July 29, 2021
Well written debut novel...however, plot development needs improvement.
May 11, 2022
I had no expectations going into All the Water I've Seen Is Running.
I didn't know anything about the book nor had I ever heard of the author, Elias Rodriques.
The story opens with a "back then" flashback and my intuition told me this was going to be one of those plotless narratives that is more of an examination of the characters. I was right.
These types of books are either a hit (Leave the World Behind) or miss (The Catcher in the Rye) for me.
It's New Year's Eve in New York City and Daniel has learned of the untimely death of a former girlfriend, Aubrey.
This leads Daniel to return to his hometown in Florida.
Through precisely executed dialogue amongst old friends and stream of consciousness recollections, Daniel's life and relationships to those around him during his coming of age years up to present unfold .
I must admit that I still don't fully understand Aubrey + Daniel. She is a self proclaimed redneck and he is a victim of childhood abuse, but I'm guessing that this sole female relationship of polar opposites happened to mold him into the man he becomes.
Before the book begins, Daniel has made strides in running from his past---which is punny because Daniel is a long distance runner. He has escaped his impoverished childhood for a life in the big city and has also accepted his queerness.
After Aubrey's death we see the internal stuggles focusing on race, class, sexuality, and his Jamaican heritage.
This book isn't going to be for everyone, but I enjoyed the way it was presented and it left me with no doubts about Rodriques' abilities to construct a beautiful examination of both joy and grief which are as connected as the rivers and seas.
I didn't know anything about the book nor had I ever heard of the author, Elias Rodriques.
The story opens with a "back then" flashback and my intuition told me this was going to be one of those plotless narratives that is more of an examination of the characters. I was right.
These types of books are either a hit (Leave the World Behind) or miss (The Catcher in the Rye) for me.
It's New Year's Eve in New York City and Daniel has learned of the untimely death of a former girlfriend, Aubrey.
This leads Daniel to return to his hometown in Florida.
Through precisely executed dialogue amongst old friends and stream of consciousness recollections, Daniel's life and relationships to those around him during his coming of age years up to present unfold .
I must admit that I still don't fully understand Aubrey + Daniel. She is a self proclaimed redneck and he is a victim of childhood abuse, but I'm guessing that this sole female relationship of polar opposites happened to mold him into the man he becomes.
Before the book begins, Daniel has made strides in running from his past---which is punny because Daniel is a long distance runner. He has escaped his impoverished childhood for a life in the big city and has also accepted his queerness.
After Aubrey's death we see the internal stuggles focusing on race, class, sexuality, and his Jamaican heritage.
This book isn't going to be for everyone, but I enjoyed the way it was presented and it left me with no doubts about Rodriques' abilities to construct a beautiful examination of both joy and grief which are as connected as the rivers and seas.
July 27, 2023
3.5 rounded up. I really enjoyed this debut novel about Daniel, a biracial queer man who has started a new life in NYC after growing up in Florida. He returns back to his hometown when Aubrey, one of his closest and most valued friends, dies. Throughout the story, Daniel reconnects with his old friends and relives a lot of his childhood memories, deals with regret, navigates the racism in his hometown, and ultimately we read about his internal struggles. The writing was very poetic. This novel has a lot of similarities to On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong in my opinion. I enjoyed the writing a lot; however I feel that the plot could have used some strengthening, and I would have liked to see some more character development. Unfortunately, I didn’t feel very connected to any of the characters because of this.
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August 29, 2021Daniel, the queer son of a mixed-race Jamaican couple, flies home to Florida from New York to mourn the death of his high school girlfriend Aubrey who he, in his teenaged hesitancy and confused sexuality, failed to ever really love the way he wanted to. It’s a multi-faceted return story as “home” is many different things. Home is Florida, home is his old track team friends. Home is Aubrey, home is water, home is language. In many ways, you can never just go home. It’s only by accepting this impossibility that Daniel gets closer to home. The more he acknowledges his departure and the differences between him and his old friends the more his speech starts to blend with that of his friends and the punctuation that separates and delineates sentences fades away.
November 15, 2022
I thought there were some strong moments in this book, but overall I was not a huge fan. The lack of quotation marks for characters were speaking is not a style choice I can get behind, and often made the boo harder to follow. I also prefer a book with just a bit more plot. Also, it made me kind of mad that Daniel never dated Aubrey, messing up his chances and then lying about it to seem like more of a man, and then never spoke to her because she did not give him the love he felt she owed him, and then once she dies coming back and making the whole thing about him. A very man thing to do. The two stars are for the nice way it was written alone.
February 25, 2024
Something I love about memoirs is that they allow for a type of creative freedom that other forms of storytelling don’t necessarily allow. With that being said- this book is not a memoir, but it reads like one. It has the same heart and intimacy of a memoir.
This story feels so real - like it could be happening right now, in any moment, just a story of a life and a death and relationships and home and love and the South. It completely captivated me. The dialogue is wonderful too - it feels so intimate that we are witnessing a group of friends reconnect and make fun of each other and love each other.
I laughed and I cried. Love this book.
This story feels so real - like it could be happening right now, in any moment, just a story of a life and a death and relationships and home and love and the South. It completely captivated me. The dialogue is wonderful too - it feels so intimate that we are witnessing a group of friends reconnect and make fun of each other and love each other.
I laughed and I cried. Love this book.
June 14, 2021
What happens when you go home again after building a different sort of life elsewhere? That's what Daniel contemplates after the death of his high school girl friend Aubrey in a car accident. He breaks up with his boyfriend and leaves Brooklyn for Jacksonville where he meets up with his team mates Des and Twig from when they ran track. Des's girlfriend Egypt and Aubrey's friend Jess are also along for this journey as Daniel tries to cope and thinks about confronting Brandon, who was driving the car when Aubrey was killed. Know that this isn't plot driven at all. There's some good meditation on otherness, friendship, and finding yourself. Thanks to netgalley for the ARC. For fans of literary fiction.
August 2, 2021
3.5 stars rounded up. The writing is lyrical, the characters compelling, and the setting is beautifully described—but where’s the plot? The novel is all about mood and atmosphere and self-discovery, but the storylines are minimally developed and seemingly secondary to the author’s meaning and purpose. The writing can be exquisite at times (the dialogue less so), which makes it worth a read in my view.
November 9, 2023
navigating the narrative structure of this book was kinda difficult but figured it out eventually
reminds me of the wandering narrator in the way that teju cole’s open city does
overall i really enjoyed it! not my fav book i’ve read, but still interesting, insightful, and also some interesting reflections on intersections of race and sexuality in conservative small towns
reminds me of the wandering narrator in the way that teju cole’s open city does
overall i really enjoyed it! not my fav book i’ve read, but still interesting, insightful, and also some interesting reflections on intersections of race and sexuality in conservative small towns
June 22, 2023
I bought this on a whim and it is one of the best books I’ve read this year. What stood out to me was how well the plot of the present was woven into recollections of ancestry and found family. It’s an excellent read.
April 4, 2021
Bewildered by the recent death of a high school girlfriend and first love, Daniel ends his relationship with his boyfriend and travels from New York to Florida to process complex feelings and reacquaint himself with old friends and enemies.
All The Water I've Seen is Running eloquently captures many of the nuances of young adulthood in the American south, an experience I've always struggled to describe accurately in my own life. The author Rodriques manages to weave together many intricacies of intersectionality through each character and plotline; race, economic class, immigration history, and sexuality come together to make for a compelling novel.
While the pace of this book was slower than others, I think it aligns well with the plot, mood, and setting. "All The Water" captures the beauty of the American south and its people, and I would definitely read something else by this author.
Note: I received a free ebook copy of this novel from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
All The Water I've Seen is Running eloquently captures many of the nuances of young adulthood in the American south, an experience I've always struggled to describe accurately in my own life. The author Rodriques manages to weave together many intricacies of intersectionality through each character and plotline; race, economic class, immigration history, and sexuality come together to make for a compelling novel.
While the pace of this book was slower than others, I think it aligns well with the plot, mood, and setting. "All The Water" captures the beauty of the American south and its people, and I would definitely read something else by this author.
Note: I received a free ebook copy of this novel from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
January 2, 2024
Better than Normal People!
February 2, 2024
I loved the way this book flowed (heh) and how each chapter melded the past and the present so well. There are no quotation marks so that made the reading experience different as well.
August 7, 2023
Interesting meditation on coming back, loss of something you never really had, and a history you feel disconnected from. Not for everyone….but it really spoke to me.
February 13, 2022
You know when you read the exact right book for a time in your life? This was that for me.
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