Dark Water

Powerful in its imagery and terrifying in its acute observation of obsession, few novels probe the depths of memory, the mind and the unfathomable ocean itself as well as Elizabeth Lowry’s Dark Water.

Hiram Carver, once assistant surgeon on the ship the USS Orbis and now alienist at the Asylum for the Insane in Charlestown, Boston, finds himself recollecting his memories of that strange and distressing voyage. Foremost within his thoughts is William Borden, the watchful, inscrutable Third Lieutenant, famous for saving the captain of the USS Providence from violent mutiny, and for guiding their dinghy across the ocean to safety. But such heroic deeds have bitter consequences, as Carver will soon discover: from the Orbis to the asylum, and then to Nantucket’s windy, wild shores, the ties that bind him to Borden and to the events of that fateful voyage will come to define his own actions…

Unsettling from its opening pages, Lowry’s novel excels in its exploration of the human psyche, of the relations we establish with others, and in its very depiction of the “dark water” which forms our own consciences. The descriptions offered of first the ship and then the asylum are claustrophobic and ominous, the crashing ocean outside a shattering reminder of the fragile veneers of society and sanity. Nowhere is this pretence more exposed than on the Orbis, with its distorted imitation of social hierarchy offering glimpses of the chaos lying underneath.

It is this possibility, this potential for chaos which Lowry harnesses so well in the novel, and which gives the story its gothic aspect. The image of the sea evokes this vast, nameless fear: full is the suggestion that malevolent shapes lurk not only beneath the waves, but appear on dry land, too. It is in Carver’s attempts to understand Borden, and indeed to comprehend his own instinctual need for the man, that we slowly become aware of the base hungers that lie coiled within both characters. There is the torture of the unknown, whether it be at sea or in the bottomless reaches of the mind, and the greater torment of being so wholly attracted to it.

Though it is Hiram Carver who leads us through the novel’s intriguing plot, it is perhaps William Borden who most attracts the reader’s attention. Like Carver, we are caught between his strangeness and charm, and we remain enthralled to the enduring mystery of what really happened on that small dinghy cast adrift in the Pacific.

But it is the twisting, spiralling friendship between the two men which is the novel’s greatest appeal, as is their own definition of such a relationship; the light in which Carver views Borden throws into harsh relief the disconnect separating what a person is and the roles our own selfish desires can cast them in. Part of the story’s thrill lies in Carver’s attempt to restore human sensibility to a man he sees only as a god – replete with the power to master the ocean – while it is Lowry’s sinuous prose which lends pace to the quest. 

Like the very best books, Dark Water forces us as readers to guess at what lies below the surface, whether it be a character’s true motives or the truth behind supposedly heroic deeds. Confronted as we are by characters ensnared within their own delusions, we too are held captive by this beautifully-written novel; though, as the poet Dylan Thomas would have it, we “sing in our chains like the sea.”

(Thank you so much to Quercus Books and riverrun for offering me the chance to review this book; I received a free copy through NetGalley for an honest review).