The Body Is Water

by Julie Schumacher

Three months pregnant after a two-night stand, Jane Haus resigns her job teaching English to confront her ambivalence about having a baby. Drawn by an irresistible inner homing device, she returns to her childhood home on the New Jersey shore—to a gruff and eccentric father who spends his days in a room full of clocks; to her brilliant sister Bee, as efficiently organized as the summer is formless; to the blissfully hot privacy of an attic full of memories; to water. And in this chaotic season of growth Jane will try to piece together the puzzle of her family's history—searching for an understanding of the mother she never really knew... and reaching out for the solace only family can offer.

Genres: Fiction

272 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1995

About the author

JULIE SCHUMACHER grew up in Wilmington, Delaware, and graduated from Oberlin College and Cornell University, where she earned her MFA. Her first novel, The Body Is Water, was published by Soho Press in 1995 and was an ALA Notable Book of the Year and a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award. Her 2014 novel, Dear Committee Members, won the Thurber Prize for American Humor; she is the first woman to have been so honored. She lives in St. Paul and is a faculty member in the Creative Writing Program and the Department of English at the University of Minnesota.

Reviews

[Caleb · Rating 5 out of 5]

I tracked down a copy of The Body Is Water after reading Schumacher's wildly funny Dear Committee Members, half-expecting another laugh riot of a novel. What I got was something more somber in subject and in tone, a deeply profound and intimate exploration of family, memory, and loss. Schumacher's language is so rich and mesmerizing, I often found myself highlighting entire paragraphs, slack-jawed with her commanding prose. Schumacher writes with the introspection, style, and emotional maturity of a writer well beyond her own years (when she first published the novel). It's a downright shame this book is now out of print. This is the best first novel I've read in years.

[Joanna · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had this author as a Professor at St. Olaf for several courses. The first was Dystopic, or nightmarish societies. In the second course - American Lit since 1945 she introduced me to Sylvia Plath, and assigned me to give a presentation on her presuming I would really like her work. My god was she right. I think I've always had a crush on Julie. Her first book, The Body Is Water, is incredibly descriptive absurdly hilarious and darkly genius, if you are the kind of person to appreciate that. The writing style and character development is superior to the story but I found that not to be a detriment to the experience of the book. Read it. Or else.

[Nicole Casey · Rating 3 out of 5]

there were some really beautiful and inspiring passages throughout but i was snooooozing

but i cried during the last 10 pages because there is nothing like the love between two sisters <33333

[Kathleen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Unsettled, then floating underwater. That's how I felt reading this novel about a woman who returns to her family home, 28 years old, single and pregnant, leaving her latest teaching job behind her. So much of Jane Haus' early life is a mystery to her and returning home, sleeping among the boxes of family history in the attic, is part of her intention to understand, despite her father's and older sister's objections. Jane's mother's story is shrouded in mystery, and her death seems to be the sentinel event in the family. "Seeing him through the glass, I'll know that instead of being lost all by myself we are lost together and that neither maps nor the help of others will allow us to find our way."

The story of Jane, Beatrice, her sister, her father and her mother has universal threads of loss, of family's not being able to find the words, of still trying to do the right thing, finding their center. They frustrated me at times and made me laugh at others, and in the end, I hoped for their future.

After reading "Dear Committee Members," I wanted to read something else by Julie Schumacher. This is her debut novel, published in 1995, now sadly out of print, and demonstrates her skill with language, her understanding of the way we behave despite our knowing better.

[Dennis Bolen · Rating 4 out of 5]

It seems a lot of fiction is being published these days on the subject of family background, and really, what other subject is there? Almost everything debatable grows from our familial origins and some of the greatest thinkers and therapists have mined this vein their entire careers. Midwestern writer Julie Schumacher, well known in the school-journal circles for her short fiction, turns to this realm in The Body Is Water to tell a slow-evolving tale of a woman returning to her father’s house in a time of crisis.

If this scenario sounds familiar, it is. The Body Is Water is resplendent with concise prose and a lovely setting, Sea Haven, New Jersey. The frequent descriptions of this tourist-residential retreat are worth this book alone, and the important story of a woman lost on the road of life is affecting. But how many times can we read about the same angst?

[Lorrie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Unresolved

This is a beautifully written, engaging storyline with fully developed characters, and I have no idea of what happened to them in the end. I have enough unresolved on the daily.

[Michelle · Rating 2 out of 5]

Started out well, but then every character ended up being very odd.

[Charlie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book hit me hot and cold, but the ending broke me.

[Ben Brackett · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sub-meh. Didn't connect with anything in the book.

[Samuel P McManus · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting reading

The author has a good sense of writing a story and produces a nice novel. I recommend this book. Above average..

[Theresa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jane Haus is three months pregnant and has decided to walk away from her teaching job in Pennsylvania and move back in with her cantankerous, widowed father in her childhood home on the Jersey shore. She doesn’t know the father of her child, a man with whom she had a two-night stand, and is ambivalent about the pregnancy.

Her older, brilliant and more competent sister, Bee, learns of her decision and quits her job in Atlanta to move back home as well to help her sister, and father, as she goes through her pregnancy.

While living at her father’s home she comes to put together the puzzle of her family’s eccentric history. Learning about a mother she never really knew and hoping that by learning about her mother, she will learn what she needs to know to be a mother and meet the challenge of the next phase of her life.

I enjoyed this book. Jane’s memories of her childhood and life on the Jersey shore are well written and really made me understand why Jane was so confused and uncertain about what she should do when she found herself pregnant. In fact, I’m planning to try to find other books by this author to read.

[Megan Baxter · Rating 2 out of 5]

I didn't like this book at all. When one of the first things you notice is that the author uses too many semi-colons, you know you're in for a rough ride.

But it wasn't the grammar. It was the thoroughly unlikeable main character who doesn't seem to have changed at all throughout the book. She's selfish, she thinks everyone is out to get her or dislikes her, with no particular evidence, she judges her sister and father on their behaviour but doesn't want to be judged on her own, refuses to do anything, think anything through, is angry when other people do anything - and yet, through the book, the author wants you to sympathize with her!

Seriously. This isn't a book that's a comment on selfishness. The author really wants you to care about this character, but I found her loathsome. Everyone in the book spends most of their time taking care of her, and all they get is judgment back.

Ugh. No more for me, thank you.

[Alan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved Julie Schumacher's academic farce, Dear Committee Members, so I thought I'd give her first novel a try. I found it very strong on character development but with only a simple plot.

The protagonist, Jane, is a late 20’s English teacher who in June quit her 4th straight teaching job and has moved family home on a New Jersey beach because she is pregnant. The house is the source of a painful family history and Jane becomes obsessed with finding out all the details. Each of the characters is so completely developed that I felt by the end of the book that I knew them personally and cared for them, too.

The story also describes a pregnancy with more detail and description than I can ever recall reading. Though the novel was slow in spots, I felt compelled to keep reading to see what new family history discoveries Jane would make and speculate on how they would shape her attitude toward her own child.

[Gail Gauthier · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this book because Schumacher wrote a YA novel, The Unbearable Book Club for Unsinkable Girls, about the daughter of the main character in this one. Loved the YA book. There was one little bit in this first one about the main character, Jane, reading a certain type of book and how it affected her that gets picked up big time in the YA book. It's always interesting to see some kind of pattern in an author's writing.

I think the second book for younger readers is far more focused with a stronger story. The writing of the main character in that second book is more certain, more coherent. Everything about it works.

The Body Is Water is one of those woman-in-crisis-going-home-and- discovering-a-family-secret stories. Perhaps I just don't find that whole situation very compelling.

[Maggie · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Jane and I don’t have a treasure map to the freezer”
And other impeccable lines of a dad trying his best.

This book hooked into me with Schumacher’s insane prose. Her writing is completely unique I was shocked to find her body of work (intentional pun) slim. She’s got some insane skill here. I liked the story well enough and was invested to meander to the end. I am dead set that one would be hard pressed to find ethos and allegories like these.

[Stevie Holcomb · Rating 3 out of 5]

Oh, this was allright. The protaginist was kind of dull. Her sister was a much more interesting character. It flowed along, but not much of a "story" there, as if the author just started writing one day without a plot or plan. But I read the whole thing, which says something over the books I put down halfway through.

[Michael · Rating 1 out of 5]

Nothing about this book interested me. The characters were flat, the writing dull, and the conflict was drab and not well-constructed. It was as though the only thing carrying the book was the "theme." To be honest, I didn't even finish this book.

[SaraK · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is very well written; I could feel Jane's emotions throughout. Not the most gripping book I have ever read, therefore only 4 stars.

[Bethany · Rating 1 out of 5]

The description made me think I would love this book, and I ended up hating pretty much everything about it.