| The Weight of Water | |
|---|---|
First edition cover |
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| Author(s) | Anita Shreve |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Historical fiction |
| Publisher | Little, Brown and Company |
| Publication date | 1997 |
| Media type | Print (Hardcover and Paperback) |
| Pages | 256 pp |
| ISBN | 0316789976 |
| OCLC Number | 34633469 |
| Dewey Decimal | 813/.54 20 |
| LC Classification | PS3569.H7385 W43 1997 |
The Weight of Water is a 1997 bestselling novel by Anita Shreve. Half of the novel is historical fiction that speculates about the true events of the Smuttynose Island murders of 1873.
In March 1873, two Norwegian-born women living on the desolate Smuttynose Island on the Isles of Shoals, a group of islands off the coast of Maine and New Hampshire, were brutally murdered. A third woman, named Maren Hontvedt, survived by cowering in a sea cave until dawn. The murdered women were Karen Christensen, Maren's elder sister, and Anethe Christensen, Maren's sister-in-law. A man named Louis Wagner was tried and hanged for their murders.
More than a century later, Jean, a magazine photographer working on a photoessay about the murders, returns to the Isles with her husband, Thomas, aboard a boat skippered by Thomas' brother, Rich, who has brought along his girlfriend, Adaline. As Jean becomes immersed in the details of the 19th-century murders, unspoken emotions begin to surface among the passengers of the sloop, and Jean begins to suspect an affair between Thomas and Adaline.
The novel is split into two parts: the present day, told from Jean's point of view and in the present tense, and 1873, told in first person from Maren's point of view as a memoir.
A film adaptation of the same name, directed by Kathryn Bigelow, was released in 2002. It starred Sean Penn, Catherine McCormack, Elizabeth Hurley and Sarah Polley.