This is a great title to recommend to patrons who love to read about the art world, and the lives of contemporary artists. I am a huge fan of Acampora's writing since I read The Paper Wasp. Her eloquent, cool yet engaging style does not disappoint here either. I especially enjoyed the scenes that explore Louisa's previous life, living, loving, and trying to make it as an artist in New York City. Now she is a gallerist in a pricy suburb in Connecticut, with a family, and maybe things are not quite as dramatic as she would like. The adult son of an aristocratic couple gets under Louisa's skin, and creates an installation that exploits her life and her gallery in a very public way. I thought it was riveting; the denouement was a little bit muted because I had The Paper Wasp's spine-chilling ending on my mind. But, this was a solidly dramatic literary read, with a beach-read-worthy scandal. I will recommend!

Thank you to the author and the publisher for allowing me to read and review this title.

Thank you to Grove Press and NetGalley for providing an e-ARC in exchange for my honest opinion.

I enjoyed this book, but it felt more like a short story than a novel. I had the same feeling upon finishing that I typically do with good short stories…hooked into the characters and wanting more. That said, I can appreciate the way the story ended. It makes sense and I’m not sure it would have benefited from anything more.

The Hundred Waters centers around Louisa Rader, an affluent mother from an artistic background in NYC. Louisa is married to an older architect and has one child, a preteen daughter, Silvie. The Raders live in Nearwater, CT, in a privileged setting, one where homes are much acred, with tennis courts and marble driveways. Horseback riding is a common activity among the young girls. Louisa lives a satisfying, if quiet life, but she is increasingly aware of the relative excitement of the life she used to live. When the Raders meet the Steigers, an Austrian couple who have moved to town with their 18-year-old son, Gabriel, Louisa’s quiet life falls under scrutiny. Gabriel is a budding artist and environmentalist, and he soon has Louisa and her daughter under his spell. What happens next will forever change the quiet lives of the Raders.

The characterizations in this story are terrific. I felt I really knew Louisa and her daughter and understood how they got caught up in Gabriel’s web. Gabriel was my favorite character – a new adult full of ideas and unable to control his urges to change the world (and change it now!).

My experience with The Hundred Waters leaves me interested in reading one of the author’s other works – The Wonder Garden – which received positive reviews for its portrayals of affluent life in linked short story format. Such a book can only be good in the hands of Acampora.

The Hundred Waters is a thoughtful book, an insightful look into the life of a privileged artist and her family. Louisa, once a fashion model and art photographer, is now the mother of a twelve year old daughter and married to a successful architect 20 years her senior. They reside in an affluent town in suburban Connecticut where Louisa directs the local art center.

Though it's been over a decade since Louisa has been part of the New York art scene, she feels drawn to it again, especially when she finds out that an old lover of hers will be at a particular art opening. Louisa attends the opening and then flits around a bit with people associated with her one-time gallery. On the one hand, she loves being a mother and her relatively secluded life in the suburbs. On the other hand, she longs to be taken seriously as a photographer again. Her photographs now reside in the back of her closet in Connecticut.

Louisa's daughter Sylvie is distant, pubescent, and secretive. Louisa and her husband are very protective of her but no child can be thoroughly protected. When Gabriel, the 18 year-old son of some very wealthy art collectors, enters their lives, Sylvie and Louisa will never be the same. Gabriel, an artist and drop-out draws on his charm, looks and charisma to attract both mother and daughter.

As Louisa tries to energize her art center with more contemporary art, she also realizes that the Board will only take a certain amount of visual chance. as they are tradition bound. Louisa tries to by-pass their control and show more edgy artists. Things come to a head at the art center when the annual Gala is held.

The novel is very well-written and the characterization is sublime. I was spellbound for much of the book. The ending, however, left me for a loop. I wish I had other readers to discuss it with because I am left with a muddled feeling,

Thank you to Grove Press and NetGalley for the privilege of reading this Advanced Review Copy of The Hundred Waters.

Ultimately, this was a DNF. Something broadly about the style and the themes was just not to my liking.

Thanks to Netgalley and Grove Press for the ebook. When Louisa was younger she was first a model and later a struggling artist in the New York City art scene, dating an unpredictable rising art star. Now, years later, she’s living a safe, but quiet, life married to an older architect and raising a young daughter in her affluent hometown in Connecticut. She meets a young artist who wants to challenge the world and she’s drawn back to her old art scene in NYC and feels that her life is empty and that the art center she runs is nowhere near the art she used to love and was a part of. Is this just a small bump in the road or does she need to completely change her life? A really sharp book with excellent characters asking tough questions.

“The Wonder Garden”… a ‘linked-stories’-novel…..
…..a voyeuristic peak into contemporary affluent suburbia: brilliant, bizarre, jaw dropping, favorite book-of-the-year….put *Lauren Acampora’s* name on the map for me …. F O R E V E R.

I’m a huge fan of her work….will read anything she writes….and I’m excited to say this book is T E R R I F I C.

“The Hundred Waters”, is not a sequel …..but we return to the affluent suburbs….[this time in Connecticut]…
…… I was hooked, engaged, and curious from start to finish.
I LOVED IT.

The blurb got this right:
“A strange, sexy, and sinister novel of art and attraction, in “The Hundred Waters” Acampora gives us and incisive, page- turning story of ambition, despair, desire, and the price of fulfillment and freedom at all costs”

Nearwater, Connecticut……
…..Picture suburban wealth….
swimming pools, tennis courts, horse back riding, iron gates, stone walls marbled with lichen driveways that twist into a dream of trees, and
acres of wilderness between the estates.

Louisa Rader was no longer a teenage model, or ambitious driven-photographer in New York.
Instead, she was back living in Nearwater, where she had grown up. She married Richard, a successful older architect.
It was Richard’s idea to move to Nearwater.
Louisa was ready to let go of her own dreams in New York, for the more quiet lifestyle in a beautiful peaceful town to raise their twelve year old preteen daughter, Sylvie.
For work….Louisa was hired to run the local Art Center.

Heinrich, and Agatha, Steiger, and their son, Gabriel, eighteen years old, move to Nearwater, Connecticut from Austria.
They were art collectors, philanthropists, old nobility‘s —they came to the states for some legacy of banking.

The two families meet. The Steigers were hosting an evening gathering of cocktails, food, and socializing. Sylvie was allowed to attend too.
During the evening, Sylvie wanders downstairs into the basement where she meets Gabriel….who was painting.
Sylvie is totally intrigued with Gabriel.
He tells her he loves animals. He draws them during his lunch breaks at work, and has always loved animals and nature.
Sounds nice and innocent enough, right?….
NOT EXACTLY….

Here are some teasers ….
“The thing I wanted to tell you today is that I’m thinking about a new project”.
“Cool. What?”
“He tells her about the art installation he once saw, horses tied to the walls of a gallery and another piece featuring a taxidermy horse strung from the ceiling. He mentions his recent obsession with prehistoric hill figures, especially a giant horse silhouette carved out of chalk in the ground in England”.
“The girl looks up at him. Okay.”
“The boy tilts his face to the sky.”
“What I’m getting at is that I need a horse”.
“A horse?”
“Just a horse. He looks back down at her”.
“I can get you one”.

Gabriel tells Sylvie:
“The world could be destroyed. No, actually we ‘are’ being killed every second, and the world ‘is’ being destroyed. We need to remember and keep going. He points to the deer skull nestled in the corner of the room. That’s why I keep that thing. To remember that I am an animal. They say animals aren’t aware of their mortality the way humans are, but really it’s the other way around. So just remember you’re an animal and you’re dying. Now, and now, and now”.

In the meantime things are brewing with Louisa ….restlessness….etc.
Motherhood, womanhood, desires, and inner conflicting turmoil….

“In the hour before Richard comes home, Louisa undresses and lies on the bed. She wants to touch her own body but resists. Instead, she puts the macro lens on her camera and shoots self-studies. Just as she used to, she focuses in on tight details: the curve of her hip, the underside of her foot, it’s pink calloused landscape against the white sheets. All these years later, she crawls with self-consciousness—how had this ever felt natural?—but pushes past the feeling, past the shame at her body’s sags and blotches, and becomes a simple lens, seeing only shapes and textures, clinical and defamiliarized”.

Lauren Acampora is a gorgeous stylistic writer….
She writes with elegant intensity….and her books are fantastically
uniquely pleasurable.

I was not only curious where this was going from beginning to the end…but left thinking about it - long after finishing it.