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Waterland | Introduction

British novelist Graham Swift's Waterland (London, 1983; New York, 1984) is a complex tale set in eastern England's low-lying fens region. It is narrated by Tom Crick, a middle-aged history teacher. Tom is facing a personal crisis, since he is about to be laid off from his job and his wife has been admitted to a mental hospital. He is a man who is keenly interested in ideas about the nature and purpose of history. Faced with a class of bored and rebellious students, he scraps the traditional history curriculum and tells them stories of the fens instead. These stories form the substance of the novel, which takes place mainly in two time frames: the present, and the year 1943, when Tom Crick is fifteen years old. The traumatic events of his adolescence reach forward in time to influence the present. The structure of the novel, which frequently moves back and forth in time, also suggests the fluidity of the interaction between past and present.

Tom's tale of the fens is sometimes lurid. It includes a family history going back to the eighteenth century and such lurid topics as murder, suicide, abortion, incest, and madness. These events are set against a background of some of the great events in history, such as World War I and World War II. The novel also includes digressions on such off-beat topics as the sex life of the eel, the history of land reclamation, the history of the River Ouse, and the nature of phlegm. At once a philosophical meditation on the meaning of history and a gothic family saga, Waterland is a tightly interwoven novel that entertains as it provokes.

Waterland Summary

Waterland begins with the narrator Tom Crick describing his childhood growing up in the low-lying fens area of eastern England. His father is a lock-keeper, and they live in a cottage by the River Leem. One day in July 1943, the drowned body of a local boy, Freddie Parr, floats down the river.

The story flashes forward to the present. Tom, having spent thirty-two years as a history teacher, is leaving his job because the school is eliminating the history department. The other reason he is leaving is because of a scandal involving his wife, who apparently has stolen a baby. No more details are given.

Crick abandons the history syllabus he is supposed to teach, deciding to tell his class stories of the fens instead. He describes the history of the fens and the persistent efforts over the centuries to drain the land. He also describes his ancestors, going back to Jacob Crick, who operated a windmill in the fens in the eighteenth century. His mother's ancestors were the Atkinsons, originally farmers from Norfolk.

After a scene in which the headmaster of the school, Lewis Scott, discusses Tom's dismissal with Tom, the narrative returns to 1943 and the discovery of the drowned body. Tom notices a bruise on the body, finds a telltale beer bottle in the rushes, and Tom's girlfriend Mary insists Freddie was killed by Dick, Tom's mentally retarded brother.

The narrator then embarks on one of his many explorations of the nature of history, before flashing back to a time in 1942 when Tom and Mary, both fifteen years old, first begin to explore each other sexually. They are careful to meet at times when they will not be discovered either by Freddie or Dick. After the death of Freddie, it transpires that Mary is pregnant, and Tom is unsure whether the baby is his or Dick's.

The narrative then returns to the distant past, as Tom relates the history of the Atkinson family and how they built their fortune through land-reclamation projects and a brewery business. One of the most significant events occurs in 1820, when Thomas Atkinson strikes his wife Sarah in a fit of unreasonable jealousy. She loses her mind as a result of the attack but lives another fifty-four years to become something of a local legend. The Atkinsons continue to prosper as the leading local family, the height of respectability and power. Arthur Atkinson is elected to Parliament in 1874, the same... ยป Complete Waterland Summary