Shackling Water

by Adam Mansbach

At the age of nineteen, saxophone prodigy Latif James-Pearson boards a bus to Manhattan to find his aging idol, the great Albert Van Horn. The centers of Latif’s universe soon become a Harlem boarding house, where he spends his days practicing intensely, and the downtown club where Van Horn's group performs and Latif hides in the shadows, listening. There, he begins a complex affair with an older white painter named Mona, and starts working for Say Brother, a charismatic drug dealer. But as Latif’s frustrations with his playing mount, and the demands of balancing artistry, hustling, and love push him toward crisis, he is forced to confront his music, his past, and himself. A virtuosic story told with lyrical intensity, Shackling Water heralds the arrival of an important new voice in American literature.


From the Trade Paperback edition.

Genres: Fiction

240 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2002

About the author

Adam Mansbach is the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Go the Fuck to Sleep, as well as the novels Rage is Back, The End of the Jews (winner of the California Book Award), and Angry Black White Boy, and the memoir-in-verse I Had a Brother Once. With Dave Barry and Alan Zweibel, he co-authored For This We Left Egypt, a finalist for the Thurber Award for American Humor, and the bestselling A Field Guide to the Jewish People. Mansbach's debut screenplay, for the Netflix Original BARRY, was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award and an NAACP Image Award, and he is a two-time recipient of the Reed Award and the American Association of Political Consultants' Gold Pollie Award, for his 2012 Obama/Biden campaign video "Wake The Fuck Up" and his 2020 Biden/Harris campaign ad "Same Old," both starring Samuel L. Jackson. Mansbach's work has appeared in The New Yorker, New York Times Book Review, Esquire, The Believer, The Guardian, and on National Public Radio's All Things Considered, The Moth Storytelling Hour, and This American Life. His next novel, The Golem of Brooklyn, will be published by One World in September.

Reviews

[Emily Rosenbaum · Rating 4 out of 5]

Certain stuff you were supposed to do in private--fast, pray, woodshed--because to have cats know about it might sully the ritual's purity, shade your motivations with self-consciousness. All of a moment you might find yourself looking left then right before helping a blind man across the street, not to check for traffic but in hopes of being seen. p. 15

This guy can write.

[Izetta Autumn · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is beautifully rendered in a structure that is reminiscent of the music it seeks to illuminate. Shackling Water is a bildungsroman - a classic coming-of-age story about a young saxonphonist.

Mansbach shows his versatility with this novel. He uses jazz as a main structural feature of his prose. The story arc is intriguing, yet clear and the character's are drawn with such deft but subtle detail, that you feel you know them.

Not only is it a good book, it's moving.

This book is a good selection for anyone who found Catcher in the Rye a bit trite and wanted something better written and deeper.

[twirls · Rating 3 out of 5]

not a bad book, but I found it somewhat irritating in its reliance on stereotypes and racial dichotomies... a not so endearing counterpoint to the free-flowing verse the author strains for. the dialogue is clunky at times, and while it was an enjoyable read, I couldn't shake the hunch that dude wrote a novel to elevate on literature's pedestal his own overly romanticized perception of jazz bohemia. it's a rather tired riff.

[Peggy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Didn't actually finish it. I liked the IDEA of it, and the jazzy writing, but I never got into it. Might pick it up again another time.

[Suraj Alva · Rating 5 out of 5]

one of the best books i read in jail

[Bob · Rating 5 out of 5]

Trumpet and soul. Can't really have one without the other. A recommended read to more easily understand relations and differences of race and class.

[Jerry Peace · Rating 1 out of 5]

Just could not get past the puerile, self-righteous post-coital ridiculous Latif ramblings on first edition page 61. Life's too short to endure that for another one hundred seventy-one pages.