January 4, 2021

 I've had several times in my life where I make a decision in the day and then feel deeply ashamed of it at night and worried that everything is going to crumble around me. Then the next day I feel fine about that decision and continue on my course, then at night feel nearly sickened with anxiety. It happened to me again recently, and I finally noticed the day/night pattern. During the day = fine. During the night = awful. It was comforting to realize it might be the product of anxiety. I'm not saying that I shouldn't listen to my nightly fears at all -- there's probably some wisdom in them -- but it's probably skewed by anxiety, by the dark, by an over-churned brain. It's like I have two people (at least) inside of me. One is an adventurer, a risk-taker, a bold pleasure-seeker, and the other is reserved, quiet, a conservative, a person who's primary goal is to keep the things she already has rather than stretching out for anything new. Both useful and to be heeded. I'm hoping that I can compromise between them better so that both are somewhat satisfied. 

Blog time! 

**SPOILERS**

Moss, Sarah – SUMMERWATER

Published: 2021

Read: 1/2022

This novel takes place over one rainy day in rural Scotland. It’s an area with summer cabins, and everyone there is on holiday. It’s raining a lot. We see through the eyes of various characters: a woman running before her husband and children wake up, a teenaged boy who nearly catches hypothermia while kayaking, his sulking sister who keeps secretly visiting an older soldier who lives in a tent, a young engaged couple, a little boy and a little girl. A reoccurring detail is that there’s a cabin full of outsiders – foreigners from Ukraine – who party late at night and keep everyone up. That night, the partiers are at it again, and people from the little neighborhood show up to ask them to be quiet – and end of joining – or in the case of the young couple bring with them a bottle of wine to join. The little girl, who’s sociopathic and has heard her parents complaining about the foreigners, lights the cabin on fire. It goes up quickly, and the woman who owns it and her young daughter are trapped inside. 

This book was quite short, and I liked a lot of it. The internal lives of the characters is interesting, well drawn, relatable, rife with anxiety. It feels like being inside someone else’s skin. Interestingly, we never see the inside of the Ukrainian woman or her daughter. The two victims in the story are the ones we’re never able to identify with directly like that (unless I misread). I wonder why the author structured it that way. I’m going to give the book an average score just because the story all together didn’t have the momentum I would have liked to have felt. When things fall apart they just kind of happen. The story doesn’t seem to build and build to that moment. Most of the way through the book I figured maybe nothing would happen, nothing dramatic anyway. The book lacks suspense, and without it I think it’s good but not great. 

Rating: ★★★