Weight of Water (the novel)
Massachusetts novelist Anita Shreve first "discovered" the Isles of Shoals while sailing off coastal New England in the 1970s. “We were lost in the fog" she recalls, "and in that dramatic way that fog lifts, all of a sudden there they were." Inspired by the tale of the Smuttynose murders, she initially wrote a six-page short story that later became the bestselling novel Weight of Water (1996).
In a brief introductory note to Weight of Water, the author alerts readers that passages are "taken verbatim" from the 1873 Wagner trial transcript. Her characters, she says, "are either the product of the author's imagination or, if real, are used fictitiously." In other words, even the historical characters in the novel might say and do things they never did in real life.
"History can't belong to anybody," Anita Shreve told a documentary filmmaker after the publication of Weight of Water. "I use history in the service of fiction. It is the story and the language that come first." Her book, she said, is just the opposite of what is traditionally known as historical fiction.
The author tumbled fact and myth together to create the background for a contemporary parallel plot about a magazine photographer named Jean James who is assigned to take pictures of Smuttynose Island. Jean arrives aboard a 41-foot sailboat with her brother-in-law and his sexy girlfriend. Jean's husband, a somber alcoholic poet, and their lively five-year old daughter are also aboard. Shreve's protagonist becomes obsessed with the island murders.
Professor C. Lawrence Robertson at the University of New Hampshire wondered whether Shreve had overstepped the bounds of good taste and human respect when using historical figures in the service of fiction.
"Does an author have the right to malign the lives of real people, at one time very much alive, to support a fictional account of a modern story?" Robertson wrote in the Portsmouth Herald in March 2000. Does a simple disclaimer at the front of a novel, Robertson argued, give the author license to create an "untrue, unfair, and impossible account" that attacks the memory of people who are not alive to defend themselves, and smear their descendants as well?
Shreve's research into the case was driven, she says, by her frustration at not knowing whether Wagner was truly guilty. On finding Maren Hontvet's deathbed confession, a device invented by the author, the fictional Jean James begins to wonder if Maren might not have been an innocent victim as she claimed. Shreve's novel is less about an actual ax murder, but more an exploration of the destructive power of jealousy. The parallel plots focus on a fictional photographer and a largely imaginary Maren Hontvet. Yet the factual details are so closely woven into the novel that readers have no way of knowing what details of the murders are real, and which are made up. Mystery on the Isles of Shoals was written to set the record straight once and for all.
(c) 2015 J. Dennis Robinso, all rights reserved.n
In a brief introductory note to Weight of Water, the author alerts readers that passages are "taken verbatim" from the 1873 Wagner trial transcript. Her characters, she says, "are either the product of the author's imagination or, if real, are used fictitiously." In other words, even the historical characters in the novel might say and do things they never did in real life.
"History can't belong to anybody," Anita Shreve told a documentary filmmaker after the publication of Weight of Water. "I use history in the service of fiction. It is the story and the language that come first." Her book, she said, is just the opposite of what is traditionally known as historical fiction.
The author tumbled fact and myth together to create the background for a contemporary parallel plot about a magazine photographer named Jean James who is assigned to take pictures of Smuttynose Island. Jean arrives aboard a 41-foot sailboat with her brother-in-law and his sexy girlfriend. Jean's husband, a somber alcoholic poet, and their lively five-year old daughter are also aboard. Shreve's protagonist becomes obsessed with the island murders.
Professor C. Lawrence Robertson at the University of New Hampshire wondered whether Shreve had overstepped the bounds of good taste and human respect when using historical figures in the service of fiction.
"Does an author have the right to malign the lives of real people, at one time very much alive, to support a fictional account of a modern story?" Robertson wrote in the Portsmouth Herald in March 2000. Does a simple disclaimer at the front of a novel, Robertson argued, give the author license to create an "untrue, unfair, and impossible account" that attacks the memory of people who are not alive to defend themselves, and smear their descendants as well?
Shreve's research into the case was driven, she says, by her frustration at not knowing whether Wagner was truly guilty. On finding Maren Hontvet's deathbed confession, a device invented by the author, the fictional Jean James begins to wonder if Maren might not have been an innocent victim as she claimed. Shreve's novel is less about an actual ax murder, but more an exploration of the destructive power of jealousy. The parallel plots focus on a fictional photographer and a largely imaginary Maren Hontvet. Yet the factual details are so closely woven into the novel that readers have no way of knowing what details of the murders are real, and which are made up. Mystery on the Isles of Shoals was written to set the record straight once and for all.
(c) 2015 J. Dennis Robinso, all rights reserved.n
