This Is the Water

From Yannick Murphy, award-winning author of The Call, comes a fast-paced story of murder, adultery, parenthood, and romance, involving a girls' swim team, their morally flawed parents, and a killer who swims in their midst. In a quiet New England community members of swim team and their dedicated parents are preparing for a home meet. The most that Annie, a swim-mom of two girls, has to worry about is whether or not she fed her daughters enough carbs the night before; why her husband, Thomas, hasn't kissed her in ages; and why she can't get over the loss of her brother who shot himself a few years ago. But Annie's world is about to change. From the bleachers, looking down at the swimmers, a dark haired man watches a girl. No one notices him. Annie is busy getting to know Paul, who flirts with Annie despite the fact that he's married to her friend Chris, and despite Annie's greying hair and crow's feet. Chris is busy trying to discover whether or not Paul is really having an affair, and the swimmers are trying to shave milliseconds off their race times by squeezing themselves into skin-tight bathing suits and visualizing themselves winning their races. When a girl on the team is murdered at a nearby highway rest stop--the same rest stop where Paul made a gruesome discovery years ago--the parents suddenly find themselves adrift. Paul turns to Annie for comfort. Annie finds herself falling in love. Chris becomes obsessed with unmasking the killer. With a serial killer now too close for comfort, Annie and her fellow swim-parents must make choices about where their loyalties lie. As a series of startling events unfold, Annie discovers what it means to follow your intuition, even if love, as well as lives, could be lost.

About the Author :
Yannick Murphy is the author of The Call; Signed, Mata Hari; Here They Come; and The Sea of Trees, as well as two story collections and several children's books. She is the recipient of a Whiting Writers' Award, a National Endowment for the Arts Award, a Chesterfield Screenwriting Award, a Pushcart Prize, and the Laurence L. & Thomas Winship/PEN New England Award. Her work has appeared in The Best American Nonrequired Reading and The O. Henry Prize Stories. She lives in Vermont with her husband and children.

Review :
"Wondrously dynamic. . . . A warm-hearted paean to family devotion." - Wall Street Journal on The Call "Undeniably fascinating. . . . Yannick Murphy's The Call is a one-of-a-kind story...filled with forthright, understated prose reminiscent of Cormac McCarthy's." - Daily Beast on The Call "Murphy pays close attention to the sensual and the macabre. . . . In the quotidian details of farm life, Murphy demonstrates how crucial it is to focus on the small, real tasks in the face of something too big and too dark to understand." - Time Out New York on The Call "There is beauty in these snapshots alone, yet the most striking moments appear as they play fugue to one another. . . . Told through the prose of the father's daily log, The Call is a subtle, lush, and ultimately, masterful novel." - Nylon Magazine on The Call "Murphy is a subtle, psychologically perceptive writer. . . . A marvelous book: sweet and poignant without ever succumbing to easy sentiment, formally inventive and dexterous without ever seeming showy. A triumph." - Kirkus Reviews (starred review) on The Call "Incisive and imaginative. . . . [A] hypnotically patterned, wryly funny, and warmly compassionate tale . . . Visceral detail and deep knowledge stoke this gorgeously realized novel . . . With phenomenal economy and delicious deadpan humor, Murphy dramatizes . . . the many forms of giving and healing." - Booklist (starred review) on The Call "This Is the Water isn't just a good airplane read. . . . Murphy's hauntingly lovely writing will hold plenty of appeal for a broader audience." - Mother Jones, The Best Books of 2014 "Murphy is playing in the same territory Tom Perrotta explored in Little Children, the intersection of the life of a psychopath with the small daily concerns of privileged couples. . . . By skipping among the minds of many of her characters, and emphasizing the discrepancy between what they know at any given point in time and what the reader knows, Murphy amps up the suspense." - Columbus Dispatch "By skipping among the minds of many of her characters, and emphasizing the discrepancy between what they know at any given point in time and what the reader knows, Murphy amps up the suspense." - Columbus Dispatch "A gifted storyteller with an unusual, hypnotic voice. . . . The nuances of small-town life are superbly captured in prose reminiscent of Philip Roth, but it is menace that drives the story forward. Truly original, it casts a spell that lingers in your mind." - Daily Mail (London) "This is the Water offers a rare combination of literary merit and genuine suspense. It is lyrical and fluid, like the swimming pool that plays such a key role in its prose." - Bookreporter.com "Almost unbearably suspenseful, this novel propels the reader mercilessly toward a stunning conclusion." - Cleveland Plain Dealer "This Is the Water isn't just a good airplane read. . . . The criminal aspect is a backdrop to a story about failing marriages, infidelity, obsessive parenting, the mindset of a killer, and of course, swim-meet intrigue . . . But the novel's oddities and Murphy's hauntingly lovely writing will hold plenty of appeal for a broader audience." - Mother Jones, The Best Books of 2014 "Murphy's writing is disarming in that it captures the way people actually think. . . . An uncommon story. This Is The Water is quietly unlike anything else." - A.V. Club, "A" "This Is the Water is a chilling combination of crime and domestic drama, and its effects linger." - Shelf Awareness "An inventive thriller set in suburbia - and in the troubled minds of her characters. The second-person narrative voice that feels alienating at the outset . . . soon becomes hypnotic . . . and then seriously unsettling. . . . Murphy proves skillful at generating a proper climate of dread, forcing us to focus our fears on the killer's next victim. But her real accomplishment is her study of the anxieties reflected in the exacting rules of the club. 'There is no crying at swim meets' is the first rule that needs smashing, for the mental health of the stressed-out moms and tightly wound girls we've come to care about." - New York Times Book Review "An inventive thriller set in suburbia -- and in the troubled minds of her characters. . . . Murphy proves skillful at generating a proper climate of dread . . . But her real accomplishment is her study of the anxieties reflected in the exacting rules of the club." - New York Times Book Review "A suspenseful story about a serial killer stalking a high school girls swim team in a quiet New England town." - The Daily News "Compelling. . . . Style and substance and swimming mesh perfectly into a page-turner that sweeps you along with the power of a winning breaststroke. . . . This is the Water is the perfect, refreshing drip in the pool for the dog days of summer." - Boston Globe "[A] propulsive, psychologically lush, witty, and unpredictable novel. . . . Murphy's evocation of feverish competition, stressed marriages, and the shocking banality of a serial killer's inner life coalesce in a novel of acute observation, penetrating imagination, and rare agility that is capped by a resounding denouement." - Booklist (starred review) "Obscenely suspenseful. . . . In Murphy's hands, the structure becomes almost hypnotic--and when the story hits full speed in the final quarter, the suspense becomes almost excruciating." - Publishers Weekly (starred review) "This mesmerizing novel follows Annie, a distracted middle-age mother of two who volunteers for her daughters' highly competitive swim team. . . . The resulting intimacy you develop with each character takes this book beyond compelling into seriously addictive: You feel as they feel, be it fear, loss, longing or that most gripping of all feelings, love. Do not miss it." - Oprah.com, 7 Best Binge-Reads of Summer "Mesmerizing. . . . The resulting intimacy you develop with each character takes this book beyond compelling into seriously addictive: You feel as they feel, be it fear, loss, longing or that most gripping of all feelings, love. Do not miss it." - Oprah.com, 7 Best Binge-Reads of Summer "A domestic tale and unlikely crime thriller, adds a striking new wrinkle to the author's consistently surprising body of work. . . . Ms. Murphy excels at such intimate observations of everyday family life. . . . A pulse-raising thriller." - Wall Street Journal "Murphy's writing is disarming in that it captures the way people actually think. . . . Entering the mind of a murderer is as unsettlingly uncomfortable as entering Annie's mind is disquietingly familiar. These are two devastating stories spun together. . . . That someone so exceedingly ordinary is thrust into the danger of a killer makes the story more compelling, but not more irresistible. The combination gives rise to an uncommon story. This Is The Water is quietly unlike anything else." - A.V. Club, "A" "This is a wonderful novel. Original, suspenseful, funny and profoundly moving. It's about family, community, the human bond with animals and--oh yeah--spaceships. I am in awe of Yannick Murphy's achievement and I plan to recommend The Call to everyone I know." - Geraldine Brooks, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Caleb's Crossing "Remarkable. . . . Suspenseful . . . The truthful evocation of family is the real triumph of 'The Call'. There is much love in this novel, and just as much truth about the pain and pleasure of family life. 'What is taking place is as layered as something in nature, ' writes Murphy of an encounter between two of her characters. She could well be describing her own clever and beautiful book." - Boston Globe on The Call "Its peculiar charm eludes easy categorization. The most striking element of The Call is its distinctive structure: The story comes to us in a stream of statements and summaries, as in the veterinarian's medical logbook or journal. . . . With its combination of Yankee stoicism and offhand poetry, the book conveys the slightly archaic feel of a biblical parable, a real accomplishment in today's hyper-contemporary fictional landscape. All told, The Call is definitely worth answering." - Washington Post on The Call "Displaying an almost magical economy. . . . The Call conjures the quirky satisfactions of rural life . . . true heroism is revealed in the humanity of a taciturn and decent man." - People (4 Stars) on The Call "Murphy seasons the rising tension with humor. . . . A different sort of murder yarn that boasts twists in both the style and the plot." - Kirkus Reviews "Murphy's latest propulsive, psychologically lush, witty, and unpredictable novel, a tale of young competitive swimmers and their parents. . . . Murphy's evocation of feverish competition, stressed marriages, and the shocking banality of a serial killer's inner life coalesce in a novel of acute observation, penetrating imagination, and rare agility that is capped by a resounding denouement." - Booklist (starred review)