Top Ten Tuesday: Water

Top Ten Tuesday was created by The Broke and the Bookish in June of 2010 and was moved to That Artsy Reader Girl in January of 2018. It was born of a love of lists, a love of books, and a desire to bring bookish friends together.

Previous Top Ten Tuesday Topics

• 20th June: Books on My Summer 2023 To-Read List
• 27th June: Most Anticipated Books Releasing During the Second Half of 2023
• 11th July: Freebie: Books Set in Rome
• 18th July: Books With One-Word Titles
• 25th July: Ten Most Recent Books I Did Not Finish
• 1st August: Forgotten Backlist Titles
• 8th August: Books I’ve Read/Want to Read Because of Top Ten Tuesday
• 15th August: Bookshops in Rome I Am Excited For

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And after a number of posts focused on Rome over the last couple of weeks – and one missed post because we were travelling back – things are coming back to a normal routine slowly! The holiday is over and the last vestiges of Rome have been washed from our clothes; we have now entered the final week of the summer break and I am facing the reality that I am back at work on Friday… this Friday! This week!

But this week’s topic does still maintain its holiday-ish flavour with the rather wide focus on “water” in titles, on covers and within settings. Swimming pools don’t readily leap to my memory, but oceans, seas, lakes… rain?

Water is such a potent symbol in writing: it is a setting that takes humanity literally out of its element, creating a vulnerability that we don’t always feel on land; it remains largely unexplored and alien and home to utterly foreign and incomprehensible creatures; it is an image of chaos, calmed by the word of God in so many cultures and mythologies. What is one of the most iconic lines in film? “Release the kraken!”

The ocean can be a metaphor of our minds and emotions and imaginations – look at the language we use for our interiority be it shallow or deep, turbulent or calm, we apply maritime language to it continually; it can be symbolic of female sexuality, birth and the creation of life.

There are so many oceans to choose from that this is in no way an exhaustive list, nor could I limit it to ten!

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The Mountain in the Sea, Ray Nayler

There are creatures in the water of Con Dao.
To the locals, they’re monsters.
To the corporate owners of the island, an opportunity.
To the team of three sent to study them, a revelation.

Their minds are unlike ours.
Their bodies are malleable, transformable, shifting.
They can communicate.
And they want us to leave.

When pioneering marine biologist Dr. Ha Nguyen is offered the chance to travel to the remote Con Dao Archipelago to investigate a highly intelligent, dangerous octopus species, she doesn’t pause long enough to look at the fine print. DIANIMA- a transnational tech corporation best known for its groundbreaking work in artificial intelligence – has purchased the islands, evacuated their population and sealed the archipelago off from the world so that Nguyen can focus on her research.

But the stakes are high: the octopuses hold the key to unprecedented breakthroughs in extrahuman intelligence and there are vast fortunes to be made by whoever can take advantage of their advancements. And no one has yet asked the octopuses what they think. And what they might do about it.

Love the cover of this one the premise… although I have come across some mixed reviews of it.

Tress of the Emerald Sea, Brandon Sanderson

The only life Tress has known on her island home in an emerald-green ocean has been a simple one, with the simple pleasures of collecting cups brought by sailors from faraway lands and listening to stories told by her friend Charlie. But when his father takes him on a voyage to find a bride and disaster strikes, Tress must stow away on a ship and seek the Sorceress of the deadly Midnight Sea. Amid the spore oceans where pirates abound, can Tress leave her simple life behind and make her own place sailing a sea where a single drop of water can mean instant death?

Sanderson is always a reliable writer, and this Cosmere-interpreted The Princess Bride promises to be incredible fun!

Our Wives Under the Sea, Julia Armfield

Miri thinks she has got her wife back, when Leah finally returns after a deep sea mission that ended in catastrophe. It soon becomes clear, though, that Leah may have come back wrong. Whatever happened in that vessel, whatever it was they were supposed to be studying before they were stranded on the ocean floor, Leah has carried part of it with her, onto dry land and into their home.

To have the woman she loves back should mean a return to normal life, but Miri can feel Leah slipping from her grasp. Memories of what they had before – the jokes they shared, the films they watched, all the small things that made Leah hers – only remind Miri of what she stands to lose. Living in the same space but suddenly separate, Miri comes to realize that the life that they had might be gone.

I have been waiting to read this for a long time, and I’m not altogether sure why I’ve not begun it…

Skin of the Sea, Natasha Bowen

This is the story of a great love – a love that will threaten worlds and anger Gods.

This is a story that will change history.

Simidele is one of the Mami Wata, mermaids duty-bound to collect the souls of those who die at sea and bless their journeys back home to the Supreme Creator.

But when a living boy is thrown overboard a slave ship, Simi saves his life, going against an ancient decree and bringing terrible danger to the mami wata.

Now Simi must journey to the Supreme Creator to make amends – a journey of vengeful gods, treacherous lands and legendary creatures. If she fails, she risks not just the fate of all Mami Wata, but also the world as she knows it.

This is a YA novel that was recommended to me by a student at school. I do love a good mermaid narrative – and my daughter has re-ignited her love of The Little Mermaid with the new film too!

The Living Sea of Waking Dreams, Richard Flanagan

In a world of perennial fire and growing extinctions, Anna’s aged mother is dying―if her three children would just allow it. Condemned by their pity to living she increasingly escapes through her hospital window into visions of horror and delight.

When Anna’s finger vanishes and a few months later her knee disappears, Anna too feels the pull of the window. She begins to see that all around her others are similarly vanishing, but no one else notices. All Anna can do is keep her mother alive. But the window keeps opening wider, taking Anna and the reader ever deeper into a strangely beautiful novel about hope and love and orange-bellied parrots.

This must be one of the most enigmatic titles for a book on this list! And a great premise, from a writer I have loved previously… the sea itself seems very much metaphorical here, but I cannot conceive of the reason I’ve not read this yet.

Wide Sargasso Sea, Jean Rhys

Born into the oppressive, colonialist society of 1930s Jamaica, white Creole heiress Antoinette Cosway meets a young Englishman who is drawn to her innocent beauty and sensuality. After their marriage, however, disturbing rumours begin to circulate which poison her husband against her. Caught between his demands and her own precarious sense of belonging, Antoinette is inexorably driven towards madness, and her husband into the arms of another novel’s heroine. This classic study of betrayal, a seminal work of postcolonial literature, is Jean Rhys’s brief, beautiful masterpiece.

Here we are moving to novels I have read, although some years ago with this one! In fact, I read this without having read Jane Eyre but now, having read Bronte’s masterpiece, I want to return to re-read this one. If there was any character who deserved a back story narrative, it was mad locked-up Bertha!

The Starless Sea, Erin Morgenstern

Are you lost or are you exploring?

When Zachary Rawlins stumbles across a strange book hidden in his university library it leads him on a quest unlike any other. Its pages entrance him with their tales of lovelorn prisoners, lost cities and nameless acolytes, but they also contain something impossible: a recollection from his own childhood.

Determined to solve the puzzle of the book, Zachary follows the clues he finds on the cover – a bee, a key and a sword. They guide him to a masquerade ball, to a dangerous secret club, and finally through a magical doorway created by the fierce and mysterious Mirabel. This door leads to a subterranean labyrinth filled with stories, hidden far beneath the surface of the earth.

When the labyrinth is threatened, Zachary must race with Mirabel, and Dorian, a handsome barefoot man with shifting alliances, through its twisting tunnels and crowded ballrooms, searching for the end of his story.

You are invited to join Zachary on the starless sea: the home of storytellers, story-lovers and those who will protect our stories at all costs.

This was just an amazing novel: a paean to writing, language, books, texts, stories, myths… Morgenstern may not publish frequently, but she writes beautifully and evocatively when she does.

And the Ocean Was Our Sky, Patrick Ness

From the multi-award-winning author of A Monster Calls comes a haunting tale of power and obsession that turns the story of Moby Dick upside down.

The whales of Bathsheba’s pod live for the hunt. Led by the formidable Captain Alexandra, they fight a never-ending war against men. Then the whales attack a man ship, and instead of easy prey they find the trail of a myth, a monster, perhaps the devil himself… With their relentless Captain leading the chase, they embark on the final hunt, one that will forever change the worlds of whales and men.

Patrick Ness is one of my favourite YA authors, and this is a completely novel story from him: gone are the semi-autobiographical young men, gone are the allusions and nods to pop culture, gone are the YA settings of high school… instead we get a potent, powerful imaginative inversion of the Moby-Dick narrative: disturbing and unsettling, lyrical at moments and brutal in others, this was incredible!

The Ocean at the End of the Lane, Neil Gaiman

This is what he remembers, as he sits by the ocean at the end of the lane:

A dead man on the back seat of the car and warm milk at the farmhouse.

An ancient little girl and an old woman who saw the moon being made.

A beautiful housekeeper with a monstrous smile.

And dark forces woken that were best left undisturbed.

They are memories hard to believe, waiting at the edges of things. The recollections of a man who thought he was lost but is now, perhaps, remembering a time when he was saved…. 

Gaiman, again, is a favourite author and this novel is one of his underappreciated gems, in my opinion – perhaps because the narrator is an old man recalling his past, it put off YA readers; perhaps because it is a coming-of-age narrative beneath all the witchcraft and monsters, it put off adult readers… It was, however, wonderful!

The Bell in the Lake, Lars Mytting

Norway, 1880. Winter is hard in Butangen, a village secluded at the end of a valley. The lake has frozen, and for months the ground is too hard to bury the dead. Astrid Hekne dreams of a life beyond all this, beyond marriage, children, and working the land to the end of her days. Then Pastor Kai Schweigaard takes over the small parish, with its 700-year-old stave church carved with pagan deities. The two bells in the tower were forged by Astrid’s forefather in the sixteenth century, in memory of conjoined twins Halfrid and Gunhild Hekne. They are said to hold supernatural powers.

The villagers are wary of the pastor and his resolve to do away with their centuries-old traditions, though Astrid also finds herself drawn to him. And then a stranger arrives from Dresden, with grand plans for the church itself. For headstrong Astrid this may be a provocation too far.

Talented architecture student Gerhard Schönauer is an improbable figure in this rugged community. Astrid has never met anyone like him; he seems so different, so sensitive. She finds that she must make a choice: for her homeland and the pastor, or for an uncertain future in Germany.

Then the bells begin to ring . . .

This was a recommendation from a colleague – in fact a boss – from work after they left and before they committed the final act of separation, leaving the Whatsapp group! I’ve not got around to reading it yet, but have been told it is great.

Lake Wobegon Days, Garison Keillor

Lake Wobegon Days is the marvellous chronicle of an imaginary place located somewhere in the middle of the state (but not on the map) and named after an Indian word meaning ‘Here we are!’ or ‘We sat all day in the rain waiting for you.’ From the narrator – a skinny Protestant kid fascinated by the Catholic church – we learn of the town’s beginnings and of the settlers who made their lives there. A contemporary classic filled with warmth and humour, sadness and tenderness, songs and poems, it is also an unforgettable portrait of small-town America.

The dreamy days of 1995, after University finals but before we had to leave Cambridge for the last time, were when I read this and it recalls memories of lying on the banks of the river, punting, summer freedom…. Also, for what it is worth, I remember enjoying the book!

The Paper Palace, Miranda Cowley Heller

On a perfect August morning, Elle Bishop heads out for a swim in the pond below ‘The Paper Palace’ – her family’s holiday home in Cape Cod. As she dives beneath the water she relives the passionate encounter she had the night before, against the side of the house that knows all her darkest secrets, while her husband and mother chatted to their guests inside…

So begins a story that unfolds over twenty-four hours and fifty years, as Elle’s shocking betrayal leads her to a life-changing decision.

Although on the surface, this is a love triangle novel, there was a deeper and darker and more powerful undercurrent to it: abuse, redemption, survival… and it contained a lake beside the eponymous Paper Palace to which the family retreated for holidays.

The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi, Shannon Chakraborty

Amina al-Sirafi should be content. After a storied and scandalous career as one of the Indian Ocean’s most notorious pirates, she’s survived backstabbing rogues, vengeful merchant princes, several husbands, and one actual demon to retire peacefully with her family to a life of piety, motherhood, and absolutely nothing that hints of the supernatural.

But when she’s tracked down by the obscenely wealthy mother of a former crewman, she’s offered a job no bandit could refuse: retrieve her comrade’s kidnapped daughter for a kingly sum. The chance to have one last adventure with her crew, do right by an old friend, and win a fortune that will secure her family’s future forever? It seems like such an obvious choice that it must be God’s will.

Yet the deeper Amina dives, the more it becomes alarmingly clear there’s more to this job, and the girl’s disappearance, than she was led to believe. For there’s always risk in wanting to become a legend, to seize one last chance at glory, to savor just a bit more power…and the price might be your very soul.

A great, fun, inclusive read full of rollicking adventure, swash-buckling, magic and demons! I’d have liked more of the ocean and the ship myself, but there we go….

Moby-Dick, Herman Melville

Moby Dick is the story of Captain Ahab’s quest to avenge the whale that ‘reaped’ his leg. The quest is an obsession and the novel is a diabolical study of how a man becomes a fanatic.

But it is also a hymn to democracy. Bent as the crew is on Ahab’s appalling crusade, it is equally the image of a co-operative community at work: all hands dependent on all hands, each individual responsible for the security of each.

Among the crew is Ishmael, the novel’s narrator, ordinary sailor, and extraordinary reader. Digressive, allusive, vulgar, transcendent, the story Ishmael tells is above all an education: in the practice of whaling, in the art of writing. Expanding to equal his ‘mighty theme’ – not only the whale but all things sublime – Melville breathes in the world’s great literature.

How could I not include the iconic ocean narrative – chaotic, muddled, powerful, Shakespearean, tragic and comical, profound in the most incredible ways. Yes, it is a slog, yes it is over long. No, it is never boring or turgid or preachy. There is a wonderful moment where a sailor falls into the ocean and experiences that profoundly alien, other world, that total solitude, and is broken by it.

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Upcoming Top Ten Tuesday Themes

September 5: Books That Defied My Expectations (books you thought you would didn’t like that you loved, books you thought you’d love but didn’t, books that were not the genres they seemed to be, or in any other way subverted your expectations!) (Submitted by Sia @ everybookadoorway.com)
September 12: Favorite Character Relationships (These can be platonic or not. Romantic relationships, parent/child, siblings, family bonds, friendships, found families, pet/human, etc.)
September 19: Books on My Fall 2023 To-Read List
September 26: Secondary/Minor Characters Who Deserve Their Own Book
October 3: Reading Goals I Still Want to Accomplish Before the End of the Year (We’ve just begun the last quarter of the year! What bookish goals would you still like to accomplish? If you participated in TTT’s Bookish Goals for 2023 topic this past January, update us on which goals you’ve achieved, which you’ve given up on, and which ones you’re still working on!)