PositiveThe Star TribuneNo doubt, Coates — a former journalist for the Atlantic — has done his research. In a gorgeous, realist style reminiscent of the masters of 19th-century French literature, he captures with plodding detail and observation the grave, immoral world of slavery ... But writers who set their fictive worlds in bygone eras and manage to eschew polemics for the details of history and riches of imagination must also wrangle into narrative existence all the dynamics that make a novel sing. In The Water Dancer, Coates has accomplished this to varying degrees of success ... Hiram’s love for Sophia — bordering on melodramatic at times — never really hits the right tempo until a little too late. Additionally, while the magical elements of the story elevate Hiram to superhero status in a gloriously satisfying way, they sometimes jar against the realism that underpins the narrative. And yet even as the novel drifts toward its rather predictable, feel-good ending, we continue to root for it. Because, after all, we are still living in a world that needs a book like this to be written, to join the centuries-long lament against the lasting, ever-damaging effects of slavery.
