Sounds grim, but there’s an indomitable spirit pushing back against despair in Campbell’s work ... A light touch of fantasy runs through this story ... She immediately peoples her pages with a large cast of eccentric characters and a thick backstory so casually laced with shocking violence that it’s tempting to think you must have misheard. But don’t be quick to drive by Whiteheart. You must succumb to the pace of The Waters ... It subtracts nothing from Campbell’s originality to suggest that she’s taken up the mantle of John Irving ... Astonishing.
What I always enjoy in Campbell’s work is her precise way of guiding a reader who may know nothing about southern Michigan across the natural landscape so that it becomes visible and easy to imagine. She also doesn’t hesitate to develop the individualities of each (usually female) character ... A thought-provoking and readable exploration of eccentricity and of all different kinds of love — familial love, romantic love, love of knowledge, love of animals and love of one’s own environment, even when it is a difficult place to live.
Seems painstakingly crafted for satire ... Yet ultimately, Campbell’s first novel in more than a decade has nothing profound or progressive to say about its fertile fictional world, instead serving up a conclusion driven by wish fulfillment, specious sentimentality, and misguided moralizing ... Gender roles in Whiteheart are robustly hackneyed ... Floats lots of big ideas, but none are plumbed deeply ... This book will likely find its intended audience, but I’ll stay out of these waters.
With its evocative descriptions of nature, the book practically sprouts in a reader’s hands ... Lush, brackish, and bracing, The Waters is not so much read as steeped in.
This is a verdant, gripping, and clarion saga of home, family, and womanhood, of meaningful work and metamorphosis, of poisons and antidotes, and the urgent need for us to heal and sustain the imperiled living world that heals and sustains us.
...a novel framed like a traditional narrative (the prologue reads like an homage to Our Town), but ever complex in the depth of its philosophical underpinnings ... This novel hums with tension. Throughout these pages, the hiss of a rattlesnake and the pop pop pops of the gun club never stray far from the action, and there is a palpable sense that every ordinary moment is in threat of being upended. Campbell’s exquisite prose style and her infinite understanding of the Midwest, along with her granular empathy for the natural world, allow for a poignant exploration of our times.
Evocative if meandering ... Baggy writing, drawn-out scenes, and twee character names aren’t doing this story any favors, but Campbell’s immersive descriptions manage to suck the reader into its swampy setting. Patient readers will be carried away.
Campbell’s thoughtfully rendered characters find life rewarding and bewildering in equal measures. Atmospheric, well written, and generally satisfying despite some overly familiar elements.
