ENTERTAINMENT REALM

em> We are Water by Wally Lamb. Publisher: Harper (October 2013). Fiction. Hardcover. 576 pages. ISBN 9780061941023.

After nearly three decades of marriage, Annie and Orion Oh separate because Annie intends to marry a woman. Annie’s a talented, successful modern artist who makes sculpture from found objects. Orion works as a psychologist. The woman Annie plans to marry, the wealthy and powerful gallery owner art dealer Viveca, was instrumental to Annie’s current success. The couple’s three adult children deal with their parents’ divorce and the impending nuptials in various ways and novelist Wally Lamb spends momentous time parsing that out for the reader. We are Water tends toward too long, too verbose and too wayward. It’s not a page-turner like The Hour I First Believed. [I’m one of the only people yet to read She’s Come Undone.]

RATING: ***/5

–review by Amy Steele

FTC Disclosure: I received this book for review from Harper Collins.