“The first thing I do when I arrive on the island is change my name.” So says Vanessa Carvin, sloughing off her first and married name to become Willow Hale. Her next act is to cut off her groomed blonde locks, hacking back until all the hair that is left is dark grey, “the unsophisticated blunt crop of a hard-working country woman”.
Willow, the protagonist of John Boyne’s 15th work of fiction, Water, is 52 and seeking solitude and anonymity on a remote island (population 400) off the west coast of Ireland. Interspersed with details of her island life in the present day is a series of narrative recollections that tell us what Willow is running from. The story emerges gradually, but we learn early on that it involves “[a] dead daughter. A husband in jail. My family’s reputation in ruins. An entire country convinced that I was complicit in all of it.” Whether she was complicit in her husband’s crimes is what Willow has come to the island to figure out.
The islanders become intrigued by the stranger in their midst and she takes to visiting the two local pubs regularly, to forestall well-meaning invitations from neighbours seeking to rescue the “mad Dublin woman hiding out in the cottage above”.
Nothing stops the abrasive neighbour Mrs Duggan from bursting in to demand tea “the way God intended. Milk and three sugars.” Mrs Duggan tells how the previous renters of Willow’s cottage were “run off” for being “queer fellas”. Most of the islanders are not small-minded. Father Onkin is a lovely priest from Nigeria who invites Willow to find peace in his church, despite her being “not that way inclined”. There’s Mrs Duggan’s son, Luke, who injects some romantic intrigue into Willow’s life and there’s the barman with the tortured past who pours his guilt into Willow’s uncompromising ear. A young man goes missing, making a bid for escape to the mainland, and Willow tactfully comforts his mother.
Boyne is astute on the invisibility of grey-haired women (few recognise the recently notorious Willow) as well as on society’s drive to silence young women. One challenges a campaigning politician about a recent sexual abuse case and Willow can read his thoughts: “He didn’t come here to be challenged by an 18-year-old girl. He came here to trot out his stump speech and drink a few pints of Guinness later with the people he thought could ensure his re-election.”
Willow is smart and enjoyably spiky, chiding the priest that “God won’t keep you warm in your bed at night, will he?” Chillingly, we see her confidence slip and a submissiveness sneak in while talking to her husband when he calls her from prison; she temporarily reverts to the “good wife” role she played too well for 30 years.
The island scenes linger in your mind’s eye. The grey sea – water is a recurring motif in this first of a planned series of four novellas – the wide sky, the squat stone cottage, our protagonist’s wind- and soap-reddened cheeks. With their engaging characters and true-to-life dialogue, these sections outshine the backstory of Willow’s marriage and her husband’s crimes. Regardless, you are in sure hands and that story, involving repression and sexual abuse, is skilfully and sensitively drip-fed.
Willow’s struggle to reconcile the past with her conscience is moving and convincing, as are her hopeful steps towards the future.
