Staff Reviews

Coates has become an essential voice on race in America. His non-fiction writing, such as We Were Eight Years in Power, and his public speaking, such as his testimony on reparations before Congress, have given him a reputation for true brilliance. My sense is that this first Coates novel, The Water Dancer, will immediately add "great American novelist" to his resume. The depth of this book is astounding, and its narrator, Hiram Walker, I believe will soon be considered one of American literature's most important characters. Walker is one of the "Tasked," a slave on a Virginia tobacco plantation, whose mother is also Tasked and whose father is the plantation owner, a leader among Virginia's "Quality." Hiram Walker knows he's different from others. He has a capacity to remember all that he hears or sees, which amazes the "Quality," and a certain ability to "Conduct" himself, which he struggles to understand. It's a power derived from remembering the stories of so many people who are lost, sold away, taken down. Coates shows us with intricate and haunting detail the human cost of slavery to everyone involved, and his writing is rock steady but bold. Walker's voice is smart and strong, and Coates successfully makes the one they called Moses, Harriet Tubman, a pivotal character. At once magical and profoundly real, this novel has a rare feeling of both completeness and greatness.       

— From Tim's Staff Recommendations