All the water in the world
- Submitting institution
-
University of East London
- Unit of assessment
- 33 - Music, Drama, Dance, Performing Arts, Film and Screen Studies
- Output identifier
- 24
- Type
- A - Authored book
- DOI
-
-
- Publisher
- Two Roads
- ISBN
- 9781473694903
- Open access status
- -
- Month of publication
- -
- Year of publication
- 2020
- URL
-
-
- Supplementary information
-
-
- Request cross-referral to
- -
- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
-
-
- Research group(s)
-
-
- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- Set in the US and UK, the novel is told from the alternating points of view of a teenage girl and her mother.
The novel draws on research into terminal illness, theories of mourning, and strategies of narration. Sociological studies of the inner life of the dying person (Kellehear, 2014) are joined with fictional devices of ‘disjuncture’ and ‘interiorisation’ (Detweiler, 1972) to describe the inward retreat of the central character. Through this retreat, a new identity is found in the shadow of death, the irony being that the event offering the character identity goes on to destroy it. The novel builds on acclaimed fictional deaths written by Porter (1930, 1939), Golding (1956, 1964), Wolff (1995), Pearlman (2005), and Saunders (2013). The psychoanalytic concept of ‘witness’ (Leader, 2008) is used to present to readers an event from which a protagonist cannot return, as well as to explore the behaviour of a grieving family. Theories of narration (Wood, 2008, Booth, 1961) and character (Stanislavski,1949) inform the dual first-person narrative which moves between action, dialogue, letters and rhythmic interior monologue, where repeated phrases such as ‘spare me’ serve as a switch between emotional registers.
The novel was published by Scribner, US in August 2019; by Two Roads, John Murray, in Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and the export territories in August 2019; and by Two Roads, UK in January 2020. Audiobook and e-book are produced in the US and UK, and as a large-print publication in the US. Translations were published in Germany and Lithuania in August 2020.
Film rights have been sold to Monumental Pictures / Lionsgate.
Won the Pat Kavanagh Prize in 2017 when it was still a novel in progress,and shortlisted for the 2020 COSTA first novel award.
- Author contribution statement
- -
- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
- -