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Mark and Gerry's Sci-Fi Reviews continue....
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Something in the Water a novel by promising first time author Aaron Hendren
Review by Mark
Pick up any novel from the bookshelf and look at the book jacket. The worst novels will still find a way to get a recognizable name to say something generically positive, or at least not harmful. If no one will say anything nice about the current novel then they can at least be counted on to say something positive about previous novels. But what about first novels? They only get plain unloved covers. No words of encouragement from Greg Bear; Arthur Clarke didn't "get chills". But what's between the covers? In the case of Aaron Hendren's first novel, Something in the Water, published in 2000 by Writer's Club Press, what lies between the covers is a well written freak trip into insanity, or the Alice in Wonderland nature of consciousness.
Sammy Sinclair is in a bad marriage. A very bad marriage. The idea itself would be more painful if the reader couldn't see true humorous elements of real people in Sammy's nightmare wife. Realizing he is in a horrible predicament, Sammy pines for his true love, with the odd name of Swan, who died in a tragic accident. Misery and dispair drive Sammy into hallucinations and paranoia.
Rather than let the reader observe the predicament, Hendron draws the reader into the middle of Sammy's insanity. It turns out that insanity is a highly non-linear place filled with wish fulfillment and self aggrandizement. Unfortunately, Hendren never lets the reader come up for air. Instead you just spiral with the story, and never come to any semblance of an ending. At the end the implication is that the characters only exist in the reader's head, so you can do anything you want with them. This is somewhat unsatisfying, sort of an easy out by an author who doesn't know how to end it himself.
Hendren is a talented writer - I marked numerous funny or interesting passages for relaying to readers and just selected these without trying to find one better than another.
"His father probably didn't even know that he had problems, but it wasn't like he was looking for any answers. Self improvement was not on his priority list. He knew that getting angry made him lose control, but he was unaware that everything made him angry."
"In his visions there were two mad chemists. Each of them wore white lab coats and had stethoscopes around their necks. One would show the other the test tube with the potion that would pollute the world's water supply, while the other would laugh and signal that they needed to make more."
"He disliked moving as it reminded of working without getting paid."
"She felt like a warm sleeping bag on a cold night, she felt like the yen to his yang. She felt like the cool rain in a hot summer day. She felt like the prize in a box of cereal. She felt like the first drag of a cigarette. She felt like you didn't study, but you still got an "A" on the test. She felt like a full moon. She felt like an extra hour of sleep...She felt like a dream that was forgotten until just now. She felt just like heaven"
"You know, I didn't used to like science fiction. I used to think that it was all space ships and dragons and stuff like that. Once I realized that real life is mostly science fiction, I got into it more."
The last part is telling because although the book is considered sci-fi by the author, it's hard to say it really is. If science fiction is hard to understand and life is hard to understand, does that make life the same as science fiction?
Something in the Water is new and probably not available at your library. It is available from Amazon.com, but be advised that you probably won't think it's science fiction.
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