In Open Water, Maria Flook explores the charged and eerie shoreline of Newport, Rhode Island, where Willis Pratt squanders his days running small cons. But his heart's not in it - he's obsessed with fishing boat tragedies from his childhood and with Holly, a pretty new neighbor who is charged with arson.
Their romance is interrupted when Willis is called home to care for his dying step-mother, Rennie, whose biological son wants to place her in a care facility. Willis is determined to guarantee his stepmother the death she desires, but when he arrives, Rennie sees that it is he who needs caring for - Willis quickly gets hooked on her prescription morphine.
This is Maria Flook's natural ground, a harsh and sensual terrain where family debt and carnal knowledge intersect. A fierce wit and an unrelenting vision earned her first novel, Family Night, a Special Citation from the PEN American/Ernest Hemingway Foundation, and the New York Times praised it for "a spare, subtle, ethereal, and erotic style," calling her gifts "extravagant and apparent on every page."
Open Water is a ringing confirmation of Maria Flook's remarkable talent. Caught up in the novel's unremitting current, its characters are propelled to a resolution that no one left on shore could have imagined.
Genre: Literary Fiction
Their romance is interrupted when Willis is called home to care for his dying step-mother, Rennie, whose biological son wants to place her in a care facility. Willis is determined to guarantee his stepmother the death she desires, but when he arrives, Rennie sees that it is he who needs caring for - Willis quickly gets hooked on her prescription morphine.
This is Maria Flook's natural ground, a harsh and sensual terrain where family debt and carnal knowledge intersect. A fierce wit and an unrelenting vision earned her first novel, Family Night, a Special Citation from the PEN American/Ernest Hemingway Foundation, and the New York Times praised it for "a spare, subtle, ethereal, and erotic style," calling her gifts "extravagant and apparent on every page."
Open Water is a ringing confirmation of Maria Flook's remarkable talent. Caught up in the novel's unremitting current, its characters are propelled to a resolution that no one left on shore could have imagined.
Genre: Literary Fiction
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