eub: (books)
Eli ([personal profile] eub) wrote2002-02-01 09:45 pm

(no subject)

You've heard about Dee being laid off. I have to say, Claritech was on the whole much better at this laying people off stuff. But it's not a disaster; I don't think she would have stayed much longer anyway. Now she gets to find something more programmy, we hope.

I didn't get any work done today. Not Dee's layoff's fault; I was sluggish and unable to concentrate all day. Probably just tired. Well, now is a weekend.

So about Graham Swift's Waterland, which I was just sitting in bed finishing because what I wanted to do was to be in bed reading. Eels and silt and the flat gray-green English fens a hairsbreadth above the sea they were built on. Long tangled family histories leading down to a history teacher telling stories about a killing in his childhood, and what he and his future wife had to do with it, and the story of what his wife has now done. It's about the end of the world. The end of history, the non-existence of history, time's slow dissolution of our works, our imminent immolation of them all. A deeply-felt book and a well-told story, but hopeful in only the most tenuous of ways.