In the nuanced realm of authorship, various strategies are utilised in combatting the monotony that tends to seep into interviews. Some authors may opt to divert to canned responses, veer off-topic to tackle another question, or even resort to creating fictitious narratives. Whilst I have undoubtedly taken all three approaches, I find myself having never resorted to drugging a journalist, restraining him to a bed, feeding him intravenously, imprisoning him within my home, all the while maneuvering his consciousness into my novel-in-progress. This process then allows me to harness his actions within my narrative. But, that might just be my upbringing asserting itself.
However, such novel methods find application in the renowned author Augustus Fate’s interaction with Jaime Lancia. Lancia, who happened to visit Fate to discuss his latest novel, is informed that the work requires refinement, and is subsequently subjected to the previously mentioned extreme measures.
The novel lives within the larger story, tracing a journey from Victorian England, through central Europe in the 1920s, to a future vision of London where Jaime and another captive character, Rachel, attempt to escape from their narrative prison and return to reality.
This story indeed sounds like an oddball concept for a novel. Yet, Sam Mills masterfully makes it work by blending her dynamic writing style, compelling characterisation, captivating dialogues, and an unwavering commitment to immerse her readers.
The novel is admittedly uneven – the Carpathia chapters gave me a hard time – and the central idea might be a bit stretched, but the audaciousness of The Watermark triumphs over these minor setbacks.
Imbued with the resonance of David Mitchell’s metafictional Babushka doll novels, Mills prompts her captive characters to unravel their escape from Fate’s fictitious world, all while a desperate editor from Random House incessantly dials its author, begging for the completion of the book, which remains an impossibility until the characters perform actions worth unveiling.
The Watermark is audaciously eccentric. It should inherently fail. Yet in the literary landscape saturated with repetition, conformity, and hackneyed writing, it stands apart. It’s the kind of novel that readers might either rave about or find impossible to endure. Personally, I found it enchanting. A touch of eccentricity can sometimes be surprisingly refreshing.