Kafkaesque allegory

Robert Edric: Gathering the water

Gathering the Water explores a remote Northern valley in the weeks before it is flooded forever.  It reads like an allegory; a water board employee dips into the enclosed lives of the inhabitants, having neither the power to help them nor the ability to influence his shadowy employers.  His meticulous reports are ignored; he is told to abridge them and he duly fabricates them and immerses himself in the brooding landscape.  The image of a rising tide, an unstoppable flood, insinuates itself throughout the novel.  Some stories of the landscape which have been buried underground are revealed as the water level rises.  We sense Mr Weightman’s increasing sympathy with the villagers and the dialogue reveals the gulf that separates him from the inhabitants.  The novel works both as a portrait of Victorian northern life and as a model for the pointlessness of many modern day Kafkaesque jobs.  Corruption, madness, hypocrisy and ignorance emerge, leading to its tragic conclusion.   It’s a rare and special novel; it most resembles novel Waterland by Graham Swift, as a portrait of a landscape and its inbred people.  It’s a novel that can’t be easily summarised; images linger on after you’ve read it, longlisted for the Man Booker prize, thoroughly recommended.