Fantastic read. I am constantly blown away by Coates' work. Every single word appears on the page as being deliberate. Nothing is left up to chance and his sentences are filled with purpose. Nothing is filler.

I go back and forth on whether or not I liked the magical realism parts of the story. I think it's a strong enough story with interesting characters that we almost didn't need the magical realism. But nonetheless it's an inventive way to tell the plight of slaves to find freedom.

Wow, what a novel. I have to say first off, with all the buzz this book is sure to get, I was not drawn in until about a quarter of the way through. The beginning was a little slow and the writing style was so unexpected (knowing Coates' nonfiction) that it took me awhile to get into it. BUT THEN - the plot seriously picks up, the characters grow, and this book becomes UN-PUT-DOWN-ABLE. Like, "it's 3am and I have an important presentation at work at 9, but I'm going to keep reading anyway..." So go ahead, ruin my career, Ta-Nehisi Coates.

But in all seriousness, if you've read Coates' nonfiction, you'll expect and love the nuanced lens through which he examines critical social issues like race, class, and gender. He somehow does it here through a completely original, creative way of depicting American history, such that we are are held face-first to the horrors that really happened to slave families, yet at the same time travel along a completely fantastical, magical plot line.

I have to give (additional) major kudos to Coates for portraying a giant of a historical figure and knocking it out of the park. That must have been intimidating but damn, he made her come to life!

An epic story of a drive to get north and a chance to help others. The gift that Coates gives to the reader is his language. The illustrative metaphors that help a 21st century reader try to get some semblance of the life of a 19th century slave.

Hiram Walker is the son of the master, yet is warned repeatedly that he will never be a part of that life. The life of the house and the inheritance and the love of blood relation, especially after his mother is sold and all memory of her disappears. But, Hi has a gift that will help him throughout his life. A Conduction, a memory that is more powerful than photographic, it is all consuming, all senses. A parlor trick in the House gains him the special attention from his father and he begins his tutoring. An education that puts makes him his white step-brother’s man. With his father ailing, it is up to Hi to protect his wayward brother and the plantation. But Virginia’s tobacco crops are failing and Maynard is a lout. This is beyond what Hi can do. He needs to get out.

I will end my plot discussion there because the twists and the turns start and really don’t stop until the end of the novel. It is such a powerful piece of writing. I can say right now that 50 pages in I was thinking that this book would be a great addition to any high school or college English course. Obviously, the subject matter is immensely power, but it is Coates’s writing that makes the story come alive. In one place in the beginning chapters, he creates an analogy of a machine that he uses to describe the production of the plantation in regards to slavery. I know that this may not be a new idea, but his details are so memorable and discerning.

I was also struck by the way Coates describes Hi’s place in the hierarchy of the plantation, the family, the slave culture, the state of Virginia, and ultimately the whole United States. Hi describes it to the reader from such a personal point of view and so vividly.

My only criticism is that the storytelling and writing was a bit uneven at times. There is a dream-like quality to the first several scenes of the book, but then suddenly the story becomes much more grounded and realistic. It doesn’t depart from this straight style for many chapters and then it was again jarring. It led to confusion and wasn’t signaled in any particular way.

Ultimately, The Water Dance is an immensely powerful read that is touched by elements of magical realism.

4 out of 5 stars

Thank you to NetGalley, Random House, and the author for an advanced copy for review.

Unfortunately The Water Dancer was a very close DNF for me. The only reason I kept on was because I wanted to do a review of it. I tried to like it, I did. I tried to be in the story and care about the protagonist. But overall, I just didn't. This will, as always, in no way stop me from reading future Coates books. Between the World and Me has been on my list for AGES and I still plan on reading it. Sometimes we just don't click with a book, right?

One last thing I will say about The Water Dancer was the world building. So many times, I feel like authors don't know how to world build. Or they attempt to, and leave it flat, or leave us with so many questions they can't answer. I could feel the world building in The Water Dancer, and those parts were pretty amazing. I would still recommend this book to others. Just because it wasn't for me, doesn't mean someone else won't enjoy it. I'd been looking forward to this one all year, but, as I said, sometimes it doesn't fit.

This book was incredible like all of Coates work. However, I think that this book really showed that Coates is exemplary at nonfiction but has some fundamentals to learn in fiction writing. The story was long, sometimes hard to understand. I did not enjoy the magical realism in it. Finally, the ending felt strange and rushed. But Coates lyrical style was wonderful and added so much scenery and imagery to his writing.

I honestly think it’s impossible to write a review that is going to do justice to this book, not in a complete way anyway. I don’t even know how to start writing my review, as I’m still unpacking this story in my own head, going back to reread paragraphs, researching things I know I should have known before, but am glad I have now learnt. So I will just start by saying that if you only read one novel this year, read this one. My heart cracked and broke so many times during the narrative, I fell in love with the characters, and I honestly didn’t want the book to end, even though I knew it had to.

If you have read any of Ta-Nehisi Coates’ work before, you know how warm, engaging, honest, and beautiful his writing style is. And this style translates perfectly into fiction: The Water Dancer is lyrical, beautifully written, and draws the reader into a story of slavery, of resistance, and of survival. There is also the magical element of conduction through memories and pain that is a main part of the story, a metaphor for the legacy of slavery that still is deeply entrenched in this country today. The author weaves this magical element into the reality of the everyday evils of slavery spectacularly well.

The Water Dancer is the story of Hiram Walker, ripped from his mother’s arms as a child, and also ripped from any memories of her. He grows up on the estate where he was born, serving his half-brother and father, until he discovers an internal power he never knew he had, and one that he cannot understand. This discovery leads him to the Underground Railroad, to a vast network of men and women fighting for freedom and the abolition of slavery, and back to the estate where he was born again.

I always wondered whether I would become more cynical, less caring as I grew older, lose the empathy that would reduce me to tears and break my heart every time I would hear, see, read about something that involved pain, death, horror, evil etc. I’m glad it remains with me, that my heart still breaks, unhardened over time, despite the very real scars of my own pains. Even before having children the idea of someone losing or forcibly being separated from their children would hurt my insides, and nowadays is also fueled by a rage within that I don’t know how to calm. One of the main topics in The Water Dancer is the separation of families: parents, children, husbands, wives in such a thoughtless, cruel manner, but a manner that was the norm in the US at that time. Black people, whether slaves or free, were commodities to the ruling white people, owned and discarded in a way one would use a tool or a utensil. This type of heedless cruelty burns a hole through generations, scars them, and leaves a mark even today. These stories need to be written, and we need to read them, talk about them, and breathe them. Slavery may have been abolished in 1865, but this country was built upon the cruelty unleashed by the white man on black and indigenous people, and the legacy of that evil is still very prominent today. The Water Dancer is fiction, but heavily based on the reality of slavery. Hiram probably existed, as did Sophia, Thena, Corinne, etc.

This is one of those books that I am going to read and read again over the next few years. This review is a little all over the place because I literally could not put this book down, and my mind is still with Hi and Sophia, still in Virginia, and will probably take a few days to come back fully to the present day. I had high expectations for this novel before I read it, but they were blown out of the water, and it was more, much more than I even expected.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the advance copy of this must read novel.

4+stars
At its core, this novel is a story of slavery, the shameful injustice, horrific treatment of human beings, of the amazing guts and guile of the people in the Underground transporting people to freedom, in the south of the 1860’s. This is such a powerful story depicting the life of slaves on a tobacco plantation in Virginia, highlighting throughout the gut wrenching separation of children from their mothers, separation of fathers and children, husbands and wives. The writing is beautiful in so many places that I found myself rereading passages.

It’s a complex story infused with magical realism. It’s a creatively written story, but the magical realism wasn’t a problem for me given the beautiful prose when I found myself in these instances of “Conduction”. I do admit that I was a little confused at times about the Underground as portrayed here. Hiram Walker, called Hi, a slave, son of the plantation owner has the gift of memory, the ability to recall everything he sees and hears and reads when he learns to read, except one thing. He can’t remember his mother, sold by his father when Hi was nine years old. Hi has another gift, one he struggles to understand until he finds a place as an agent on the Underground. On Hi’s journey we meet a large cast of characters, some are courageous, some will touch your heart and there were some that I just couldn’t understand, but the journey is an amazing one. This isn’t a book for everyone because the magical realism may not be for you, but it’s an important and beautifully written story of slavery unlike anything I’ve read. It will hit you in the gut as it should and the characters will touch your heart with its depiction of family, of love, and the desire to be free.


I received an advanced copy of this book from Random House/One World through NetGalley.

This book grabbed me from its first pages and never let me go. Hiram Walker is the son of a plantation owner. But he’s the black son, born to a slave and thus a slave himself. His mother was sold “Natchez way” when he was 9. After a near death experience as a young man, he plots to escape. Despite having a photographic memory, Hiram has lost his memories of his mother. It’s a literary device that really captures the loss of a family member to slavery .

This book is so beautifully written it takes your breath away in much the same way that the near drowning takes Hiram’s. It truly captures the horrors of slavery.

I loved his use of words. Not slave and owner. But Tasked and Quality. Even the whites are designated as Quality or Low.

“Bored whites were barbarian whites. While they played at aristocrats, we were their well-appointed and stoic attendants. But when they tired of dignity, the bottom fell out. New games were anointed and we were but the pieces on the board. It was terrifying. There was no limit to what they might do at this end of the tether, nor what my father would allow them to do.”

As can be expected, Hi is infuriated. He’s the smart one while is white half brother is a dullard, gambling away what’s left of the family fortune. Coates spells out for us the incredible suffering of being a slave. And he’s not talking physical suffering but the mental suffering of never being able to express yourself or allow yourself natural wants like a loving relationship.

Coates uses magical realism as a plot device. It becomes a larger and larger part of the story as the book goes on. I struggled with this, more so when a well known historical character is given a certain mythical power. Similar to The Underground Railroad, by Colson Whitehead, one has to be willing to suspend belief.

My other quibble is that he doesn’t set us firmly in time or place. We know that Virginia is in decline, the soil exhausted from years of tobacco. But I couldn’t tell how far before the Civil War we were. Or where in Virginia we were as there is no Goose River, Elm County or Brycetown. This is a pet peeve of mine and just a few sentences could have cleared things up.

This is not a fast read. It needs to be pondered. I do feel it started much stronger than it finished. But it’s a very meaningful read and I would recommend it.

My thanks to netgalley and Random House for an advance copy of this book

Narrated in first person, memoir-style, from the vantage point of old age looking back on his younger years, Hiram Walker knows he is an uncommon person living an all too common way of life. He has been born a slave, in a Virginia Plantation, son of a black slave mother and a white slave-owner father. There comes a time when his mother no longer lives with him and cannot remember her; she, like many others, has gone ‘Natchez-way’—sold, because the land is no longer productive.

It is after surviving tragedy that Hiram comes to the attention of the ‘Underground’, an organization fighting slavery where and how it hurts the most. Like him, the ‘Underground’ realize that Hiram’s magical gift can be used to their advantage to extract slaves en-masse, if he can learn to unleash it at will. Forced to become an agent by necessity, Hiram will realize that some memories must be resurrected to save himself and the ones he cannot live without.

Dense, despite being just 416 pages long, The Water Dancer is an emotional and lyrical homage to the power of memories and storytelling. The expertly-used magical realism gives this novel an otherworldly, positive outlook, despite being firmly rooted in the horrors of slavery.

Disclaimer: I received from the publisher a free e-book via Netgalley in exchange for my honest review.

This is an elegantly written and important novel. Ta-Nehisi Coates, a brilliant non-fiction writer, has published his first work of fiction. With a touch of magical realism, Mr Coates tells the story of Hiram Walker born into slavery in a plantation in Virginia. Hiram is a child in the beginning of the novel which follows his story into adulthood and out of slavery. Mr. Coates is a truly gifted storyteller. At this time, it's so important to read the story of the US written by African American authors. Do not miss this important novel. Thank you to NetGalley and Random House for the privilege of reading an early copy of this amazing novel.

The Water Dancer is as personal and skillfully written as should be expected from renowned nonfiction writer Ta-Nehisi Coates.

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It’s easy to think it was inevitable for The Water Dancer to be exceptional.

Ta-Nehisi Coates is well-known in nonfiction spaces for his bold perspectives and elegant writing style. You’d be forgiven for thinking that his headliner debut novel will of course be outstanding.

But jumping form and genre is difficult. I’ve read too many debut novels of poets and nonfiction writers to not see all the ways it can go wrong. Plenty of poets, short fiction, and nonfiction writers jump into the fiction space without a real reason, leading to a lot of novels that didn’t need to be novels.

The Water Dancer is a novel that needed to be a novel, and that’s worthy of note. (Did it need to be quite so long? Probably not, but whatcha gonna do. Brevity is not a particular strength of Coates’ nonfiction writing either.)

Yes, Coates needed this precise vehicle for this story. It had to be fiction, it had to be longform, it had to be historical, and it had to be realism with a supernatural twist.

The Water Dancer leads with Coates’ inventive, skillful use of language.

With the time and space afforded by the form of the novel, Coates is able

Marketing for this title has emphasized Coates’ rich, musical prose. The prose is certainly noteworthy, though I fear it won’t work for everyone. I personally don’t mind (extremely) long sentences and chapters that digress and circle back multiple times, but if that style irritates you, it’ll be difficult to get through this book.

But when I talk about Coates’ use of language in this book, I’m talking about more than his well-constructed sentences. The terms Coates chooses to describe Hiram, his feelings, the setting, and slavery itself are core to the novel’s mission.

To begin with, it’s a remarkable feat or world building that Coates is able to layer a new vocabulary over existing history seamlessly. Terms like “the quality” (white people/slaveholders) and “the tasked” (enslaved people) are instantly identifiable without explanation.

More importantly, creative use of language lets Coates draw unexpected connections and build to emotional punches. Coates mines terms like “conduction” and “underground” and “water dance” for layers of alternate meanings.

The Water Dancer has grimly realistic portrayals of the horrors of slavery, but it also looks past literal representations. Coates uses creative language–and magical imagery–to bring his vision of the Underground Railroad to live. Likewise, he’s able to dig deeper than visible harms of slavery, turning his attention to the deeply personal dimensions of the corrosion of the human spirit.

I went into this having read 2 of Coates' non-fiction books, which I thought were clear, to the point, and excellently written. For me, this dive into fiction left me wanting. The plot seemed to drag on and stall at various times throughout the book. I will definitely continue reading his non-fiction, but may pass on future novels.

Best known for his award-winning nonfiction books Between the World and Me and We Were Eight Years in Power, Ta-Nehisi Coates has a historical fiction novel about slavery among the September 2019 book releases. His latest novel follows Hiram, the black son of a white plantation owner. With no memory of his mother after she is sold away, Hiram tries to win the love of his father. After escaping death, Hiram realizes his father will never love him as a son. After a failed attempt to escape, Hiram eventually joins the Underground – where he aims to rescue others with a mysterious power he has developed.

Written in beautiful lyrical writing, The Water Dancer does an excellent job of showing how it doesn’t take physical abuse to make slavery so morally long. The slower pace of the novel made the beginning drag a bit, but the power in Coates’ writing kept me pushing forward. However, at the half way mark, the introduction of magical realism into the story became too much for me and I stopped reading it. I’m sure it has deeper meaning, but I completely lost interest.

If you don’t mind the slower pace or the magical realism, you will probably love the powerful and lyrical writing of The Water Dancer. Else, you will be like me and struggle to finish it.

I will upfront and honest: I had to reread the first 15 or so pages twice. I was lost in Mr. Coates' style of writing and thought for sure I was missing something important. However, quickly thereafter I fell into his writing rhythm and floated along as he unveiled the story of a young Tasked man (slave). The new references assigned to both slaves and their white masters (Quality) help reinforce the other worldly view of the story of Hiriam and his abilities. Mr. Coates' writing draws the reader into his world and this story highlighted the best and worst of humanity. An enjoyable but heavy read. Not one to expect to read in small bits and pieces as the reader needs to re-immerse themselves into the story each time, like traveling to another world.

Coates' prose sings in fiction as well as prose, and I loved the first part of this book, but perhaps a third of the way through I felt it stalled out somewhat and never quite regained momentum. It's still an important book and one I would recommend.

Whew! What can I say about this? It’s beautiful, lyrical, and well-researched, as we’ve all come to expect from Coates. The obvious parallels are things like Beloved or Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad. I also think I’d recommend to someone who read the 1619 Project in the NYT.

The Water Dancer is about story, and it’s ability to connect us to our deepest memories, to parts of ourselves we had forgotten and parts we never knew existed, to each other. Hiram Walker is slave, and his story is heartbreaking, but in the end, it is what offers him a path toward freedom, for himself and the ones he loves. The dilemma Hiram wrestles with is whether he should devote himself wholly to the Underground and their plan - to which he owes his own freedom - or to follow his heart and give all that he has to freeing his own family. I was drawn to the places in this book that explored the lives of the slaves apart from the work they performed, the ways they created connection to each other, family, and moments of joy despite their circumstances, and how the memories they created became the key to their escape, to their freedom. I liked this book, but for me, there was something missing, or maybe it was simply the erratic pacing which kept me slightly distant from the emotional impact of the story. The prose is beautiful, the unique twist of magical realism is intriguing, the ideas presented are important, and ultimately, this is a book that needs to be read.

Ta-Nehisi Coates is a brilliant writer whos works deal with issues of race and society. When I read his novel, The Water Dancer, I was taken on a pilgrimage to a time of slavery. I went through so many emotions while on an enigmatic journey with Hiram Walker and his family and friends. I hope this book gives you the same emotions it gave me. I loved it!

In Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Between the World and Me, he wrote on the idea of serious writers and their characters being white. Classic literature has been taught to us as historically being by white men about white culture, where other perspectives are interpreted as inferior. At one point, Coates considered a question by Saul Bellow that asks who the Tolstoy of the Zulus is. Later, he accepted the response by Ralph Wiley, “Tolstoy is the Tolstoy of the Zulus,” and in that sentiment affirmed that stories by black authors about black characters matter just as much as white ones, but without reducing them to merely a ‘black version’ of their counterparts.

Though he’s written both Black Panther and Captain America’s comic series, this is Coates’ first full-length fictional work. Taking place during the middle of the 19th century, Hiram is a member of the Tasked in Virginia. He serves the Quality until he attempts to join the Underground and discovers the power of Conduction. The terms used are intuitive and historical, stemming from language used in the old south by both slaveholders and those enslaved. Most characters are created by the author, but historical locations, events and figures are skillfully interwoven with the magical realism of the novel to create a truly remarkable story.

Coates is a talented writer, and I’ve enjoyed everything I’ve read of his. But, the beginning especially, was pretty slow going. Eventually the plot picks up a bit, but there were so many breaks in the story where Hiram would reflect deeply, and he felt like a stand-in for the author to have yet another introspection. These ideas seem to work so much better in Coates’ non-fiction books, but at times took away from the overall narrative he was trying to tell here. The book could have been much shorter without taking away anything crucial.

I did enjoy it overall, though, and this was an excellent debut novel for an already very accomplished author.

I know Ta-Nehisi Coates' reputation, but I have to confess to not having read any of his non-fiction. Regardless of that authorial voice, he makes an immediate impression with his first novel. The story opens with a traumatic event: slave Hiram Walker plunging into an icy Virginia river while driving a carriage with his brother/owner Maynard. Struggling underwater to save himself from drowning, he experiences visions that only make sense to him later. Central among them is his mother performing the water dance: a dance in which the dancer must move without dropping the earthen water jar perched on her head.

The narrative then shifts back to Hiram's childhood, growing up as a slave on the Lockless plantation. He was an unusual child, possessed with a photographic memory--for everything except his mother, who was sold off when he was young. His talents may provide a means of escape, something all slaves (the Tasked) desire, but few obtain. It is an open secret that the master of Lockless is his father, so it is not surprising when he is called up to join the household staff of the big house. There he meets several people who become important in his life--especially after he decides to make a run for freedom with his friend Sophia. The promise of the Underground then appears to be a mirage, until he finds himself part of it.

The story takes another turn when Hiram is conducted into Philadelphia. He tastes freedom for the first time, and sees the Underground from the inside. He uses his talents to forge documents, and goes down south as a field agent. This is where the story has the most basis in the historical Underground Railroad. But Hiram has a special, magical talent as well. And under the tutelage of another agent, he begins to learn how to use water to practice Conduction: teleportation from one place to another, with the aid of memory. The story has an air of magical realism when that power is used, but Coates ties it into African tradition, so it becomes an extension of the water dance.

Hiram returns to the Walker plantation to claim Sophia and the rest of his family. There he takes on a new relationship with his aging father, reacquaints himself with his family, and finally becomes part of a new, expanded Virginia Underground station. A surprising homecoming which comes to feel completely natural.

Thanks to NetGalley for an advance digital copy of the book.