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Memory of Water: A Novel
Memory of Water: A Novel
Memory of Water: A Novel
Ebook277 pages4 hours

Memory of Water: A Novel

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

3.5/5

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About this ebook

An amazing, award-winning speculative fiction debut novel by a major new talent, in the vein of Ursula K. Le Guin.

Global warming has changed the world’s geography and its politics. Wars are waged over water, and China rules Europe, including the Scandinavian Union, which is occupied by the power state of New Qian. In this far north place, seventeen-year-old Noria Kaitio is learning to become a tea master like her father, a position that holds great responsibility and great secrets. Tea masters alone know the location of hidden water sources, including the natural spring that Noria’s father tends, which once provided water for her whole village.

But secrets do not stay hidden forever, and after her father’s death the army starts watching their town—and Noria. And as water becomes even scarcer, Noria must choose between safety and striking out, between knowledge and kinship.

Imaginative and engaging, lyrical and poignant, Memory of Water is an indelible novel that portrays a future that is all too possible.

LanguageEnglish
PublisherHarperCollins
Release dateJun 10, 2014
ISBN9780062326164
Author

Emmi Itäranta

Emmi Itäranta writes fiction in Finnish and English. Her professional background is an eclectic mix of writing-related activities, including stints as a columnist, theatre critic, scriptwriter and press officer. She is the author of Memory of Water and lives in Canterbury, England.

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Reviews for Memory of Water

Rating: 3.722748836966825 out of 5 stars
3.5/5

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  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    This is an interesting story combining history, art and the law. It is told in two narratives - Josephine, a 17 year-old house slave and modern day Lina, a young attorney. Gradually their stories intersect and the book becomes more interesting. However, I found Lina's story far more compelling as she searches for the 'perfect' plaintiff to be the face of a class lawsuit for slave reparations. I enjoyed the first few chapters of Josephine's story but then I found her story incomplete. She felt plastic and lacked emotion so I never really connected with her. The ending was also rather disappointing after having spent nearly a week following the lives of Lina and Josephine.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Very good book!
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    This is the debut novel for Tara Conklin. It's historical fiction set in two time periods: (1) present day New York City with Attorney Lina who works on a class action case on behalf of the descendants of slaves who were never paid for their work, and (2) mid-1800's Virginia on a failing tobacco plantation where Josephine is a slave house girl. Josephine is artistic and brave and dreams of running away to escape the hard life and abuse she suffers. The chapters switch between the viewpoints of these two protagonists. There are several stories going on making the book too long plus the author writes many detailed descriptions of various settings with information that seems like it's just to make the book longer. There are well-developed characters in Lina and Josephine. I was routing for Josephine to make her escape and for Lina to find the information she needed in all her research to win her case.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Josephine is a house girl, a slave in 1852 living with the Bells on a dying plantation with a dying mistress, and dreams of running away. In the present day, Lina Sparrow is a young litigation lawyer whose firm is representing a client suing for reparation against big name companies that profited from slavery in the 19th century.I didn't exactly know what to expect when I picked up this debut historical fiction novel for this month's book club book. I was quickly sucked into both Josephine and Lina's stories. In alternating chapters, the story investigates the nearly unimaginable long-term toll that slavery has taken on an entire nation, while illuminating the lives of these two women with their own heartaches. There is plenty for a book club to discuss, and Conklin's writing has a smooth style that makes for compelling reading. I could have used a little more development of secondary characters such as Lina's boss, her father, and the potential love interest that shows up, but overall I really enjoyed this thought-provoking, challenging read.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    The House Girl starts off with an intriguing premise and structure. The chapters and voice alternate between a present-day young female lawyer named Lina, and Josephine, a slave working as "house girl" for the lady of the house. The lawyer is working on a case involving reparations for slavery and must identify someone descended from a slave to serve as lead plaintiff. Josephine's mistress is an artist, and in the present day, the artistic community believes the paintings may actually have done by the slave girl. The potential lead plaintiff emerges during an exhibition of the artist's work, and Lina convinces her law firm to send her to Virginia for research in the state's archives to locate Josephine's descendants. Meanwhile, back in the 19th century, Josephine may or may not have had a baby, and she tries to escape via the Underground Railroad.While all of this seemed promising at first, ultimately this novel failed to deliver. Josephine's story relied too heavily on supposed historical documents to move the plot along. Lina's story included a subplot about Lina's relationship with her father Oscar, an artist who raised Lina single-handedly after her mother died when Lina was very young. The tension between Lina and Oscar wasn't developed enough to be believable; I never understood why they didn't just sit down and talk things out, and why Lina found his paintings of her mother so offensive. And then there's Lina's full name: Carolina Sparrow. Seriously? It sounds more like a bird than a person, and once that thought struck me I had a hard time getting past it.I read this for a book club whose members enjoy discussing the dilemmas and decisions that face characters in a novel. And in that respect, I think they will love this book. I tend to focus more on the writing, and the quality of the story, and was left disappointed by The House Girl.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    The House Girl by Tara Conklin

    Challenges read for: Goodreads, EBook, Historical Fiction

    Book Cover: Simple, pretty, very much the way Josephine would be.

    This was a fabulous story, a story of a slave out of the tobacco fields in Virginia who wanted nothing more than to be free--at any cost. A brave girl who could tell us a story of plantation life as she saw it through drawing and painting. The story flows painlessly from present day to late 1840's. We meet Josephine, a house girl to Missus Lu on what had once been a large and prosperous tobacco plantation. The missus has given Josephine exposure to her own studio where Josephine can blossom into quite an accomplished artist. Tragedy occurs, both die in separate incidents and it is assumed that the paintings found were the accomplishments of the Missus. The buyers of the plantation showcase those works as those of Missus Lu. Enter present day and Lina, up and coming attorney in a large firm, slated for partner, who has a reparations suit dropped in her lap--her research brings her into Josephine's extraordinary short life and begins to reveal the truth--could those paintings truly be the work of Josephine? Beautifully woven story--although the core is Josephine, it is the story of Lina's own battles--guess you'll just have to read it for yourself!
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    The House Girl marks Tara Conklin's debut novel.The story is told in two narratives - that of Josephine a 17 yr old house slave in 1850's Virginia and Lina - a class action lawyer in 2004 New York.The opening chapter belonged to Josephine and I was immediately captivated. She is planning to run - and it won't be the first time. “Mister hit Josephine with the palm of his hand across her left cheek and it was then she knew she would run. She heard the whistle of the blow, felt the sting of skin against skin, her head spun and she was looking back over her right shoulder, down to the fields where the few men Mister had left were working the tobacco.” Lina's law firm is looking for the "perfect plaintiff" to be the 'face' of a lawsuit being brought, seeking reparations for descendants of American slaves. She stumbles across Josephine's name through her father's work. He is an artist and there is great controversy concerning who really painted a series of paintings attributed to Josephine's 'Missus' - Lu Anne Bell. Was it Lu Anne or was it the slave Josephine?Lina's narrative follows the search for the descendants and I found this part of the story extremely interesting. Lina is also going through her own personal difficulties - she has her own family issues that have been left untended for many years. I wanted to like Lina more than I did. Although she is a high powered lawyer, she is still a petulant child with her father. And given that she is highly intelligent and quite adept at research, I cannot believe that she never sought to confirm the details of her mother's life and death. By the middle of the book I found myself speed reading through her sections.It was Josephine's story that grabbed my heart and wouldn't let go. I know it's a fictionalization, but Conklin has based her novel on facts. Heartbreaking facts. Additional narrators are introduced through their letters - that of a slave doctor and a young woman whose home was a stop on the Underground Railroad. I enjoyed these sections very much as well. I chose to listen to The House Girl. The reader was Bahni Turpin. She was excellent - her interpretation of Josephine chillingly brought her story to life. The cadence and tone she used for Lina was completely different of course, but I found it matched what I thought of Lina - a bit whiny. The accents used for other characters - especially that of Lu Anne Bell were excellent and believable.This one is poised to be the darling of book clubs everywhere. There is a reading group guide. I did enjoy this debut effort, but there are other books dealing with slavery (and in a deeper manner) that I would recommend ahead of this title. Still, it was an entertaining listen.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    The House Girl is yet another novel that juxtaposes a contemporary story with a linked plotline from the past. It is a tricky balancing act for the author to ensure that both stories are of equal interest.Lina Sparrow is a first year litigation associate in a high-powered New York City law firm. Although 24 and attractive, she doesn’t have much of a personal life, since her law firm career demands so much of her time. She still lives with her father, Oscar, who is a well-known artist.Josephine Bell, seventeen in 1852 and serving as a house slave in Lynnhurst, Virginia, is also an artist. Her master, Missus Lu, sometimes allows her to paint with her in her studio. Now that Missus is feeling poorly, she even asks Josephine to help complete her own paintings, because her hand has become too unsteady.As the story opens, Lina’s “mentor partner” at Clifton & Harp, Daniel Oliphant III, pulls her into a big new case brought by a wealthy African American client, Ron Dresser. Dresser wants to sue for reparations on behalf of the ancestors of slaves, claiming that trillions of dollars in unpaid wages resulted in unjust enrichment for private companies benefiting from slave labor before the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment. Lina’s assignment is, per Dan, to “get ourselves a great lead plaintiff: "I want something stirring, a new angle, something compelling. And don’t forget photogenic – these people will be on TV, they’ll be in the papers, they’ll be giving interviews. We need some great people, Lina, some great stories.” The lawsuit provides an excuse for Lina to read about (and share with us) the history of slave exploitation of labor.Thanks to her artist dad, Lina discovers the slave Josephine as a potential source for a “colorful” angle, if only she can find a descendant. A series of very unlikely and improbable developments enable her to learn many details that not only advance her case, but also allow her to locate the perfect plaintiff. Everything gets wrapped up in the end, but not neatly, and even somewhat bizarrely. Discussion: In many ways Josephine’s story is infinitely more interesting than Lina’s, but I don’t have a sense of how historically realistic Josephine’s story may have been, nor how authentic her voice seems. On the other hand, Lina’s account of life in a top-ranked, competitive law firm rings very true. I laughed out loud at Lina’s comparison of law firm time to casino time, and at the way she thought of everything she did in six-minute intervals.But some of the coincidences and dei ex machina in the story strained credulity. And some of Lina’s actions seemed markedly inconsistent with her character portrayal. Most perplexing to me, however, was the lawsuit that formed the backbone of the story.I was surprised, maybe astounded even, that the lawsuit for reparations for unjust enrichment was defined as having an end point of 1865. In fact, prior to 1865, slavery was legal. After 1865, on the other hand, slavery continued in the South by surreptitious means, and it is then that companies truly could be culpable for unjust enrichment. [See, for example, the Pulitzer Prize winning book Slavery By Another Name by Douglas A. Blackmon who analyzes why blacks did not rise in American society after emancipation until the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. Using extensive documentation, he demonstrates that long past the time of the Civil War, slavery was actually still alive and well in the South in all but name, with active support of the state and federal governments.]Evaluation: The intertwined stories of this book are definitely compelling, even if there are some plausibility issues, especially in the Lina sections of the book.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Lina is an attorney - an associate in a large firm in NY - trying her hardest to be the best and to get ahead when her boss hands her a case that could make her career. It's a reparations case for slavery; she and another associate are to prepare a brief and find a plaintiff to be the "face" of the lawsuit so that they can sue major corporations for all of the free labor provided by slaves and use the money to fund scholarships, etc.Josephine is a slave, a "house girl" in the home of LuAnne Bell, woman dying from what I can guess to be cancer and a master who beats her and doesn't see her as anything other than property. Her only freedom in her life comes when she is allowed to draw and paint with her mistress - and she has a talent. One very bad day Josephine decides to escape the failing plantation and take her chances at true freedom.The stories of these two women intertwine when Lina, through her artist father and his connections finds that the famous paintings attributed to LuAnne Bell might actually have been painted by Josephine. The foundation that now owns the former Bell plantation does not want this to be true and is doing everything it can to prove it false. Lina feels that a descendant of Josephine's would make an excellent face for her case - if one exists.Before I begin my review of the book I must say that I love the cover. It's so very simple yet it draws you in. I know that had I been in a book store shopping this is a book I would have been drawn to - so kudos to whomever designed it. The story, though, is not simple at all. It's involved, engrossing and for me at least it was impossible to put down. I read it in one sitting. The very first paragraph pulls you into Josephine's story and doesn't let you go. I must admit that Josephine's portion of the book - it is told in a back and forth manner - was more interesting to me but Lina's search for her history was NEARLY as fascinating. I am a lover of the historical so I do prefer the "olden times." It was when Lina's personal life entered the story that I was a bit distracted. All of the hullabaloo about her mother did not lead where I expected it to and in my opinion did not add anything to the plot. That is the reason for my not giving the book a 5 rating.Overall though, I loved it - obviously as I'm keeping this one for a second read. The hubby is reading it as I type and he is as engrossed as I was so it's a book for both genders. It has fascinating characters, a thought provoking plot and it keeps you guessing. What more can you ask of a book?
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Black History Month is wrapping up and I just finished a novel that fits in well with that celebration. Tara Conklin's debut novel, The House Girl first beckons to you with a stunningly beautiful cover; a silhouette of young woman against a serene green background of what looks like wallpaper, with birds and flowers.While the cover pulls you in, it is the beautiful writing that urges you to keep reading. The story takes place in two time frames- 1852, where we meet Josephine, a 17-year-old house slave who cares for the ailing mistress of the house, LuAnn Bell. LuAnn is a painter, and from time to time she allows Josephine to paint as well.LuAnn also taught Josephine how to read. Josephine yearns for freedom, and we discover throughout the story that she once tried to escape but was returned to her owners.In 2004, Lina Sparrow is a corporate lawyer, the daughter of Oscar, a famous artist. Lina's mother died when she was a child, and she has very few memories of her mother. Lina is chosen by one of the partners at her law firm to work on finding a plaintiff for a big case- a slave reparations lawsuit that a big client wishes to bring against corporations that made lots of money off the labor of slaves.Lina attends a show of LuAnn Bell's paintings, and hears about a controversy surrounding the show. Some people believe that Josephine is the actual artist, and the controversy has made headlines. Lina believes that descendants of Josephine would make the perfect plaintiffs for her case, so she travels to Virginia in search of them.The story alternates between Josephine and Lina's point of view, but the most interesting parts of the novel for me were the letters written by Dorothea Rounds (an abolitionist who helped her undertaker father as a stop on the Underground Railroad) to her sister Kate, and a twenty page letter written by Caleb Harper, a disgraced medical student and brother-in-law to Dorothea.Dorothea's letters to her sister explain in great detail how she and her father cleverly hid slaves in coffins destined for shipment up North. As someone who grew up in Auburn NY, the last home of Harriet Tubman and a stop on the Underground Railroad, I found this so fascinating. How their scheme ends is a sad tale and the author tells it in such a compelling manner I found myself on the edge of my seat as I read it.Caleb's story is a sad one too. He has a alcohol problem and after he is blamed for a family tragedy, he completely falls apart. He ends up working for a slave catcher, medically treating the slaves so that they can be resold further South. When Caleb meets up with Josephine, he sees a chance at redemption.I raced through Caleb's 20-page letter because his story was so interesting, and he is such a well-written character. Many other reviews have mentioned that Josephine's story is more compelling than Lina's, and I think it is partly because of these two primary sources that Lina uncovers. They are quite well done.The House Girl is one of those books that slowly pulls you in, and once you are in, you can hardly come up for air. Josephine's story and her yearning for basic human dignity and what she is willing to endure to find that are inspirational and heartbreaking. If you are a fan of historical fiction, I highly recommend this irresistible debut novel and I look forward to more to come from Tara Conklin.rating 4 of 5
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Tara Conklin has written a wonderful book about a slave from Virginia and a lawyer in New York City, who was a kind of slave to her law firm. The book flips back and forth from 1853 to 2004. Josephine, the slave, was a house slave whose mistress taught her to read and write and allowed her access to art supplies. Her artwork survived although it was attributed to her mistress, Lu Anne Bell, who died in 1853. Carolina Sparrow (Lina) is an up-and-coming Caucasian lawyer at a large NYC firm who is assigned to work on a slave reparations lawsuit. She is the daughter of two artists although her mother died when Lina was four. Her father has painted a series of paintings featuring her mother, about whom he had refused to say much over the years. The book weaves these stories together pretty seamlessly and ends up as a spell binding read. Highly recommended! I could hardly put it down.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    In Tara Conklin's "The House Girl," lawyer Lina Sparrow is tasked with finding someone to be the face for a class action suit her Manhattan law firm is handling that seeks reparations for descendants of American slaves. Lina is drawn to the story of Josephine, a slave in the home of now-famous artist Lu Anne Bell. There are those in the art world who are disputing the Bell family's claim that the paintings were done by Lu Anne, but instead were the work of her house slave, Josephine.Lina convinces her boss to let her track down what happened to Josephine's possible descendants. Lina is also dealing with the death of her mother, which happened several years ago, but which she and her father never talked about. I really enjoyed author Conklin's "The House Girl," especially Josephine's story and learning what the life of a slave had been like. Conklin's chapters switched between Lina in the current day and the ways of a corporate law firm back in time to the 1850s and Josephine's story of runaway slaves. I highly recommend it.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I enjoyed this read, but it seemed like some of the pieces fell together a little too easily (I mean really . . . . what are the chances that she would find all of that evidence). However, if you don't think too much it will keep your interest.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I absolutely adored this book. It reads flawlessly. While I was incensed at the appalling abuse and torture visited upon African Americans in the south, the rich story of the book is ultimately hopeful. This is a story I won't soon forget.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    3.5 out of 5 stars. Lina is an attorney who measures her life in tenths of an hour. A century and a half earlier, Josephine was a house slave with little to love in her life. A slavery reparations lawsuit brings their stories together. I did enjoy reading this historical fiction. As always when I read about slavery or injustice of all types, I am appalled at what we are capable of doing to one another. However, this story is more about human spirit than it is about anything else. I liked some of the characters, especially Lina's father, Oscar. Some of the characters did not have the depth I would have liked, and some parts of the story were a little too easily guessed. The writing was interesting and competent, no grating idiosyncrasies but also nothing to make it especially memorable. It all adds up to a good story, solid writing, but not something that will find its way to my list of favorites.I was given an advance reader's copy of the book for review, and I am grateful for that.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Great story, well written, couldn't put it down!
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I enjoyed this story about an attorney assigned to work on a reparations case, and a young black girl who is the house slave of a failing tobacco farmer. Although I am more interested in reading about reparations where Native Americans are concerned, I did appreciate the way that the stories of the two women intersected.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    The House Girl was actually two stories in one book. One was great, the other distracting. Josephine has been the house girl enslaved by the Bell family. She has been the care giver to the Missus, Lu Anne . Lu Anne is kept comfortable in her dying days as Josephine manages her them with reading and painting. Lu Anne has been happy to share her art studio with Josephine, allowing her to paint exceptional works of art. Lina, a,present day attorney, has been assigned a case regarding historical reparations to slaves. She lives with her Dad an artist himself who has told her about an exhibit of Lu Anne Bells that is questioned for its authenticity. The storyline regarding Josephine is compelling. The back story of Lina and her family is an unwelcome distraction and totally unnecessary. Perhaps it should be its own novel. It was Lina's story that the reader gets bogged down in. I would be more inclined to give a good recommendation if the story had been only about Josephine.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I loved the historical stories of Josephine and Dorothea, Lina’s story I could have done without after all her talking about time by billable hours got really boring, then after her trip to Richmond and she got the important letter that she says on the plane she had a hard time not tearing it open then she gets home goes out and gets drunk with Jasper goes to work the next day and still hasn’t opened it?? What?? You would think that would have been the first thing she did before going out. I didn’t like Lina and her story (or her mother’s story) was so predictable, well it was one of three options *no spoilers* and sure enough it was one of those that I had guessed Very early on in her story.I think this would have been a better book without the reparations story, if the modern story had just been the case of the art authentication it would have tied the story together better, I will admit to just scanning through Lina’s story in the last 100 pages or so I just wanted to get back to Josephine. Josephine’s story was great we got to know her and knew her relationship with her Missus and we as a reader knew the truth about the art because the author gave us a detailed look at Josephine’s life. I also liked Dorothea’s story through the letters to her sister but I couldn’t help wondering what if these letters had fallen into the wrong hands they were so detailed with names and dates about what was happening at the family farm for something that needed to be kept in the utmost secrecy Dorothea sure talked a lot about it and that did come back to bite her.I would read more from this author as I did enjoy the historical story in this book.Overall I did enjoy this book I would give the historical part of this book 4 stars and the present day story 3 stars so 3 ½ stars as a whole.3 ½ StarsI received this from Edelweiss and the publisher for a fair and honest review.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Artistic talent and skill are gifts given to chosen people and are not based on skin color or social standing as the historical novel HOUSE GIRL by Tara Conklin so beautifully illustrates. Josephine is a Virginia tobacco plantation slave who dreams of freedom, while in contemporary times Lina Sparrow an attorney, and daughter of an artist is beginning work on a slave reparations case.As these two lives separated by time and sorrow merge; the story of Josephine and her mistress Lu Anne Bell a famous artist begins to unravel – who is the truly gifted painter – was it really the young slave girl? As Lina researches Josephine’s story she learns many truths about herself, slavery, art and life.A beautifully written book that combines historical facts such as the Underground Railroad along with rich details about plantation life for both slave and master. It is at heart a story of women reaching for more – wanting more and looking for their places in life – while trying to understand who they really are and what freedom actually means. Author Conklin writes a seamless narrative of two worlds separated by hundreds of years that provide the reader with a depth of emotion that will linger long after the last page is read.I received this book through the Goodreads early reviewers programs
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Told sometimes from the third person perspective of Josephine, a slave in Virginia in 1852, sometimes from Lina, an attorney in a 2004 reparations case, and sometimes from the letters of a family involved in the Underground Railroad, this is the story of Lina’s attempt to unmask the truth behind artwork that has been passed off as that of Josephine’s mistress, but may in fact be Josephine’s own. The novel is technically well-written and well-paced. Lina’s discovery regarding her own past, as she discovers the truth about Josephine’s, sparked my curiosity. However, I was disappointed at the lack of emotional impact that the novel had. The characters were interesting, but never quite compelling, and I felt detached particularly from Josephine, never really getting the sense of knowing her. At times she felt more like a plot device than a character in her own right. While the unfolding mysteries of the plot kept me reading until the end, this was not a book that stayed with me, as I felt connected to the plot, but never, unfortunately, to the characters.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Loved Josephine's part of the story, 1852 on a failing tobacco farm in Virgina, but Lina's in the present day, I did not find as enticing. The author did a very credible job in seamlessly weaving the past with the present, but the present day story was a bit of a cliche for me. Young lawyer, taking a case on reparations,ar times I felt a bit minupulated and preached to about this case, and the fact that the main litigant was of course an extremely good looking male. Josephine, who wanted to run away, despite knowing other slaves who had their ankles cut for attempting the same thing, was a very likable character. Lina, and her constant ruminating on billable hours, I think was meant as a reflection that she was a slave to her law firm, and only as valuable to them as the money she coud bill. Good first novel, brought up many interesting aspects of slavery and what our responsiblilty is to a past that we were not part of, will be good for discussion groups. ARC from publisher.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    From 1852 to 2004....from one artist to another....from a farm in Virginia to the hustle and bustle of New York City.THE HOUSE GIRL flawlessly switches between these two time periods telling of the life of Josephine, a slave girl, Lina, a New York City attorney, and Lina's father, Oscar, an artist. The book leads you through the life of Josephine as she struggles with her decision to "run, it leads you through the life of Lina who is researching families who may benefit from wrong doing during the period of slavery in the United States, and it leads you through the life of Oscar trying to make amends through his artwork. The most significant question, though, along with finding descendants is that of who really did create the paintings found in Lu Anne Bell's home? Was it really Lu Anne or was it Josephine? Corresponding with this painting mystery and the mystery of Josephine's descendants is that of Lina's mother...what really did happen to her when Lina was only four? You will get caught up in both stories because of the great detail Ms. Conklin uses and because of the research. I love "digging" for historical information. As you switch between the two stories, you will ask yourself to choose which life you were more interested in....Lina's or Josephine's....it may be difficult to choose since both were appealing and drew you in, but for me Josephine's story wins hands down for interest.It took a few chapters, but you will become so involved, it becomes difficult to stop reading....you want to know what will become of the characters and the answer to the mysteries.Each character comes alive with the vivid detail Ms. Conklin uses, and she puts their feelings out in the open...you can feel the tension, the pain, the frustration, the longing, and the fleeting happiness they experience. I really enjoyed this book because of the history and the research and of course the detailed descriptions of the characters.The historical aspect and the fact-finding kept me up late. It is very interesting how the farm's kitchen records, crop records, and births and deaths of every person including the slaves was kept. I thoroughly enjoy these types of findings. I also wonder how these records were not destroyed and who would have thought to preserve them. Such foresight....something to be grateful for. Don't miss this book especially if you are a historical fiction buff. This book pulls you in and will cause you to pause and reflect on the human race and have you wondering about the reasons why we do what we do, have you wondering what the reasons are that lead us to make the choices we make, and have you wondering about the reason we turned out to be the person we are. 5/5This book was given to me without compensation by the publisher in return for an honest review.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    The House Girl is a novel with two parallel stories - the first about a 19 year old slave girl, Josephine Bell living on a plantation in 1852, and the second follows Lina Sparrow, an ambitious first-year lawyer who has been assigned to a class action suit involving reparations for the descendants of American slaves. It might seem that a new author would struggle with recreating a believable narrative for a plantation slave, but this was not the case. Josephine's story was heartfelt and filled with vivid descriptions. I loved this portion of the book. I definitely got a real sense of the horrific conditions and treatment of the slaves and although it is unrealistic, it made me really want the modern day class action suit to result in something, even if it was an official government apology for the wrongs inflicted on the slaves. But I struggled with the modern day story. It almost felt like this book was written by two different people. As much as the historic part was rich with description and the characters were complex, the modern day story was flat. There were several coincidences and subplots that made what could have been a deep and powerful book seem trite and more of a 'chick lit' read. Promising, but not good enough.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    While this is ficitonalized, it's always interesting to think about the relationship between characters of such different means, backgrounds and standing. I don't always enjoy back and forth timelines in books, in this case I think it worked well. Overall a good read.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    THE HOUSE GIRL by Tara ConklinJosephine is a 17 year old slave in anti-bellum Virginia while Lina is a twenty something up and coming lawyer in present day NYC. The lives of these two become entwined when a wealthy Black client of Lina’s law firm starts a “slave reparations” law suit that becomes entangled with an art dealer’s contention that Josephine is the true artist and not her widely acclaimed mistress. Both life in a high powered law firm and life in the slave owning South are presented believably. Lina and Josephine are both sympathetic and well-drawn characters. The story line for both is engaging. While the sub plot involving Lina’s mother is rather thin and too neatly concluded, the artistic element is a link for the two stories.Book groups will have a variety of subjects to discuss; some very superficial and entertaining and others quite serious and profound. Race relations now and then permeate both stories. The question “Who is Caucasian and who is Black?” may form the body of the discussion. The value of a piece of art and how the artist’s name recognition determines price is another point for discussion. Motherless children and how they and their families cope could form another topic.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Skilled slaves were often hired out as craftsmen and women. We know this because their masters and mistresses earned money from their talents. But what about those artistic talents that didn't earn money? What about a highly talented landscape painter and portraitist? Would her work, unsigned by her of course, be attributed wrongly to the not nearly so talented but definitely white mistress of the house who liked to dabble with paint? In Tara Conklin's novel, The House Girl, this question of authorship and art coupled with the themes of family and belonging twine throughout the complex dual narrative plot. Lina Sparrow is a new lawyer. Raised by her charismatic artist father after her artist mother's death when she was small, she has worked hard to get where she is in life, juggling her own drive with taking care of her often times absent minded father. She is an up and coming star for her year at her very high powered law firm and she's just been asked to work on a slavery reparations class action lawsuit against the US government, provided she can find a suitable lead plaintiff to be the poster child for the suit. And this is the point where Lina's two lives, the controlled work life and the bohemian home life collide since she comes up with the idea for a lead plaintiff while at an exhibition with her father. She sees works by antebellum artist Lu Anne Bell who captured life on a southern plantation in her landscapes and portraits but it is the more and more generally accepted suggestion that Bell's best works were in actual fact painted by her house girl Josephine and claimed as Lu Anne's that is most interesting to Lina. And so she sets out to find out the truth about the paintings and if Josephine had any descendants who could possibly be the face of Lina's lawsuit. While Lina's search for Josephine's fate and family goes on in the modern day, the novel also tracks Josephine's life in the pre-war years. She is an accomplished artist but her talent must be sublimated to her duties to her very ill mistress. The master of the plantation is a cruel and hard man, breaking not only his slaves but also his wife. Lina resolves to flee the Lynnhurst plantation right from the opening chapter of the novel although it takes her a long time to acquire the knowledge and the resolve to follow through with her desire to be free. Her tale of slavery is not unusual but that doesn't make the telling any easier. The novel starts off exceedingly slowly and even though the reader knows that the parallel stories must converge, it took quite a while for Lina's search to line up with the goings on in Josephine's life, delaying the revelations that must come in the end. But eventually they did compliment each other better than in the beginning and worked to engage the reader. Josephine's life, although representative of so many slaves, was a fascinating one while Lina's life and work on the lawsuit was less interesting although her own search for the truth about her family as she searched for the truth about Josephine's possible descendants was an interesting parallel. The fact that Lina so easily finds what she is looking for though, where others have failed through the years, makes the ending to the novel unearned and although the trail of letters from both Dorothea and Caleb Harper concludes several plot threads quite tidily, both those instances were too deus ex machine and made for too easy and neat a conclusion. There are interesting themes in the novel, that of the personal and political connections to art, family and truth, the search for self, origins and provenance, and the complications of history to name just some and because of that the book is a good read if not a great one.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Lina is a corporate lawyer and is assigned to find descendants of slaves to get reparation for them. She learns of Josephine, a slave who may be the artist of paintings credited to her owner Lu Anne Bell. This book is their story of the current day research and the past of Josephine's life. Some parts of Josephine's life may be hard to read, but you like her and her spirit. I liked the book and both main characters.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Alternating chapters tell the stories of two women. In 1853, Josephine Bell, a seventeen-year-old slave on a Virginian tobacco plantation, plans her escape to freedom. In New York in 2004, Lina Sparrow, a young attorney, is looking for a good lead plaintiff for a class action suit seeking reparation for the descendants of American slaves. The two stories intersect when Lina hears about a folk artist whose paintings are thought to actually be the work of her house girl Josephine. Lina sets out to do genealogical research to determine if Josephine had any descendants. Josephine’s story - her life and her fierce determination to escape from servitude as a house slave – is compelling. The reader cannot but feel sympathy for her circumstances. Unfortunately, the author’s decision to tell the last part of Josephine’s story using a witness’s letter distances the reader from her and lessens the emotional impact of the narrative. Lina’s story is much less interesting. The reparation case is really far-fetched, and her research is advanced by a series of coincidences that stretch credibility. Just as she seems to reach a dead end, a document lands in her lap which gives clues that have eluded numerous scholars. In the end a letter written by a peripheral character conveniently explains everything. Of course, this crucial document reaches her only at the last minute when an archivist has a change of heart. Lina is not a believable character. She is able to change the minds of the archivist and her candidate for lead plaintiff yet she is totally passive at work and lets her boss walk all over her? She works hard at searching for evidence of Josephine’s descendants, yet she knows virtually nothing about the death of her mother 20 years earlier. Never did she actually conduct a search into her mother though she was an aspiring artist who had received some publicity? The reader is expected to see parallels between Josephine and Lina’s determination, but Lina just comes across as flat next to the house girl. Lina is a naïve, sheltered and unfocused young woman, and her story is bland.The novel would work well as historical fiction if the focus had remained solely on Josephine and her story had been told directly without the inclusion of long missives from witnesses. Removing the Lina narrative would have eliminated most of the many coincidences and a weak character who does not inspire any emotional connection. The adding of the romance element in Lina’s chapters only added to the impression that the author was trying to write a commercial blockbuster which seems to necessitate such an element. This book has strengths but considerable weaknesses. It should have been subjected to considerable revision.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Tara Conklin intertwines the story of two women: Josephine Bell, a Virginia house slave who in 1853 is trying desperately to escape to freedom and Lina Sparrow, a New York attorney looking for a plaintiff to serve as "lead plaintiff" in a class action suit in 2004 to compel the payment of reparations for descendants of slaves. The story is hung together by the discovery of some artwork that is thought to have been painted by Josephine Bell although heretofore attributed to her owner. The slave story is by far the more compelling. We read of harsh treatment, unsuccessful escapes, and finally her "trip" on the Underground Railroad. The characters are well-drawn, believable, and the story hangs together beautifully. The reader is emotionally drawn into the life of Josephine, given insight into the extreme conditions slaves endured both in captivity in the south, and throughout the ordeal of the escapees.Lina's story on the other hand is a bit sparse. I found it difficult to relate to this young woman who seems to have no backbone in her job, whose researching skills are lacking and who seems to be on the receiving end of several fortuitous happenings. I couldn't quite figure out if the plaintiff she was pursuing was also meant to be a romantic interest, and I found the whole reparations story a wee stretch. The story of Josephine and her paintings carried the book. The platform of the reparations case was quite unsteady, and the ending really left me hanging.Overall, the book is still worth reading if for no other reason than for the clear picture of slave life and the hopelessness of their situation. Reparations may be called for. I just wish the author had made a better case for them, and found a more convincing plaintiff and built a more persuasive case.

Book preview

Memory of Water - Emmi Itäranta

PROLOGUE

Everything is ready now.

Each morning for seven weeks I have swept the fallen leaves from the stone slabs that form the path to the teahouse, and forty-nine times I have chosen a handful among them to be scattered on the stones again, so the path wouldn’t look too much like it had been swept. That was one of the things my father always insisted on.

Sanja told me once the dead don’t need pleasing. Perhaps they don’t. Perhaps I do. Sometimes I don’t know the difference. How could I, when they are in my blood and bones, when all that is left of them is me?

I haven’t dared to go to the spring in seven weeks. Yesterday I turned on the tap in the house and held the mouth of the waterskin to its metal. I spoke to it in pretty words and ugly words, and I may have even screamed and wept, but water doesn’t care for human sorrows. It flows without slowing or quickening its pace in the darkness of the earth, where only stones will hear.

The pipe gave a few drops, perhaps a spoonful, into my waterskin.

I know what it means.

This morning I emptied the rest of the water from the skin into the cauldron, brought some dried peat from the shed into the teahouse and placed the firestarter next to the hearth. I thought of my father, whose wishes I had violated, and my mother, who didn’t see the day I became a tea master.

I thought of Sanja. I hoped she was already where I was going.

A guest whose face is not unfamiliar is walking down the path, offering me a hand I’m ready to take. The world will not spin slower or faster when we have passed through the gate together.

What remains is light on water, or a shifting shadow.

PART ONE

Watchers of Water

‘Only what changes can remain.’

Wei Wulong, ‘The Path of Tea’

7th century of Old Qian time

CHAPTER ONE

Water is the most versatile of all elements. So my father told me the day he took me to the place that didn’t exist. While he was wrong about many things, he was right about this, so I still believe. Water walks with the moon and embraces the earth, and it isn’t afraid to die in fire or live in air. When you step into it, it will be as close as your own skin, but if you hit it too hard, it will shatter you. Once, when there were still winters in the world, cold winters, white winters, winters you could wrap yourself in and slip on and come in to warm from, you could have walked on the crystallized water that was called ice. I have seen ice, but only small, man-made lumps. All my life I have dreamed of how it would be to walk on frozen sea.

Death is water’s close companion. The two cannot be separated, and neither can be separated from us, for they are what we are ultimately made of: the versatility of water, and the closeness of death. Water has no beginning and no end, but death has both. Death is both. Sometimes death travels hidden in water, and sometimes water will chase death away, but they go together always, in the world and in us.

This, too, I learned from my father, but I now believe I would have learned it without him just as well.

I can pick my own beginning.

Perhaps I will pick my own end.

The beginning was the day when my father took me to the place that didn’t exist.

It was a few weeks after I had taken my Matriculation Tests, compulsory for all citizens the year they came of age. While I had done well, there was never any question that I would remain in my current apprenticeship with my father instead of continuing my studies in the city. It was a choice I had felt obliged to make, and therefore, perhaps, not really a choice. But it seemed to make my parents happy, and it didn’t make me miserable, and those were the things that mattered at the time.

We were in our garden behind the teahouse, where I was helping my father hang empty waterskins to dry. A few of them were still draped on my arm, but most were already hanging upside down from the hooks on the metal rack. Sunlight filtered in veils through their translucent surfaces. Slow drops streaked their insides before eventually falling on the grass.

‘A tea master has a special bond with water and death,’ my father said to me as he examined one of the skins for cracks. ‘Tea isn’t tea without water, and without tea a tea master is no tea master. A tea master devotes his life to serving others, but he only attends the tea ceremony as a guest once in his lifetime, when he feels his death approaching. He orders his successor to prepare the last ritual, and after he has been served the tea, he waits alone in the teahouse until death presses a hand on his heart and stops it.’

My father tossed the waterskin on the grass where a couple of others were already waiting. Mending the skins didn’t always work out, but they were expensive, like anything made of durable plastic, and it was usually worth a try.

‘Has anyone ever made a mistake?’ I asked. ‘Did anyone think their death was coming, when it wasn’t time yet?’

‘Not in our family,’ he said. ‘I’ve heard of a past-world master who ordered his son to prepare the last ritual, settled to lie down on the teahouse floor and walked into his house two days later. The servants thought he was a ghost and one of them had a heart attack. The tea master had mistaken the servant’s death for his own. The servant was cremated and the master lived for another twenty years. But it doesn’t happen often.’

I slapped a horsefly that had landed on my arm. It darted off just in time with a loud buzz. The headband of my insect hood felt tight and itchy, but I knew taking it off would attract too many insects.

‘How do you know when your death is coming?’ I asked.

‘You know,’ my father said. ‘Like you know you love, or like in a dream you know that the other person in the room is familiar, even if you don’t know their face.’ He took the last skins from me. ‘Go and get two blaze lanterns from the teahouse veranda, and fill them for me.’

I wondered what he needed the lanterns for, because it was only early afternoon, and this time of the year even the nights didn’t drown the sun in the horizon. I went around the teahouse and took two lanterns from under the bench. A stiff-winged blazefly was stirring at the bottom of one. I shook it into the gooseberry bushes. Blazeflies liked gooseberries best, so I kept shaking the branches above the lanterns until there was a handful of sleepily crawling flies inside each. I closed the lids and took the lanterns to my father.

He had lifted an empty waterskin on his back. His expression was closed behind the insect hood. I handed the lanterns to him, but he only took one of them.

‘Noria, it’s time I showed you something,’ he said. ‘Come with me.’

We walked across the dried swamp spreading behind our house to the foot of the fell and then up the slope. It wasn’t a long walk, but sticky sweat glued the hair onto my scalp. When we reached the height where the boulder garden began, I took my insect hood off. The wind was so strong that there weren’t as many horseflies and midges here as around the house.

The sky was pure and still. The sun felt tight on my skin. My father had stopped, perhaps to choose his route. I turned to look down. The tea master’s house with its garden was a speckle of floating green in the faded landscape of burned-out grass and bare stone. The valley was scattered with the houses of the village, and on the other side rose the Alvinvaara fell. Far beyond its slopes, where the watering areas were, loomed a stretch of dark-green fir forest. Yet further that way was the sea, but it couldn’t be seen from here even on bright days. In the other direction was the slowly decaying trunk tangle of the Dead Forest. In my childhood there had still been occasional birches that didn’t grow higher than to my waist, and once I had picked a whole handful of lingonberries there.

A path ran along the border of the boulder garden, and my father turned to it. On this side the slope of the fell was full of caves. I had often come here to play when I was younger. I still remembered when my mother had once found me here playing mountain trolls with Sanja and a couple of other kids. She had yelled at my father, who had forgotten to look after me, and dragged me by the arm all the way home. I wasn’t allowed to play with the children from the village for a month. But even after that I had sneaked to the caves with Sanja whenever my mother was on research trips, and we had played explorers and adventurers and secret agents from New Qian in the Mediterranean Desert. There were dozens of caves, if not hundreds, and we had explored them as thoroughly as we thought possible. We had kept looking for secret passageways and hidden treasures, the kind you’d read about in old books or pod-stories, but never found anything more than coarse, dry stone.

My father stopped outside the mouth of a cave that was shaped like a cat’s head, and then passed through it without a word. The entrance was low. My knees rubbed against the rock through the thin fabric of my trousers, and I had trouble bringing the lantern and the insect hood in with me. Inside the cave the air was cool and still. The lanterns began to glow faintly as the yellowish glint of the blazeflies grew in the twilight.

I recognised the cave. We had fought about it one summer with Sanja, when she had wanted to use it for the headquarters of the Central And Crucially Important Explorers’ Society of New Qian. I had insisted that there was too much wasted space, because the cave grew steeply lower towards the back, and that it was too far from home for convenient smuggling of food. Eventually, we had opted for a smaller cave closer to my house.

My father was crawling towards the back of the cave. I saw him stop and push his hand right into the wall – so it seemed to me – and I saw the movement of his arm. The rock above him made a faint screeching sound as a dark hole opened in it. The cave was so low there that when he sat up, his head was already at the level of the hole, and he slipped through it, taking his lantern with him. Then I saw his face, when he looked at me through the hole.

‘Are you coming?’ he said.

I crawled to the back of the cave and felt the wall where I had seen him open the hatch. All I could see in the wavering light of the blaze lantern was the coarse rock, but then my fingers found a narrow shelf-like formation behind which there was a wide crack, and I discovered a small lever hidden in it. The crack was nearly impossible to see because of the way the rock was formed.

‘I’ll explain later how it all works,’ my father said. ‘Now come here.’

I followed him through the hatch.

Above the cave there was another one, or rather a tunnel which seemed to plunge right into the heart of the fell. On the ceiling, right above the hatch, there was a metal pipe and a large hook next to it. I had no idea what they were for. On the wall were two levers. My father turned one of them, and the hatch closed. The glow of the lanterns grew bright in the complete darkness of the tunnel. My father removed his insect hood and the waterskin he had been carrying and placed them on the floor.

‘You can leave your hood here,’ he said. ‘You won’t need it further ahead.’

The tunnel descended towards the inside of the fell. I noticed that the metal pipe ran along its length. I had no space to walk with my back straight, and my father’s head brushed the ceiling at times. The rock under our feet was unexpectedly smooth. The light of my lantern clung to the creases on the back of my father’s jacket and the darkness clung to the dents in the walls. I listened to the silence of the earth around us, different from the silence above the ground: denser, stiller. And slowly I began to distinguish a stretching, growing sound at its core, familiar and yet strange. I had never before heard it flowing free, entirely pushed by its own weight and will. It was akin to sounds like rain knuckling the windows or bathwater poured on the roots of the pine trees, but this sound wasn’t tame or narrow, not chained in man-made confines. It wrapped me and pulled me in, until it was close as the walls, close as the dark.

My father stopped and I saw in the lantern light that we had come to an opening between the tunnel and another cave. The sound thrummed loud. He turned to look at me. The light of the blazeflies wavered on his face like on water, and the darkness sang behind him. I expected him to say something, but he simply turned his back on me and went through the opening. I followed.

I tried to see ahead, but the glow of the lanterns did not reach far. The darkness received us with a rumble. It was like the roar of heated water at the bottom of an iron cauldron, but more like the sound of a thousand or ten thousand cauldrons when the water has just begun to boil and the tea master knows it’s time to remove it from the fire, or it will vanish as steam where it can no longer be caught. I felt something cool and moist on my face. Then we walked a few steps down, and the light of the blazeflies finally hit the sound, and I saw the hidden spring for the first time.

Water rushed from inside the rock in strings and threads and strands of shimmer, in enormous sheets that shattered the surface of the pond at the bottom of the cave when they hit it. It twisted around the rocks and curled in spirals and whirls around itself, and churned and danced and unravelled again. The surface trembled under the force of the movement. A narrow stream flowed from the pond towards the shelf of stone that the doorway we had come through was on, then disappeared into the ground under it. I could see something that looked like a white stain on the rock wall above the surface of the water, and another lever in the wall further away. My father urged me on, to the edge of the pond.

‘Try it,’ he said.

I dipped my fingers in the water and felt its strength. It moved against my hand like breathing, like an animal, like another person’s skin. It was cold, far colder than anything I was used to. I licked my fingers carefully, like I had been taught to do since I was very young: never drink water you haven’t tasted first.

‘It’s fresh,’ I said.

Lantern light folded on his face when he smiled, and then, slowly, the smile ran dry.

‘You’re seventeen, and of age now, and therefore old enough to understand what I’m going to tell you,’ my father said. ‘This place doesn’t exist. This spring dried a long time ago. So the stories tell, and so believe even those who know other stories, tales of a spring in the fell that once provided water for the whole village. Remember. This spring doesn’t exist.’

‘I’ll remember,’ I told him, but didn’t realise until later what kind of a promise I had made. Silence is not empty or immaterial, and it is not needed to chain tame things. It often guards powers strong enough to shatter everything.

We returned through the tunnel. When we came to the entrance, my father picked up the waterskin he had left there and hung it from the hook on the ceiling. After making sure that the mouth of the skin was open, he turned one of the levers on the wall. I heard an electric noise, similar to the noises the cooling appliances in our kitchen made, and a roar yet different from before, as if captured in metal. In a moment a strong jet of water burst from the ceiling straight into the waterskin.

‘Did you make all this?’ I asked. ‘Or mother? Did she plan this? Did you build this together?’

‘Nobody knows for certain who built this,’ my father said. ‘But tea masters have always believed it was one of them, perhaps the first one who settled here, before winters disappeared and these wars began. Now only the water remembers.’

He turned both levers. The rush of water slowed down and died little by little, and the hatch opened again.

‘You first,’ he said.

I dropped myself through the hole. He closed the skin tightly, then lowered it carefully into the cave where I took it from him. When the hatch was closed again, the cave looked like nothing but a cave with no secrets.

The glow of the blazeflies faded swiftly in the daylight. When we walked into the garden, my mother, sitting under the awning, raised her eyes from the notes she was taking from a heavy book on her lap. My father handed his lantern to me. The shadows of leaves swayed on the stone slabs, as he walked towards the teahouse with the waterskin on his back. I was going to follow him, but he said, ‘Not now.’

I stood still, a lantern in each hand, and listened to the blazeflies bouncing against their sun-baked glass walls. It was only when my mother spoke that I thought of opening the lids of the lanterns.

‘You’ve burned again in the sun,’ she said. ‘Where did you go with your father?’

The blazeflies sprang up into the air and vanished into the bushes.

‘To a place that doesn’t exist,’ I said, and at that moment I looked at her, and knew that she knew where we had been, and that she had been there too.

My mother didn’t say more, not then, but calm vanished from her face.

Late that night, when I lay in my bed under an insect net and watched the orange light of the night sun on the pine trees, I heard her speaking with my father in the kitchen for a long time. I couldn’t make out the words they were saying, yet I discerned a dark edge in them that reached all the way to my dreams.

CHAPTER TWO

The ground was still breathing night-chill when I helped my father load the broken waterskins on the low cart at the back of the helicycle. Their scratched plastic surface glinted in the morning sun. I fastened the thick straps around the skins, and when I was certain they were sufficiently steady, I flung my seagrass bag on my shoulder and got up on the seat of the cycle.

‘Use Jukara,’ my father said. ‘He’ll give you a discount.’ Jukara was the oldest plasticsmith in the village and my father’s friend. I hadn’t trusted him since some waterskins he had repaired the year before had broken again after only a few uses, so I said nothing, merely moved my head in a way that could be interpreted as a nod. ‘And don’t take all day,’ my father added. ‘We have guests coming in tomorrow. I need your help with cleaning the teahouse.’

I stepped on the pedal to start the helicycle. One of the solar panels was broken and the motor was acting up, so I had to pedal almost all the way along the dusty pathway through trees of wavering gold-green scattered around our house. Only just before the edge of the woods did the cycle settle into a steady, quiet spin. I steered the cycle and the cart carefully to the wider road, locked the pedals and let my feet rest on them as the cycle moved unhurriedly towards the village. The morning air felt crisp on my bare arms and there weren’t many horseflies yet. I removed my insect hood, letting the wind and sun wash over my face. The sky was a dry, bare blue, and the earth was still, and I saw small animals moving in the dust of the fields in search of water.

After I had passed a few houses at the edge of the village, the road forked. The way to Jukara’s repair shop was to the left. I stopped and hesitated, and then I continued to the right, until I saw the familiar chipped-blue picket fence ahead.

Like most buildings in the village, Sanja’s home was one of the past-world houses, a one-storey with multiple rooms, a garden and a garage from the time when most people still owned fast past-tech vehicles. The walls had been repaired repeatedly, and Sanja’s parents had told me there had once been a nearly flat roof without solar panels, although it was hard for me to imagine.

When I stopped outside the open gate, she was standing in the front yard, emptying the last of a waterskin into a metal tub and cursing. The front door was open and a barely audible flow of pod-news was drifting from inside the house through the insect curtain covering the doorframe. Sanja wasn’t wearing an insect hood, and when she looked at me, I saw that she hadn’t slept.

‘Bloody sham sold me salt water,’ she said, furiously tucking her black hair behind her ears. ‘I don’t know how he did it. I tasted the water first, like I always do, and it was fresh. His prices were atrocious, so I only bought half a skin, but even that was wasted money.’

‘What sort of a container did he have?’ I asked as I steered the cycle through the gate to the yard.

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