Her Death Was Also Water (Allen C Jones, MidnightSun)

Seven people, an open boat, a flood. I’m not sure if they’re supposed to be archetypes, but they’re uncomfortably familiar. The men: a widowed South-Asian mini-mart owner, a pathetic liberal academic, a muscled ‘alpha male’ bully with a misogynistic internal monologue and his timid younger brother. The women: a cynical believer in internet conspiracies who married for money, her daughter, and her daughter’s best friend. In a few days the flood covers the whole world, cities and all. One of several unexplained encounters takes place on an island where the characters meet dead loved ones who offer some closure and then sprout giant black wings and fly away, two people from the boat leaving with them. This, and other surreal elements, are where Allen C Jones’s book lost me. I like weird fiction, but the rapid shifts between the real and the strange with no substantial narrative connective tissue left me unsure of what I was supposed to make of either. Her Death Was Also Water ends with the remaining characters moments from death due to exposure and starvation, with the resolution left to a few lines in an epilogue that gives us a brief glimpse of the post-flood world, but no mention of any bizarre phenomenon. Days after reading this book I’m still not sure how to parse it. This novel could be fun for an analytical book club or of interest to folks who really want to wrestle with something.

Stefen Brazulaitis is the owner of Stefen’s Books in Perth.

Category: Reviews