Book details
Into the Water
by Paula Hawkins
2017 · Riverhead Books
About the book
In the English village of Beckford, residents have long died in a stretch of the river known as the Drowning Pool. When Nel Abbott is found dead in the water, she becomes the second woman to perish there in a single summer. Her estranged sister, Jules, returns to the town to care for Nel’s orphaned teenage daughter, Lena. Through a shifting narrative involving local police, grieving families, and historical accounts of seventeenth-century witch trials, the story tracks how memory can be unreliable. It examines how local legends and buried secrets about past fatalities influence the investigation into Nel's final moments.
Fans of multi-perspective psychological fiction read this book to analyze how trauma distorts personal recollection. The narrative suits those interested in small-town dynamics and the specific tension between institutional law and local mythology. Readers finish the book with an understanding of how collective silence sustains systemic abuse across generations. It provides a technical case study in unreliable narration and the ways past violence dictates the present behavior of a community.
Details
- Published
- 2017
- Publisher
- Riverhead Books
- ISBN
- 9780735211209
- Language
- EN