The Sweetness of Water by Nathan Harris - review

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Title: The Sweetness of Water

Author: Nathan Harris

Genre: historical fiction

Pages: 368

My rating: ★★★☆☆

Longlisted for the Booker Prize 2021

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The Sweetness of Water has all the elements of an incredible story: A clandestine romance; a dash of adventure; an unlikely friendship; unheroic heroes; murder; revenge; a reckoning; and bittersweet freedom. Yet, despite all that, the story fell flat to me. The problems lay, not in the plot or the characters, but in the construction. Nathan Harris wasn’t able to weave the elements together seamlessly, as a masterful storyteller would’ve. Seeing as this is his debut novel, it's understandable. His prose was overworked and clunky. It was too long and the ending dragged on. I don't think he’s a bad writer, just an inexperienced one. Normally I wouldn’t have judged a debut novel so harshly, but seeing as this is part of the Booker Prize longlist, I’m judging it against all the other nominees.

While many novels set during the Civil War end with the slaves being freed, Harris examines the harsh reality of what happens after that “freedom” is granted. How free can you be when you have no home, you can’t find a job, and when you do you’re paid basically nothing, and society still rejects you and treats you like scum? That’s the reality Prentiss and Landry, two brothers and newly freedmen, are facing in the opening pages of the novel. Their fates change when they meet George, an eccentric and lonely landowner, and his wife Isabelle. He offers them a place to sleep and a job with fair wages, and eventually, a friendship is born, provoking the wrath of the townspeople.

I like how the novel switches between the POVs of the different characters, but I wish we got to spend more time on Prentiss’. I feel like he was the least developed of the characters. My favourite moment was the bittersweet conversation between Prentiss and Clementine. And of course any time Isabelle and Landry interacted.