To Heaven by Water

by Justin Cartwright

Book Overview

With the subtlety of Ian McEwan and the pathos of Kazuo Ishiguro, a wise, compassionate novel about age, loss, and moving forward. As he moves toward old age, David Cross finds himself living an... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1596916214
• ISBN13: 9781596916210
• Release Date: August 2009
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
• Length: 305 Pages
• Weight: 0.65 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.6" x 8.2"

Customer Reviews

An Elegy of Life in Autumn

I was new to the writing of Justin Cartwright when I came across "To Heaven by Water". Something about the book blurb caught my eye- perhaps it was the fact that he was born in South Africa - a place I lived for many years and that this novel had connections with Africa; whatever it was, the book proved worth the price of its purchase and the effort expended in exploring it. This is not a thriller, it is not a book in which there is page-turning excitement or edge-of -your-seat drama, but in its elegiac evocation of the simple and the complex in the daily lives of its protagonists, it is beautifully and evocatively written. At its heart it is a story about David Cross, for forty years a corporate BBC figure in British households, a "face" whom people thought they knew as he read the news on their TV screens, night by night. Long-standing member of the "Noodle Club", an association of old comrades, drifting together into the shallows and shoals of old age, confronting their mortality in the light of their life experiences, individual and shared. With his recent retirement and the loss of his wife of many years,Nancy, David suddenly finds that he is not the man he thought he was. He takes time out to visit with and re-establish contact with an almost-estranged brother in the Kalahari desert and relives the bright memories of some of his great moments in TV journalism, such as spending time in Rome with Richard Burton. But all of this is a sideshow to the self-realization that comes from his relationship with his aging friends, his married children, Ed, his son, who, together with his wife,the beautiful Rosalie, is trying, increasingly desperately, to start a family; his daughter Lucy, who is involved with an unsuitable boyfriend and as these relationships are developed, David Cross comes to learn more about himself, to grasp and indeed accept the significance of his own life, within it's setting of time and place. Justin Cartwright has written a beautiful book which tells of lives, outwardly so simple and yet inwardly so complex. It is indeed a small canvas, but exquisitely crafted, subtly nuanced and altogether, a delight to read. If you enjoy the books of Douglas KennedyTemptation, you may well enjoy Justin Cartwright's writing. I shall certainly be looking for more by this author.

"All I can tell you Lucy is that you and Ed are everything to me"

Set in inner London this marvelously erudite contemporary novel is about the upper-middle class Cross family and how they manage to tackle life with its infinite numbers of expressions, beliefs and delusions. Set against the backdrop of a newly appointed Prime Minister Gordon Brown, "who seems to be like something discovered when a glacier moves," Cartwright's new and dynamic London is pulsating with energy and a sort of fluid and hip sexuality. Certainly retired television presenter David Cross is in thrall to it, just as comfortable wandering the streets of Soho as he is living in the family home in Camden. Ed, David's son thinks his father is encumbered with his past, "a Bactrian camel, staggering along laden with all sorts of goods nobody needs or wants anymore." For David, however this is a time of renewal. His wife Nancy, only recently passed on from cancer, has enabled David to begin a new lease of life. Fanatically training at the local gym, he's become super thin and now sports trendy African bangles his brother has sent him from Africa. In his own mind he is more himself than he has been for nearly forty years. One night at the Royal ballet with Ed and his daughter-in-law Rosalie, he sees the gorgeous vision of Darcey Bussell in her farewell performance, the ballerina turning David trance-like. It is this vision that frames David`s emotional state and unfurls many of the assumptions that he has made about his marriage to Nancy and about his children. In alternative chapters Cartwright unfurls the desires, needs and insecurities of David, Ed, Rosalie and David's daughter the twenty-six year old Lucy who a specialist in roman coinage who currently feels wary and abandoned and worries about being alone and isolated after breaking up her boyfriend Josh, with his penchant towards abusive behaviour. Rosalie, an ex-ballet dancer, almost "Darcy Bussell en pointe" in her looks is a woman who is gravity defying, desperate to become pregnant. Most shockingly, Ed refuses to accept the reality of his situation. While Rosalie has a very clear idea of how her life should proceed, constricting the poor Ed feels constricted, falling into a sexy affair with Alice, a girl from his office. Alice meet for quick drink. Buoyed by all of the sexual possibilities, sex with Alice is uncomplicated and fun, while sex with Rosalie has become a sort of marital rite, even an obligation. Meanwhile, David experiences a familiar comfort, desperate to spend his remaining years in some way free of the material. He gives both his son and daughter a declaration of unequivocal love. Thus far in his life, he has successfully been comforted with his past, although his wife Nancy had an affair, she was more than willing to give him and her children support, to protect them all from the evils of the world. The generational wheel turns very quickly, even as the author includes a back-story of David's recollection of life in 1966 where he was never as happy as that summer

Magnificent

I should confess to being a bit of a fan of Cartwright's and particularly of his last novel, the Song Before it is Sung. But while that was an audacious historical novel set around 30s Oxford and the Stauffenberg plot, a glance at the back cover of his new book showed a far less ambitious novel fixated on domestic London life. I wasn't sure what to expect... But in a way, it's the everyday setting that makes it all the greater an achievement. A smaller canvas, maybe, but there are no tricks and conceits to carry the writing along - it has to survive line by line without dramatic historical events to help it on its way. And Cartwright is masterful at it. He is one of those writers whom one reads while constantly thinking aloud to oneself: how can he know this about people - about relationships - about life? How can he be so perceptive? There's a wisdom to the writing, often manifested in a beautiful and sometimes deceptively simple turn of phrase, that gets to immediately to the point: be it describing Gordon Brown perfectly in three words, or explaining the guilt one might feel after the death of a loved one. It seems to me the most emotionally charged of his novels and it also includes, which i wasn't expecting, some jaw-droppingly dramatic moments which really keep the pages turning. In summary, a wonderful book that I will treasure.