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 "A suspenseful story about a serial killer stalking a high school girls swim team in a quiet New England town." - The Daily News