Blue Water, book review

Every so often I stumble on a new (to me) author whose writing is so resonant, I know I’ll be returning to him or her again and again. Such was the case with Anita Shreve, Anne Tyler, Jessica Barksdale Inclan, Ann Patchett, Karen White, Chris Bohjalian – and now A. Manette Ansay.


I knew nothing about Ansay when I picked up Blue Water. I knew only that the premise of her book intrigued me. It starts with an impossible agony: the death of Rex and Meg Van Dorn’s only child, six-year-old Evan, killed when Meg’s former best friend, Cindy Ann, slams drunkenly into their car. In the aftermath, the Van Dorns are shocked when Cindy Ann receives little more than a legal scolding. Enraged and grief-stricken, they buy a sailboat and head for Atlantic blue water, hoping to put as much distance as possible between themselves and Cindy Ann. But when, a year after Evan’s death, Meg returns for her brother’s wedding, she’s forced to confront the complex ties that will forever bind her to her onetime friend.

In Blue Water, Ansay creates original characters, both complicated and vibrant. She writes in clear, unadorned prose, and while she tells the story in Meg’s first person voice, she artfully plays with the narrative, stretching it to encompass Cindy Ann’s voice as well. All the while, she constructs a path that leads Meg to a choice: either life with her husband; or forgiveness that “would enable her, finally, fully, to survive.” The two cannot be had together; Meg must sacrifice one in order to claim the other. And though the ending doesn’t feel happy, it does feel right, and it leaves room for hope – a feat I can attribute only to the enviable skill of the writer.