The Water Dancer (Oprah's Book Club): A Novel

I've had to ponder on this book for a few days before I felt ready to give it a fair review. Overall, it's a ripping good yarn of the antebellum south, with the cruelties and ironies of slavery in full form.

Hiram Walker was born into slavery, and his mother is sold off while he is still very young - and he loses his memories of her, while being very adept at keeping memories of virtually everything else. He also learns that he is the son of the master of the plantation, and goes from playing with his brother as children into having to serve him as his slave by the time they both reach young adulthood.

This is among the more insidious aspects of slavery, and it has been well documented that these types of relationships existed. Coates does a fine job exploring these ironies, including the character differences between the white offspring - the one to inherit the lands and house - and the black slave offspring. In this story, the white sibling is a slothful ne'er do well, a boorish, loud young man who embarrasses the family, while young Hiram is intelligent, his keen memory for songs and card tricks showing his intellect before the father decides he is worth getting tutored by the same tutor as his white, privileged son.

As we get deeper into the story, the magical realism aspect becomes more pronounced - and it is here that my issues with the book begin. It's fine for an author to make any character have magical powers - in this book, it's the power to "conduct" by holding onto one's most vivid and powerful memories, which enables them to transport themselves across vast stretches of land in an instant - but in this novel, Coates ascribes this ability of "conduction" to an historical figure, known as Moses, who we come to learn is none other than Harriet Tubman herself, of the famed Underground Railroad. Coates wants us to believe that Tubman uses this magical power to help her free dozens of slaves and transport them to the North, to freedom. In reality, of course, Tubman relied on her wits, her connections, and her unquestionable powers of organization and navigation to guide runaways along the Underground Railroad. Why Coates would choose to assign this fantastical power to her seems diminishing to her actual skill sets.

I found this off-putting enough to reduce the rating of an otherwise well-done novel, one with richly drawn characters and an astute crafting of how plantations were run, and the lengths to which the white slave-owners would go to keep their "property" under their rule.

I read this for the "Literary Fiction" part of my 2020 reading challenge. I expected to like this, I wish I had liked this, but I really didn't. I usually like historical fiction and fantasy and everything, but this was just really slow and lackluster. The second half was easier to get through than the first half, but I still felt really let down by this book.

The prose isn't always easy to read, but this story is powerful and unforgettable. Hiram was born with a gift he doesn't know how to use or control; but it has the power to change his future. He was born into servitude at Lockless, a Virginian tobacco plantation. His mother and his memory of her is long gone; all he has is his half brother, Maynard, the heir to the estate, and the plantation owner, his father. He is afforded some liberties but when you're born to the tasked; the only liberty that matters is freedom. Little does he know that his gift will soon help him on the underground. Heartbreaking and powerful!

So so gooooood!

I expected this novel, which I believe is the author's first novel, to be good because TNC is brilliant and creative; and I expected the writing to be superb and eloquent, because he is as good a writer as anyone I have ever read. I did not expect this book to be great - how often does one read a book that one sees as "great"? - but it is. The Water Dancer is sensational, beginning with the conception of a human relationship novel to me, then the development of a place and an environment that he drew from his deep education and knowledge of the subject matter (which I will not describe because of not wanting to create any preconception in the mind of any prospective reader), and then the creation and execution of a remarkable story of depth and pain and meaning and power and growth.

The only book to which I can compare this one is The Moor's Last Sigh, by Salman Rushdie, which I believe to be the best-written book I have ever read.

Hiram Walker was born into slavery – or tasking – as Coates calls it. Hiram’s father was the white owner of the plantation. Hiram barely remembers his mother who was sold when he was very young. He has a memory – or perhaps a vision - of her doing a water dance with her sister.

Hiram dreams of a better life. He is tasked to look out for his white half brother in matters of schooling and running the plantation. It soon becomes clear that he is much more capable than his brother and Hiram dreams for full acceptance – but even after an accident where the carriage careens into a river and his brother is killed, Hiram sees that he will never be accepted as a true son and perhaps heir of the plantation.

There was, however a very strange occurrence when Hiram and his brother were struggling in the water – a mysterious blue light and suddenly Hiram was a half mile away on dry land.

The accident was a turning point, and Hiram’s longing for freedom can no longer be ignored. Although his first attempt at escaping was a disaster, eventually he finds himself in free Philadelphia and working to help other slaves escape. He is frustrated that he is not able to free his foster mother and his love Sophia lest it might betray those who helping them to be free.

And then Hiram discovers he has the gift of ‘conductance’ where, using the force of water, he is able to travel long distances and even take others with him.

This novel is yet another facet of slavery; and a sharp picture of the frustrations and grief of not being recognized as human – at losing loved ones and being betrayed.

Two small quibbles – Coates continual use of the word ‘tasked’ instead of slaves. Some online reading pointed out that this may be due to the reluctance of using the word slave, which is so worn that readers can see it and pass it over. But when I looked it up to see if this was a common usage of the word, I found that ‘tasked’ is a commonly used to describe a less cruel method of slavery where bound people merely had to finish their assigned chores and not be driven by a slave driver. The US had both systems – and they even occurred within the same holdings such as the difference between house slaves and field slaves. But I do not think that Coates meant the word tasked to imply that Hiram was in a less objectional position, especially as he used tasked to refer to all the enslaved.

My second quibble is the use of a magical realism power. To me, this somehow takes away from those real conductors of escaping slaves like Harriet Tubman (also in the book) who, pursued by men and dogs, risked their lives and their families’ lives to sneak through woods and countryside to help their fellows to freedom

3.7 stars

This was an absolutely beautifully written book that I know I'll read again. And Joe Morton did a fabulous job narrating. Do yourself a favor and pick this one up.

Coates is more generally known as an essayist, writing especially on racial issues. this is his first novel, and he has chosen for it a magic realism style. it's full of sound historical detail, and it contrasts the dying old southern plantations of Virginia, who had ruined the land in the switch to growing tobacco and in their death throes were selling off their slave assets, with the more vibrant industrialized Philadelphia, who had banned slavery and become a haven for Freedmen. told from the point of view of the enslaved, the narrative is powerful and deeply felt, the Underground Railroad and all the detail about how it was set up becomes important, and Harriet Tubman appears as a character. the magic realism style serves as an overriding metaphor for freedom and power, but doesn't really work as well as the first-person narrative of the lead character, caught between worlds and between a tangled past and a bright possible future.

Slavery narrative that employs elements of magical realism, this story is set in antebellum Virginia. Hiram Walker is the son of a tobacco plantation owner and a mother who was sold when he was young. He cannot remember his mother and longs to find her. After his half-brother drowns, he discovers he has a power of conduction, and later uses this power as part of the Underground Railroad.

It is beautifully written. The beginning and ending are strong. I was occasionally unsure of what was happening in the dream sequences. It is a novel about the trauma involved in loss of family, the power of memories, and the longing for freedom in many forms.

I knew there would be magic, but I did not expect the extent to which this book transcends time and space.

That this took me such a long time to read is not a reflection on this book's quality. Why it took so long is a boring story so I'm going to put it under a spoiler tag because I feel like explaining but I don't think anyone should actually read my boring explanation. I got this audiobook from the library and it's been so popular that the queue has been consistently very long. I got one of those skip-the-line loans where the library lets you jump to the front of the queue but you only get the book for a short period. When I did that with this book my library had just introduced the skip-the-line thing and would cancel your hold when you borrowed the book. Now they let you keep your hold when they offer you a skip-the-line which makes a lot of sense to me. I had 7 days to read it and got about a third of the way through before the loan expired. Then I had to go to the back of the queue which was like 17 weeks long. By the time I got to borrow the book again I had forgotten what I had already read and so had a hard time getting back into it. I had to start over from the beginning and my brain rebels when I tell it to do something over again. So it took a while of me borrowing it, realising I wasn't in the right brainspace, returning it, and joining the back of the queue and waiting to borrow it again. Not the book's fault at all. Told you the explanation would be boring.

Once I got back into this book I couldn't put it down. It's a slow book plotwise but the writing really draws you in. Since it's about slavery it's going to be difficult to read but I felt that the writing style made it very accessible and there was interesting philosophy that I haven't seen in other media about slavery. When we talk about slavery we tend to focus on either the corporal punishment or on the lofty philosophical ramifications of lost personal freedom. Both are important but this book highlights an aspect that I feel we don't see represented enough: that slavery tore families apart. This book is all about the fallout of people having their parents, children, brothers, sisters, spouses forcibly removed from them with no way of reasonably finding them again and what that does to their psyches and their communities. There are so many different perspectives on this presented throughout the book. The main character is a slave whose father is the master and whose mother was sold while he was very young. He has perfect recall of everything that has ever happened in his life except he cannot remember anything about his mother. He lives in a kind of limbo because his father acknowledges him as his child so he has certain privileges but he's still a slave. The entire story, while going to different places and involving a lot of interesting characters -- including Harriet Tubman -- really revolves around him trying to understand what happened to his mother and why he doesn't remember. That this relationship between mother and son is the core of this book made it feel very real to me. This book is all about relationships and about the difference between bonds that you freely enter into and those that are forced upon you. The magical realism feels grounded because it's based in the stories that are shared among family and community. The book really highlights how important shared stories are in fostering a sense of self and community. Also there's a heterosexual relationship that is actually really good - it passes through several phases from typically patriarchal to truly equal and respectful and even as a non-hetero it made me happy.

What I took from this book was that stories are such an important part of a person's history and understanding of oneself. They tell us about where we came from and connect us to each other through a shared history. They are a kind of power. Slavers stole those stories from the people they enslaved by tearing families apart and destroying those links between generations. It's an overlooked trauma from slavery that continues to affect current generations who don't have those connections to their ancestors.

Also, I don't know how to phrase this because as a white person I know I have not experienced the tiniest fraction of this but I did relate on a level as an adopted person as I don't have any stories that connect me to my birth family. Not saying it's the same thing AT ALL but I did feel a connection while reading this between Hiram trying to regain his memory of his mother and my own search to try to find my birth mother. Again, I know it's not at all the same as my birth mother didn't have me taken from her forcibly, she was just pressured by her religion, but whenever Hiram talked about wishing he didn't have that blank space in place of his mother I felt it pretty viscerally.

Had there not been magical realism in this book, I would probably have loved it. The magic diminishes the achievements of Harriet Tubman and other underground railroad heroes.

"What you must now accept is that all of us are bound to something. All must name a master to serve. All must choose." And with these words Hiram realizes that even in freedom we are bound by our choices. The Water Dancer is an exceptional story of slave who is partly white, his father is the master of the plantation, and Hiram is truly a mix of races but also of cultures. His sharp intelligence serves to help him to freedom, but he also has a gift - the gift of conduction. He is a water dancer. But when Hiram achieves his freedom, he knows he is not truly free because the woman he loves is still a slave and so he has choices to make - not just for her, but for all of his people living in bondage. I have truly enjoyed everything I have read by Coates and this book is no exception. The characters take on a life of their own and everything, from the way they speak to the geography of their world, makes the book that much more enjoyable. But Coates has a way of wrapping hard truths in amazing stories and this one is no exception, "The masters could not bring water to boil, harness a horse, nor strap their own drawers without us. We were better than them - we had to be. Sloth was literal death for us, while for them it was the whole ambition of their lives." And in the final analysis that was their undoing. An astonishing tale of slavery, the underground, of love and loss and sacrifice. Well written and well conceived. And well worth the read.

The book is very good. Joe Morton is fantastic.

The story of freedom is both an American story and a universally human one. In this novel, Coates reminds us that personal loyalties to family sometimes transcend the desire for freedom. Using the motif of finding one’s own free way, he describes the story of Hiram Walker, an enslaved person who was educated due to his superb memory, only to become intermixed with the Underground Railroad. Along the way, he discovers the backcountry of Virginia along with the freedoms of Philadelphia. Finally, he learns the secrets of his family as he learns to found his own.

Coates is masterful in presenting us with a story where everything comes together in the final chapters. As noted in the endnote, the story is inspired by the historical narrative about William and Peter Still and their family. The story is organized into three parts, and each part functions as its own mini-story with its own intrigue and climax. This tapestry is woven together so that the reader anxiously awaits the inevitable unfolding at the last page.

The protagonist lives in a world of the Quality, Low-Whites, and the Tasked – appropriate labels for classes in an oppressive state. He has superb powers of memory but cannot reckon his own family’s history. Thus, in a way, this book functions as a coming-of-age story where Walker must understand his unique place in the world, whatever that means and wherever that leads. His life story also functions as a testament to the power of love to overcome difficult barriers.

This book’s popularity acknowledges the weight that the American history of slavery has held recently. With a few twists of narrative, it presents that culture ethos of a dying state based on slavery, of a free society, and of the Underground Railroad seeking universal emancipation. Harriet Tubman even makes an appearance! Those interested in understanding how America came to its present state will find these pages welcoming. It rightly sweeps the characters’ stories up into the longing for freedom and becomes not merely a story of race but instead a story of liberation. Readers in the marketplace have celebrated this book, and rightly so.

I really wanted to like this book but I admit I have a difficult relationship with magical realism. Sometimes it works for me but many times it doesn't. In this book, the magical realism did not work; I really could not see the point of it and how it moved the plot forward. It seemed like it was thrown in with really no connection to the main plot.

The story of the main character was interesting. The language, at times, was quite beautiful and did a good job of reflecting the way people thought and talked. One of my pet peeves with some writing; I dislike oblique references that make me try to guess what exactly just happened. This happened a few times in the book where I was left wondering what the significance of certain passages were. ( I did not understand that Ms. Quinn was running the Underground until a few pages after the revelation.)

Nonetheless, it was interesting to see black slavery from a different point of view and some of the characters were quite memorable. An average book.

First half was ok but then it became weird and it stopped reading.

A story of slavery in Virginia.

An interesting mix of magical realism and history. I, unfortunately, had to hurry this through faster than I wanted to (library loan with a bad timing), and I had to listen the last couple of chapters as an audiobook. I lost focus at that point so I more or less missed the ending.

Of the recent novels about slavery, The Water Dancer by Ta-Nehisi Coates is probably getting the most press, thanks to Oprah’s Book Club. I first heard it described as science-fiction, but as a big sci-fi fan myself, I would classify it as fantasy. Hiram is a slave, whose mother has been sold away by his father and master. Hiram’s “task” is to mind his white half-brother, Hiram’s opposite in every way: slothful, disrespectful, but heir to the estate. One late night, Hiram is driving his brother home, and their carriage goes off a bridge. The heir drowns, but Hiram somehow survives. Hiram’s miraculous survival brings him to the attention of the Underground.

It turns out Hiram has inherited an unusual ability, Conducting, by which the conductor (such as Harriet Tubman) uses memory to build a bridge across distances, and lead slaves away from “the Task.” That is the part that qualifies this book as fantasy, rather than science fiction, which would have a somewhat more rigorous explanation for this magical power.

Genre nitpicking aside, it’s a compelling read. Hiram is a realistic character, a young man who makes mistakes of passion, and learns from those around him, particularly women. The heartbreak of slavery and the shakiness of freedom are portrayed in vivid colors. I have not read any of Coates’ other books, but I understand this is his first foray into fiction. Bravo!

It took me a while to get into this book and even longer to wrest some meaning from it. The main character has the gift of "conduction," which means that he is able to magically transport slaves to freedom with the help of water. White people are called either Quality or Ryland and slaves are referred to as "tasked."

This book deals with the slavery and how the sunset of the plantation life (the failure of the cultivation and land due to overuse) affects everyone in a way that is hard to imagine.

Having read Coates' nonfiction, I knew him to be a powerful writer. Nonetheless, I was completely blown away by the strength of emotions that reading his first novel evoked. This is truly excellent, well-researched historical fiction with added magical realism that takes the novel in a very pleasant direction. Wonderful writing, strong characters, and a memorable storyline. One of the best books I read in 2019.

I loved everything about this book - the beautiful use of language; the historical setting - the story of the slave whose father is master of the Virginia plantation and whose mother has been sold away; the fantasy / magical realism element around the power passed through generations to our hero; the journey from slavery to freedom; the whole book was excellent. I listened to the audiobook and Joe Morton did a fantastic job - his was the perfect voice to read this book.

An awesome book! Yes, this is about the darkness of slavery, but it also has the hope of the underground railroad, a touch of magic is thrown, there's a guest appearance by Moses/Harriet Tubman, and I was lifted up by the love throughout the book. Memorable characters, beautiful writing, and a satisfying ending. Highly recommended.

This novel is a bit hard to review, because I don't want to put off readers who are new to this genre (magical realism layered into historical fiction around the horrors of slavery). Coates is of course a famous nonfiction writer. Unfortunately comparisons of The Water Dancer to Colson Whitehead's Underground Railroad are inevitable, and here, Colson comes out ahead. Far ahead. The Water Dancer has much to recommend it, but ultimately, its writing is a bit overwrought, and the use of magical realism does not illuminate much other than seeming to allow many overwritten passages and a couple small deus ex machinae. It is surprising to me that Coates would have first novel syndrome...but this is it.

Powerful, wide ranging slave narrative - with elements of mysterious "conduction": folklore/magic of the Underground RR's almost unbelievable ability to "spirit" away slaves from their owners and re-establish them in freed blacks' communities up North. This is a looong read but the young Hiram, a child born to the Lockless VA property planter white owner & his slave mamma, the main character's "arc" is realistic and fantastical, in alternating ways - and his voice remains uniquely his throughout. Harriet Tubman & an unbelievably strange but successful VA plantation daughter turned full abolitionist - leading a completely dual existence of a refined local Southern family member, and a fierce, daring Underground RR operative on the other: both these women play pivotal roles in Hiram's development. Other key women in his life include Thena, a longsuffering & carefully controlled slave woman who raises him when his mother is sold away; his long absent but somehow present mother, and the young Sophia, slave woman who is "attached" to a nearby plantation owner, and is called upon regularly to be his companion & mistress as required. Compares to Octavia Butler's Kindred , or to M.E. Anderson's Octavius Nothing or even to Frederick Douglass' Autobiography. Heavy read - only mature YA readers.

A story of slavery that doesn't focus on the physical horrors of slavery but the humanity. The Tasked are portrayed as real human beings and slavery is shown from the impact on their emotional lives. Hiram is the half-son of Quality, the owner of the land. His worth, both in intellect and character, is recognized by his father but not rewarded. He merely gets assigned a different task - looking out for his white half-brother who is a monumental disappointment to their father. Hiram is troubled by the missing memories of his mother but he holds out hope that his father will one day realize his potential. When it becomes clear that will never happen and Hiram falls in love with a woman, he knows he can't stay - he has to run. Coates' unique version of the Underground Railroad, based on fact but enhanced with magical realism, places value on the power of memory, specifically of remembering those we have lost. This beautifully descriptive read (Joe Morton's audiobook narration is excellent!) gets bogged down at times but is mostly compelling and thought-provoking.

The Water Dancer is two things: first, it is a story of the horrors of slavery and how racist institutions harm all of society; second, it is a superhero origin story.

Coates writes wonderfully, as expected, and much of the story is full of beautiful language and painful descriptions. Some of it is a bit heavy handed at times, but the writing more than makes up for it.

The biggest issue is with the fantasy elements; while intriguing, they just aren't woven into the story very well. As mentioned earlier, Hiram's story falls somewhat into the superhero archetype: protagonist comes into power, faces villainy, has desire to protect loved ones, eventually embraces power and saves the day.

Hiram's power is that of Conduction, the ability to use water and memory to essentially teleport. There's some fascinating ideas here, but these seemed lost in a rather traditional narrative about the ills of slavery and the underground railroad. One example of wasted potential comes in the idea of memory and objects. Hiram notably has an eidetic memory, but can't remember anything of his mother. When this memory is restored it feels like this should be a revelation, but there weren't enough hints to this woven into the rest of the story.

I also wasn't a fan of how Coates handled Hiram's mentor in Conduction, in this case none other than Harriet Tubman. I'm generally not a fan of making historical figures into fictional characters, although the portrayal here is fairly respectful. I'm just not sure if giving "Moses" superpowers diminishes her at all-Harriet Tubman was already a badass.

Perhaps I as a reader was hoping for the fantasy aspect to play a bigger role. I was hoping the story would build to Harriet and Hiram going full alternate history superhero on the evils of slavery. Coates, to his credit, is not so reductive in his depictions, but the story felt anticlimactic in this regard.

I'm still glad I read this though, and I look forward to Ta-Nehisi Coates' next foray into fiction.

A review copy was provided by the publisher.

Sigh. I wanted to like this. It is objectively good. This is a theoretically emotionally resonant story that is both personal and of universal import and it felt very feminist as well, which is rare for books written by men that are not specifically about feminism. The prose is sharp and clear. The historical detail is rich and accurate. And maybe its me but I don't feel enriched by the read. I learned nothing new about the period, or my country or myself. I think it echoed stories beautifully covered by other writers (Colson Whitehead and Toni Morrison most obviously.) I am not by any means saying that lots more writing about slavery or the underground railroad cannot be done. There are piles of books I love that are about repressed WASPs, neurotic Jews, Asians crushed under the heel of community and family expectations and unyielding norms, Russians/Soviets done in by by oppression, and soldiers forever damaged by the invisible toll of war. What I am saying is if you are going to write about something that has already been written about, and written about well, you need to say something new, something surprising, or you need to provide the reader with a lens she has not had access to before. This just did not do that. If Coates had let us to know Hiram outside of his sense of duty and his unique intellect and forbearance, to know his heart (before the final few pages) this review would likely have been different. Also,, Coates presents things very objectively, I never felt like I was seeing things as Hiram saw them, just as they were, without impact or perspective. I also don't think the magical realism was deployed well. I cop to not being a fan of the device in general, but having said that there are books where I have loved it -- The Underground Railroad, Swamplandia, The Master and Margarita, and others are favorites of mine. Maybe because Coates did not commit fully to making it work, maybe because it wasn't necessary, maybe because it diminished the real courage and hard work of Harriet Tubman and others who risked all to bring people out of bondage, for whatever reason it felt less like a narrative device, and more like a cop out for explaining things that didn't work in the story. I dunno, for me it was a slog, though I am not sure why, and I understand why others like it. For now though, I think I have to count myself as one who far prefers Coates' nonfiction to his fiction.