Evelyn Lau’s book Other Women is a difficult book to recommend whole-heartedly. Alternating between first and third person, it tells the story of an artist, Fiona, who is recovering from a 15-month affair with successful businessman, Raymond who is twenty years her senior and married.

The problem with the book isn’t the story (what little story there is) because anyone who has ever had an obsessive relationship with the wrong person will certainly relate. The problem isn’t the prose; Lau can certainly write, although I would have to say that this story is over-written– nothing is stated simply, there’s a metaphor for every emotion.

For me the problem is the characters. Raymond isn’t at all likeable; he comes across as narcissistic (and in fact Fiona actually says this of him) and although he once cautions Fiona that she  mustn’t let him hurt her, he yanks her along a romantic trail of self-destruction and worse, Fiona isn’t the only affair he’s ever had. Fiona isn’t much more sympathetic. The whole novel is spent lamenting Raymond’s loss. Fiona drinks and compares every other man to Raymond, and all this for a relationship that is never even consummated.

Still, it was hard not to be swept along by Lau’s poetic prose, even though I could have cared less about the characters and their rather soggy affair.

Emily White of the New York Times Book Review says “Regina McBride writes in a shimmering and often hypnotic prose style, one that’s full of incantatory repetition…The Nature of Water and Air has an urgent melancholy about it — it casts an undeniable spell.”

I have mixed feelings about this book. On the one hand, I thought McBride managed to capture a particular time and place (1970s Ireland) extremely well. I was intrigued by the book’s opening lines: “There are silences all around my mother’s story.” But in some intangible way, I felt that the novel failed me.

The narrator of The Nature of Water and Air is Clodagh, a sensitive, intelligent girl whose life is touched by tragedy. Clodagh and her twin sister, Mare, live with Agatha, their emotionally distant mother, and Mrs. O’Dare, their housekeeper, in a crumbling manor house. Agatha is not a traditional mother. Before she “settled”, she was a tinker– part of a sub-culture of people who traveled in caravans, selling bits and pieces and camping in fields. What little affection Agatha does manage to share goes to Mare, who is very ill and subsequently dies. Clodagh spends the rest of her young childhood watching her mother from behind corners and through windows.

It is difficult to say much more about this book without spoiling some of its revelations.

McBride is a poet and it’s apparent in her prose. Her writing is lyrical and often quite lovely, but it also occasionally stands in the way of the narrative. While I can’t say that I loved this book, I certainly appreciated McBride’s talent. And in the end, despite some of the questions I had, I felt satisfied by the time I had spent with Clodagh.