The Memory of Water, by Emmi Itaranta - book review

[watervole]

I got this book because it was on the list of 100 best SF novels that was circulating recently, and it was only £1 on Kindle.  (It's now free!)

I don't know if I'll ever read it again, but it was certainly worth reading. 

It's a curious book. Beautifully written with text that draws on varied imagery, and uses both the nature of water and the tea ceremony to reflect the narrator's thoughts and her approach to life.

 

The author has a way of foreshadowing events that is almost spooky.  Reading one section, I knew that a character was about to die, yet upon re-reading it, I could not tell exactly had keyed me in. It was very subtle, but works, because the protagonist is a tea master - and she is able to sense when death is coming. Somehow, the writer conveys this ability to the reader.

 

In this post-climate change world, water is in very short supply, and the government use the water supply to control the population.  Finland, one of the last inhabitable areas has been ruled for a long time by people of Chinese origin and some of the names and customs reflect this.  Much technology has been lost and people scavenge the waste dumps of the past for useful items, or things that can be converted into useful objects.

 

It works well as a background and was pretty convincing overall.  the only item that really threw me out of the book was an almond tree (almonds need large amounts of water and I can't see them being grown in a region with severe water shortages).

Comments

[coth]

They grow almonds nowadays in the dry state of California.

[watervole]

And if you do a quick google, you'll realise just how much water they are drawing from aquifers and other unsustainable sources to do it.

It's a big issue in California, and unlikely to go away. 10% of the state's water goes on almonds. I've read that it takes a gallon of water to grow one nut (sounds an awful lot, so you might want to double check that).

[coth]

Yes, I know that. Sorry, I didn't make my point clearly, which is that the people who manage water supply are not the people who grow almonds, and very few societies manage their (scarce) resources effectively.

Of course I can't comment on Itaranta's integration of the information into her worldbuilding and plot.

[watervole]

I wasn't clear. The almond tree was in the protagonist's garden.

She was once criticised for sprinkling handfulls of water on the grass as part of the tea ceremony, which gives an idea of how unlikely it is the water ration would extend to an almond tree.

There's an outside chance that the writer used the tree deliberately, but I don't think so.

[coth]

Yes. I can see that being a problem.

[igenlode]

I suspect the author just saw the almond tree as being 'Chinese' themed :-(

[watervole]

That sounds very plausible.

[coth]

And I've taken the Kindle sampler - thank you. Don't know when I will read it though.

[watervole]

I find unread books linger longer on Kindles. Probably because it doesn't have a way of showing me recent purchases or unread books (or at least none that I've found).

[coth]

I read Kindle books on my phone, where the app shows me my most recent purchase first. Also, I mostly sort books into Libraries as I read them, so the ones I haven't read remain uncollected.

I have many, many more unread paper books than unread Kindle books.