What do you think?
Rate this book
What the World Will Look Like When All the Water Leaves Us
The stories in Laura van den Berg’s rich and inventive debut illuminate the intersection of the mythic and the mundane.
A failed actress takes a job as a Bigfoot impersonator. A grieving missionary becomes obsessed with a creature rumoured to live in the forests of the Congo. And, in the title story, a young woman travelling with her scientist mother in Madagascar confronts her burgeoning sexuality and her dream of becoming a long-distance swimmer.
A failed actress takes a job as a Bigfoot impersonator. A grieving missionary becomes obsessed with a creature rumoured to live in the forests of the Congo. And, in the title story, a young woman travelling with her scientist mother in Madagascar confronts her burgeoning sexuality and her dream of becoming a long-distance swimmer.
194 pages, Paperback
First published October 1, 2009
39 people are currently reading
3196 people want to read
About the author
Laura van den Berg
29 books782 followersLaura van den Berg was born and raised in Florida. She is the author of five works of fiction, including The Third Hotel, a finalist for the New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award, and I Hold a Wolf by the Ears, one of Time Magazine’s 10 Best Fiction Books of 2020. She is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Strauss Living Award from the American Academy of Arts & Letters, a literature fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Bard Fiction Prize, a PEN/O. Henry Award, and a MacDowell Colony Fellowship, and is a two-time finalist for the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award. Laura is currently a Senior Lecturer on Fiction at Harvard. Her next novel, State of Paradise, is forthcoming from FSG in July 2024. She lives in the Hudson Valley.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 178 reviews
August 26, 2011
The day after my 22nd birthday, I had one of those serene, emphatic moments people write about in books. You know when the world around you seems to freeze, and all you’ve ever done in life and all you are going to do, becomes suddenly clear. For me, this moment came while Christmas tree shopping with my parents. In the midst of the New England countryside, all those questions my twenty-something self struggled with so incessantly just didn’t seem to matter anymore. It was a quick, fleeting moment – but I swear it happened.
These unexplainable flashes are often the most difficult to capture on the page. When writers try to encapsulate the experience, it can come off as self-indulgent or just plain stupid. But it is in this space that Laura van den Berg’s characters dwell. Lucky for us, she succeeds at catching this poignancy in her debut story collection, What the World Will Look Like When All the Water Leaves Us (Dzanc Books; $16.95).
The women of van den Berg’s stories are going through some stuff. From the actress turned Bigfoot impersonator who must reassess her life’s ambition with a dying boyfriend by her side, to the young American teacher living in Paris whose husband, paranoid about recent civil unrest, one day disappears, van den Berg’s characters are at pivotal moments in their lives. While modern ‘chick lit’ might have you believing the only character worthy of a book deal is an editorial assistant trying to make it in the big city (no offense to her, by the way – I was her once), van den Berg’s women are refreshing with their ambition, knowledge, and fortitude.
The heroines of these stories are scientists, students, artists, professors, athletes. They travel and study and blow your mind with their insight. They are the women you want to stand near at the party to hear about her experience open water swimming in Madagascar, or that time she stood her ground against a mugger who tried taking an African mask she herself had stolen. These women are intelligent without being standoffish, thoughtful without being preachy, and while their circumstances may at times seem out of the ordinary – like the botanist among a group who is in search of the Loch Ness monster, or the college student whose parents both died while on an exploration in the rain forest – their emotional struggles are as real as they get.
In each of van den Berg’s eight stories, the main characters are all at significant turning points in their lives, and dealing with loss in one form of another – whether it be of a loved one or of a dream they’re forced to give up. The author succeeds most when her protagonist is left by herself – allowing her to achieve powerful moments of clarity. Van den Berg excels at examining the space that opens when a character suddenly finds a void in her life. She doesn’t let that loss define them though, rather she allows the ways in which they consider and move through each of their lives speak. So while their situations may at times seem distant to us, we never feel disconnected because of their emotional closeness to us. This enables us to develop a great respect for our author – even as her characters brave the truths we ourselves might be afraid to admit. In the story, “Still Life with Poppies,” the narrator contemplates the heroine’s next move: “It wasn’t that she wanted so badly to remain in Paris; more than anything, she was incapable of deciding, of striking in a different, unknown direction, and was frustrated by her inability to release herself from her life as easily as her husband had, a top spiraling across a flat surface.”
Do we take that leap forward or remain where we are? How long can we escape our pain before we must face it? Do we choose comfort or adventure? Though the questions may seem straightforward, when it comes to life, we all know how complicated they really are. An exceptional storyteller, van den Berg’s first book emphatically explores how women of our generation go about answering them. She writes eloquently about their insecurities without her characters coming across as whiny or people to be pitied. And while we don’t always see how things turns out for them, with the resting place van den Berg takes us to, we somehow know things are going to work out. Portraying the diversity we women too often go unnoticed for in literature, What the World Will Look Like When All the Water Leaves Us is a triumph debut. - Sarah, Fashion Writer
Find the original review at http://blog.modcloth.com/2010-01-27-w...
These unexplainable flashes are often the most difficult to capture on the page. When writers try to encapsulate the experience, it can come off as self-indulgent or just plain stupid. But it is in this space that Laura van den Berg’s characters dwell. Lucky for us, she succeeds at catching this poignancy in her debut story collection, What the World Will Look Like When All the Water Leaves Us (Dzanc Books; $16.95).
The women of van den Berg’s stories are going through some stuff. From the actress turned Bigfoot impersonator who must reassess her life’s ambition with a dying boyfriend by her side, to the young American teacher living in Paris whose husband, paranoid about recent civil unrest, one day disappears, van den Berg’s characters are at pivotal moments in their lives. While modern ‘chick lit’ might have you believing the only character worthy of a book deal is an editorial assistant trying to make it in the big city (no offense to her, by the way – I was her once), van den Berg’s women are refreshing with their ambition, knowledge, and fortitude.
The heroines of these stories are scientists, students, artists, professors, athletes. They travel and study and blow your mind with their insight. They are the women you want to stand near at the party to hear about her experience open water swimming in Madagascar, or that time she stood her ground against a mugger who tried taking an African mask she herself had stolen. These women are intelligent without being standoffish, thoughtful without being preachy, and while their circumstances may at times seem out of the ordinary – like the botanist among a group who is in search of the Loch Ness monster, or the college student whose parents both died while on an exploration in the rain forest – their emotional struggles are as real as they get.
In each of van den Berg’s eight stories, the main characters are all at significant turning points in their lives, and dealing with loss in one form of another – whether it be of a loved one or of a dream they’re forced to give up. The author succeeds most when her protagonist is left by herself – allowing her to achieve powerful moments of clarity. Van den Berg excels at examining the space that opens when a character suddenly finds a void in her life. She doesn’t let that loss define them though, rather she allows the ways in which they consider and move through each of their lives speak. So while their situations may at times seem distant to us, we never feel disconnected because of their emotional closeness to us. This enables us to develop a great respect for our author – even as her characters brave the truths we ourselves might be afraid to admit. In the story, “Still Life with Poppies,” the narrator contemplates the heroine’s next move: “It wasn’t that she wanted so badly to remain in Paris; more than anything, she was incapable of deciding, of striking in a different, unknown direction, and was frustrated by her inability to release herself from her life as easily as her husband had, a top spiraling across a flat surface.”
Do we take that leap forward or remain where we are? How long can we escape our pain before we must face it? Do we choose comfort or adventure? Though the questions may seem straightforward, when it comes to life, we all know how complicated they really are. An exceptional storyteller, van den Berg’s first book emphatically explores how women of our generation go about answering them. She writes eloquently about their insecurities without her characters coming across as whiny or people to be pitied. And while we don’t always see how things turns out for them, with the resting place van den Berg takes us to, we somehow know things are going to work out. Portraying the diversity we women too often go unnoticed for in literature, What the World Will Look Like When All the Water Leaves Us is a triumph debut. - Sarah, Fashion Writer
Find the original review at http://blog.modcloth.com/2010-01-27-w...
September 24, 2017
These stories have within them what I love--A struggling actress as a Bigfoot impersonator! A guy who quits his life to look for the Loch Ness Monster!--but I was left a bit unmoved at the end of them most of the time. I would have loved to cut ten-to-fifteen pages from each of these, trimming down the constant descriptive language and reforming it into fewer lines that are more concise and clever, making the revelations less soft, having the characters make harder left turns every once in awhile.
The writing itself is technically proficient, and van den Berg has her style down solid--no surprise for someone whose stories are propelled by science. That form isn't necessarily a bad thing, but after the third or fourth 25-page story about academic pursuits mixing (kind of, but not really) dangerously with abandonment/distance/uncertainty, I felt like I was reading the formula instead of the results. Nothing wrong with that--how many Amy Hempel stories are just her talking at a dog, for shit's sake--I just wanted her to lean harder into the odd parts instead of the doldrums the odd parts bounce against.
One thing I'll never forget is the part in the story where the woman steals the giant mask at the shop she works in. Her holding it as she gets mugged is a powerful image, and what I would have liked to see more of in the stories: an action with a consequence, an unexpected risk that makes total sense.
These are fine stories from a talented writer, and I'd be interested in reading more, but this book seems like a promise to make good on.
The writing itself is technically proficient, and van den Berg has her style down solid--no surprise for someone whose stories are propelled by science. That form isn't necessarily a bad thing, but after the third or fourth 25-page story about academic pursuits mixing (kind of, but not really) dangerously with abandonment/distance/uncertainty, I felt like I was reading the formula instead of the results. Nothing wrong with that--how many Amy Hempel stories are just her talking at a dog, for shit's sake--I just wanted her to lean harder into the odd parts instead of the doldrums the odd parts bounce against.
One thing I'll never forget is the part in the story where the woman steals the giant mask at the shop she works in. Her holding it as she gets mugged is a powerful image, and what I would have liked to see more of in the stories: an action with a consequence, an unexpected risk that makes total sense.
These are fine stories from a talented writer, and I'd be interested in reading more, but this book seems like a promise to make good on.
December 26, 2013
I spent most of the day hate-reading this book. Its repetitive structures (of plot, imagery, relationships) were frustrating and plodding. and yet there were occasional moments of sweetness where something genuine peeked out from behind the undergraduate writing-workshop cleverness. Maybe that's why I kept going. van den Berg's stories are variations on a single theme: educated, lonely white woman encounters primitive-mythological (Balinese death mask, Bigfoot, Loch Ness monster). There's always water, which seems to be kind of a meta-metaphor--as if it represents the fantasy that all problems might be washed away, all mysteries revealed (or just drowned, as if each story is a rewriting of Kate Chopin's Awakening). Characters are incessantly touching each other between the shoulder blades in ways that are supposed to be fraught with significance and intimacy. But the stories lapse into heavy-handed axiom. Van den Berg seems not to trust her imagery to signify nor her readers to interpret.
February 9, 2015
I snapped this up after I'd read her first novel. There is a bit of sameness to these stories, but it's almost a challenge of how many of the same elements she can pack in and still make it feel different. Scientist parents, death, and being alone, so alone.
Oh yeah and lake monsters. I will be looking for her other books!
"All bodies of water look the same to me now, places to get lost in."
"I'm only thirty-three and yet I feel like I've been walking the earth for hundreds of years."
If you like brooding, depressing, lonely stories, these will be for you! I do, so these are for me.
ETA: These stories were discussed on Episode 017 of the Reading Envy Podcast, after the author was mentioned in passing on Episode 014.
Oh yeah and lake monsters. I will be looking for her other books!
"All bodies of water look the same to me now, places to get lost in."
"I'm only thirty-three and yet I feel like I've been walking the earth for hundreds of years."
If you like brooding, depressing, lonely stories, these will be for you! I do, so these are for me.
ETA: These stories were discussed on Episode 017 of the Reading Envy Podcast, after the author was mentioned in passing on Episode 014.
January 21, 2019
This book made me contemplate how perhaps folks should read their potential partner’s short stories before falling in love so that they might save themselves years of disappointment.
April 3, 2017
I bought a copy of this book after reading and loving the story "Where we must be". I read it online and then heard her read it. The other stories in the collection did not disappoint. Van den Berg's voice is fresh and unique. I love her characters: unsure, vulnerable, exploring who they are. There's often a parallel story that threads, twists through the narrative, enriching and enhancing the main story. I've ordered her other books - she has just become 'one to watch' - for me.
June 13, 2012
If I was going to define who I want to be as a writer, if I had all of the ability of my dreams, if I could convey my stories in precisely the manner that I have always hoped to, I would say to throw Laura van den Berg, Lauren Groff, and Steven Millhauser into a blender. I don't think this actually sounds so odd.
Laura van den Berg's craft is one of poetic elegance. Readers are immediately haunted by her characters, whose loneliness resonates in tune with every human being's deepest and most private fears. She makes use of cryptozoology, athletic endeavor, and other "searches" as a narrative device to explore the spaces inside of her characters. They emerge from her words as fully realized individuals, a skill many other writers haven't yet managed to master in the short story form.
I think one of the most awesome (and I mean that literally) aspects of her skill is how she is capable of painting so vivid a picture of the characters' environments in a way that no word is wasted. Each part of the sentence not only tells you what is happening around the character, but how the character perceives it, what the character chooses to perceive first. Everything external reflects internally and vice versa.
I full well believe that she is in line to become one of the next literary legends.
Laura van den Berg's craft is one of poetic elegance. Readers are immediately haunted by her characters, whose loneliness resonates in tune with every human being's deepest and most private fears. She makes use of cryptozoology, athletic endeavor, and other "searches" as a narrative device to explore the spaces inside of her characters. They emerge from her words as fully realized individuals, a skill many other writers haven't yet managed to master in the short story form.
I think one of the most awesome (and I mean that literally) aspects of her skill is how she is capable of painting so vivid a picture of the characters' environments in a way that no word is wasted. Each part of the sentence not only tells you what is happening around the character, but how the character perceives it, what the character chooses to perceive first. Everything external reflects internally and vice versa.
I full well believe that she is in line to become one of the next literary legends.
December 14, 2011
This is an extraordinary story collection that remains on the ever-growing stack of 'books I love' on my writing desk. Laura van den Berg is a skilled storyteller with a keen and compassionate eye. I read riveted, loving the strange and wonderful places van den Berg's stories took me and the deeply human lives they showed me. I returnto these rich, imaginative stories often, both for the pleasure as a reader and for the instruction and inspiration as a writer.
January 22, 2010
I envy the fact that this author found her voice at such a young age--sophisticated, smart, worldly, but tender, too. I look forward to her next book.
December 27, 2018
Outstanding collection of short stories that are often obscure, but truly thought provoking. Unique settings, exquisite writing. The characters in the stories leap out of the page they are so real! Some stories kind of end hanging, with little resolution. Frankly I didn't care as they were quirky and invigorating!
June 2, 2022
Beautiful and heartbreakingly relatable.
February 26, 2025
An excellent collection of short stories, haunting and thoughtful. I'll definitely read this author again.
July 22, 2022
can't get enough of Laura Van Der Berg
July 15, 2015
This is a gorgeous collection of short stories that all take place in and around various bodies of water. Most of the stories explore independence from the people we love, in various ways: people who want to be free but can't leave their loved ones; people who have lost loved ones and aren't sure they like their freedom; people who choose to walk away; people who choose to stay though a part of them wants to walk away. They also explore themes of searching, usually for mythical creatures or things. Most often, the people who want or have freedom are in opposition to the people who are seeking - they want freedom from the seekers, or (if they don't like their independence) they're drawn to the seekers. The stories are often quiet, on the surface, but there are emotional depths to explore in them. And the writing is beyond lovely.
Like anyone, I'm sure, I have favorites from the collection. "Goodbye My Loveds" is the story of a young woman who is caring for her (oddball) tween brother after the death of their parents - all the ways she loves him and loves his weirdness and wants to protect him, and all of the things she can't have that she wants because of him. "Inverness" is the story of a woman looking for a mysterious and rare flower around Loch Ness, shortly after her lover leaves her for someone else, while staying at an inn where some other scientists have gathered to search for the Loch Ness Monster along with the husband of the innkeeper. "Up High in the Air" is about a woman in an unhappy marriage, a professor who is cheating on her husband with one of her students, whose mother is falling into dementia several states away where she can't handle it directly. And the title story, "What the World Will Look Like When All the Water Leaves Us," is about a teenager who has been wrenched away from her regular life by her biologist mother after her father leaves them, and her decision to pull away from her mother and what she wants to return home and pursue her own dreams.
Like anyone, I'm sure, I have favorites from the collection. "Goodbye My Loveds" is the story of a young woman who is caring for her (oddball) tween brother after the death of their parents - all the ways she loves him and loves his weirdness and wants to protect him, and all of the things she can't have that she wants because of him. "Inverness" is the story of a woman looking for a mysterious and rare flower around Loch Ness, shortly after her lover leaves her for someone else, while staying at an inn where some other scientists have gathered to search for the Loch Ness Monster along with the husband of the innkeeper. "Up High in the Air" is about a woman in an unhappy marriage, a professor who is cheating on her husband with one of her students, whose mother is falling into dementia several states away where she can't handle it directly. And the title story, "What the World Will Look Like When All the Water Leaves Us," is about a teenager who has been wrenched away from her regular life by her biologist mother after her father leaves them, and her decision to pull away from her mother and what she wants to return home and pursue her own dreams.
November 18, 2009
Laura van den Berg was raised in Florida and earned her MFA at Emerson College. She is the recipient of scholarships from the Bread Loaf and Sewanee Writers' Conferences, the 2009 Julia Peterkin Award, and the 2009-2010 Emerging Writer Lectureship at Gettysburg College. The winner of the Dzanc Prize, Laura’s first collection of stories, What the World Will Look Like When All the Water Leaves Us, was published by Dzanc Books in October 2009 and selected by Barnes & Noble as a Holiday Discover Great Writers title.
Inverness originated in the way that many of my stories do,” writes van der Berg, “with a first line—in this case, ‘All evening, the men spoke only of the monster.’ From there the worlds of Emily and McKay, of the Twinflower and the Craigdarroch and the Loch Ness Monster, unfolded.
"The final version of the story, however, didn’t come into the world easily. Out of all the stories in my collection, Inverness took the longest to get right. Between its original publication in Third Coast and the publication of my collection, the story went through numerous changes—adding characters, subtracting characters, re-writing the ending. I had moments when I was certain I would never get the story right, that I would have to drop it from the collection at the last minute, and then, one day, it started to come together.
"The characters that populate Inverness, particularly Emily, still linger with me. I often think of what might have happened on that hillside after Emily opened her eyes, after she left her imaginings and rejoined the world."
Download and read "Inverness" from Laura van der Berg’s debut collection at ForeWord's Book Club.
Inverness originated in the way that many of my stories do,” writes van der Berg, “with a first line—in this case, ‘All evening, the men spoke only of the monster.’ From there the worlds of Emily and McKay, of the Twinflower and the Craigdarroch and the Loch Ness Monster, unfolded.
"The final version of the story, however, didn’t come into the world easily. Out of all the stories in my collection, Inverness took the longest to get right. Between its original publication in Third Coast and the publication of my collection, the story went through numerous changes—adding characters, subtracting characters, re-writing the ending. I had moments when I was certain I would never get the story right, that I would have to drop it from the collection at the last minute, and then, one day, it started to come together.
"The characters that populate Inverness, particularly Emily, still linger with me. I often think of what might have happened on that hillside after Emily opened her eyes, after she left her imaginings and rejoined the world."
Download and read "Inverness" from Laura van der Berg’s debut collection at ForeWord's Book Club.
December 9, 2014
"Up High in the Air," "Where We Must Be" and "Still Life With Poppies" were all stunning, cinematic, enormous, moving without being maudlin - pitch-perfect portraits of desire and loneliness and absurdity. At times I wanted the absurdity to be amplified; van den Berg's language is very straightforward in most stories, and I found myself remembering images more than paragraphs. This line, however, from the end of "The Rain Season" rang in my head for a week:
"I concentrate on the scent, but it vanishes into the aroma of rain and tree bark, the way one life can collapse into another and different people can stir within the same body, like bats thrashing inside a secret hollow."
"I concentrate on the scent, but it vanishes into the aroma of rain and tree bark, the way one life can collapse into another and different people can stir within the same body, like bats thrashing inside a secret hollow."
February 7, 2013
These stories have a perfect mix of the strange and the intimate ordinariness of character lives. Some have more bizarreness than others, but always the right amount. The best aspect of these stories, though, is the subtlety of the emotions. The emotion is always there, and you can always feel exactly what the message is through what the character is feeling, but it isn't crassly articulated. Pressed, I'm not sure I could articulate it myself. Instead, I just sat back after reading each story and knew I got it (whether or not what I got was what was intended).
February 11, 2011
This is the first book I have won through Goodreads give away, thanks Goodreads This was a quick and easy read, which I enjoyed a lot.
Iloved it how in such a small amount of time the author could make you really feel for the characters. On the downside since there is only a small amount of time, there are many unanswered questions at the end of each story.
All up this was a really good read, and I am looking forward to seeing what Laura Van den Berg does next.
Iloved it how in such a small amount of time the author could make you really feel for the characters. On the downside since there is only a small amount of time, there are many unanswered questions at the end of each story.
All up this was a really good read, and I am looking forward to seeing what Laura Van den Berg does next.
April 12, 2018
The characters have very different lives, yet were very similar emotionally, so the stories felt very connected. Each woman had an unhappiness that she had to sit with, which is very relatable, and I liked that despite their disappointments or pain there comes across a sense of inner fortitude. I enjoyed the interesting turns each story took, and having a female-character-driven story collection. It was a bit melancholic, or contemplative, with the kind of characters that stick in your head.
March 6, 2015
So beautiful--Laura van den Berg made me realize I enjoy reading short stories. Some of the emotional space she covers--and the observations she makes about her characters flaws, especially in terms of perception and communication--is absolutely mind blowing in a Virginia Woolf kind of way.
November 14, 2009
What a great first book for Laura! I am so excited for her as a friend and as an author. The stories in her book were unique and adventureous! The characters were complex and developed. She makes you feel for their sorrows and share in their joy. I cannot wait to read her next novel
May 6, 2010
A BARNES AND NOBLE DISCOVER GREAT NEW WRITERS OFFICIAL 2009 HOLIDAY SELECTION.
"van den Berg taps into her characters’ losses with an impressive clarity."
—Publishers Weekly
"Stunning, desolate, and unforgettable."
—Booklist (starred review)
"van den Berg taps into her characters’ losses with an impressive clarity."
—Publishers Weekly
"Stunning, desolate, and unforgettable."
—Booklist (starred review)
May 27, 2016
Damn, what a great collection of stories. Two themes I loved in this one -- the presence of water in every story, whether it's a lake, the sea, the rain, and the sense of wanting, whether it's wanting to be someone else or somewhere else. I'm definitely going to read more of her work.
January 1, 2010
A superb collection of stories, more like 4.5 stars than 4. What a terrific way to end my reading year!
January 1, 2010
Several variation on the theme of pursuit. Each story is an evening read. I am still thinking about what it means.
March 19, 2015
Every story in this book was incredible!
November 14, 2017
3.5 stars. Great short story collection. Sad and a little strange, but not too strange. Lots of heavy imagery, full of people struggling, almost drowning, in loss and sorrow.
June 5, 2016
Pitch-perfect stories that artfully capture the complexity and nuance of everyday life and relationships.
May 30, 2018
A well-written collection of forgettable stories.
February 8, 2019
It’s not the writing I wasn’t into, but it seemed like each story was about the same woman- same attitude, life style, etc. I had trouble getting into it.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 178 reviews