I have been submitting to agents...have requests for 5 partial, one full and one waiting for an exclusive. So yeah, sort of. But one of my partials just turned it down with a lot of praise...I suspected first 50 pages are a bit of a slog..am too sick of reading it and have no idea anymore if its good or not...can someone help? I need honesty, not gentleness.
MOVING THROUGH WATER takes as its protagonist a thirty-year-old molecular biologist who loves the beakers and crucibles in her immaculate stainless-steel lab more than she loves people---or so she thinks. When the book begins, Fay Stern, the research scientist heroine, is pathologically in love with her brother, Arthur, who serves as her mirror, her other self, her guru and, ultimately, her dramatic antagonist. It is this complex relationship which frames the book and provides its dramatic and thematic structure. By the moment of the book’s critical “fourth act,” Fay is in love with two men. First, is her brother Arthur, an accomplished, if unconventional, pediatric surgeon.
Having grown up with a mother who never counseled her—let alone initiated her into the world of women, it is an overly mature Arthur to whom she turns with all the questions of a deeply sensitive and curious girl—the life-and-death ones, as well as the trivial. It would have been Arthur, therefore, who might accompany her to buy her first Kotex as well as to bury the family dog and help her with her volcano-in-a-bottle science project.
The other love of her life is Harry, an ex-pro quarterback with a heart as big as the Ritz. Harry finds his love for the gridiron eclipsed by a consuming desire to use his mighty hands to bake bread. Harry is exactly the man most women want---gentle, forthright, handsome and nurturing. And it is precisely this nurturing side which leads Harry to embrace being a father to Moe---the baby whose existence—and possible nonexistence--- propel the plot.
Fay, who ironically works in genetic research, is totally ambivalent. She doesn’t feel she could be a good wife—never mind a mother. Her complex attitude about being both wife and mother, not surprisingly, goes back to the childhood she shared with Arthur, and the idiosyncrasies of their elderly parents’ approach to childrearing. Both are nearly ghosts, even when alive. This characterization allows us to understand the unusual bond between brother and sister. The relationship between Fay and Arthur might seem overly entwined, almost pathological, however ---their love is deeply platonic in the best sense of the word. Harry is awestruck when Fay finally tells him she is pregnant with their child. He can’t wait for Moe to be born. And when he is, it is as if Fay’s darkest worry has come true, Moe is a finicky, problem baby who refuses her efforts at comfort.
Fay, a serious nature girl, aches to take advantage of a mild Minnesota autumn and go camping before the blankets of snow bury them inside with a constantly wailing baby. They pack up Moe and go to the forest. If only Moe didn’t respond so eagerly to everyone but her—although she is the one who supplies the milk, Fay would be consoled, believing at last that the real problem is colic and not her maternal deficiencies. No matter what she does, no matter how many books she reads, the baby rejects the breast. She’s certain she’s a bad mother and that her baby knows in his secret heart that she didn’t want him. The camping trip, though it starts perfectly, becomes the time and place where, despite everyone’s best intentions, tragedy occurs.
Fay has two men to relieve her of childcare so she can enjoy a much-needed break from agonizing about the baby and her own perceptions of failed motherhood. She finds, however, that there is no vacation from motherhood. A mother is always a mother regardless of breaks or babysitters. This is the vocation that never ends---a contract literally written in blood.
Although they had each enjoyed a beer with lunch, Arthur had also smoked pot. Fay hadn’t paid it much mind, but when their after-picnic siesta turns into a tragedy that threatens the life of her infant, she remembers that detail and begins to see Arthur in a different light.
Arthur had indeed fallen and hit his head. Baby Moe, like the eponymous Moses, ends up in the water—but without a basket to cradle him. In a state of confusion and grief, Fay is pulled between two of the men she loves and believes she has to choose between them. MOVING THROUGH WATER is moving through gravity and any motion through the unexpected heaviness of water is like moving against gravity, and towards the terrific graveness of love.
MOVING THROUGH WATER takes as its protagonist a thirty-year-old molecular biologist who loves the beakers and crucibles in her immaculate stainless-steel lab more than she loves people---or so she thinks. When the book begins, Fay Stern, the research scientist heroine, is pathologically in love with her brother, Arthur, who serves as her mirror, her other self, her guru and, ultimately, her dramatic antagonist. It is this complex relationship which frames the book and provides its dramatic and thematic structure. By the moment of the book’s critical “fourth act,” Fay is in love with two men. First, is her brother Arthur, an accomplished, if unconventional, pediatric surgeon.
Having grown up with a mother who never counseled her—let alone initiated her into the world of women, it is an overly mature Arthur to whom she turns with all the questions of a deeply sensitive and curious girl—the life-and-death ones, as well as the trivial. It would have been Arthur, therefore, who might accompany her to buy her first Kotex as well as to bury the family dog and help her with her volcano-in-a-bottle science project.
The other love of her life is Harry, an ex-pro quarterback with a heart as big as the Ritz. Harry finds his love for the gridiron eclipsed by a consuming desire to use his mighty hands to bake bread. Harry is exactly the man most women want---gentle, forthright, handsome and nurturing. And it is precisely this nurturing side which leads Harry to embrace being a father to Moe---the baby whose existence—and possible nonexistence--- propel the plot.
Fay, who ironically works in genetic research, is totally ambivalent. She doesn’t feel she could be a good wife—never mind a mother. Her complex attitude about being both wife and mother, not surprisingly, goes back to the childhood she shared with Arthur, and the idiosyncrasies of their elderly parents’ approach to childrearing. Both are nearly ghosts, even when alive. This characterization allows us to understand the unusual bond between brother and sister. The relationship between Fay and Arthur might seem overly entwined, almost pathological, however ---their love is deeply platonic in the best sense of the word. Harry is awestruck when Fay finally tells him she is pregnant with their child. He can’t wait for Moe to be born. And when he is, it is as if Fay’s darkest worry has come true, Moe is a finicky, problem baby who refuses her efforts at comfort.
Fay, a serious nature girl, aches to take advantage of a mild Minnesota autumn and go camping before the blankets of snow bury them inside with a constantly wailing baby. They pack up Moe and go to the forest. If only Moe didn’t respond so eagerly to everyone but her—although she is the one who supplies the milk, Fay would be consoled, believing at last that the real problem is colic and not her maternal deficiencies. No matter what she does, no matter how many books she reads, the baby rejects the breast. She’s certain she’s a bad mother and that her baby knows in his secret heart that she didn’t want him. The camping trip, though it starts perfectly, becomes the time and place where, despite everyone’s best intentions, tragedy occurs.
Fay has two men to relieve her of childcare so she can enjoy a much-needed break from agonizing about the baby and her own perceptions of failed motherhood. She finds, however, that there is no vacation from motherhood. A mother is always a mother regardless of breaks or babysitters. This is the vocation that never ends---a contract literally written in blood.
Although they had each enjoyed a beer with lunch, Arthur had also smoked pot. Fay hadn’t paid it much mind, but when their after-picnic siesta turns into a tragedy that threatens the life of her infant, she remembers that detail and begins to see Arthur in a different light.
Arthur had indeed fallen and hit his head. Baby Moe, like the eponymous Moses, ends up in the water—but without a basket to cradle him. In a state of confusion and grief, Fay is pulled between two of the men she loves and believes she has to choose between them. MOVING THROUGH WATER is moving through gravity and any motion through the unexpected heaviness of water is like moving against gravity, and towards the terrific graveness of love.