What ancient wrongs was his fury concealing?
Cool Water
Frank Herbert’s family has gathered beside Tinaroo Dam for his daughter’s wedding – the first time they’ve been together since the death of his father, Joe, a year earlier. It should be a time of celebration, but things are shaky for Frank, in his marriage and his new business. Joe never did think Frank could do or make anything worthwhile.
Like Frank, the dam itself has seen better days. Built in the 1950s for the tobacco industry, it is lower now than ever before. As the water recedes, objects begin to emerge from below the surface – abstract and disquieting. It seems the past is always lurking. Frank’s grandfather, Victor Herbert, was the butcher of Tinaroo during the dam’s construction, but Joe never spoke of him. Joe was not a talker, but he could roar. What ancient wrongs was his fury concealing?
In the midst of wedding preparations, but unable to utter the words he needs to save his own marriage, Frank is drawn onto the water. Beneath the fig trees, where bloated black bream circle, he hears the echo of his father’s voice, forcing him to look down – and back.
Moving between the weekend of the wedding and the year in the mid-1950s that cursed the Herbert men for three generations, Cool Water asks what it means to be a good man, and what we risk when we allow the patterns of the past to hold us in their grip. The question is: can Frank eclipse his family’s shadow, to find a way into a future of his own making?
“Myfanwy Jones has become one of my favourite authors and Cool Water should make her one for any Australian reader. This is a generational novel imbued with grace and grit.”
“Most novels leave us with learnings, but very few refine your character. I left more astute, more empathetic and somehow wiser after I read these pages.”
“Jones deftly charts the psychological currents of men striving to be good – and to maintain meaningful connections – while battling the legacy and expectations of toxic masculinity, and its expectations of boys and men to be dominant and in control. And she cleverly links it to colonial domination ... Cool Water is an ultimately hopeful, intricately made novel that offers lessons without preaching and pulls off the highwire act of an ambitious structure and balance of events.”
“‘This fine and beautifully rendered novel explores the trauma of bad parenting and toxic masculinity with sensitivity and quiet intensity ... An outstanding read.”
“This is a real stunner. The sense of patriarchal violence is established elegantly and extremely adroitly ... Myfanwy Jones can really write.”
“This is such a breathtaking story ... perfect for anyone who loves family dramas and the exploration of relationships. ”
“Jones has mastered the art of absence, and the resulting story is a triumph ... It’s an unforgettable and stingingly relatable read.”
“Like the legacy of the Tinaroo Dam and the violence of men, Cool Water ripples through the reader and leaves an enduring imprint. A vivid and profound novel that conjures old hurts from the depths and brings them to the light. I loved this novel.”
“Myf Jones is a rare observer of the human condition and Cool Water is her finest work - beautiful and utterly absorbing. Highly, highly recommend.”
“There is a link here with the dense, familial fiction of Christina Stead, but the way that Jones shifts rapidly from the interior and exterior landscape of this novel will put the reader in mind of more contemporary writers like Tim Winton.”
“These characters are not one-dimensional – the author grants them each a deep humanity ... and the dam’s creation and depletion is an apt visual metaphor for the characters’ emotional journeys.”
“It would have been all too easy to go big, noisy and melodramatic with the various elements at play, but Jones is too good a writer to go down that messy narrative road, and so, instead, we are gifted with a measured, thoughtful and observant tale of what can happen in a family, good and bad, over three searing generations.”
“The family violence is always there, underlying every other scene, never gratuitous, but terrifying all the same. Jones explores with compassion and empathy, and set against the most remarkable scenery, how such a thing can happen, repeatedly, for years on end.”
“On one level this absence is extraordinarily upsetting, a reminder of how much Victor’s violence and inadequacy has stolen from the funny, smart and deeply vulnerable boy Jones so vividly creates. Yet as this accomplished novel unfolds, this absence also creates space for the possibility that Joe found ways to escape.”
“Cool Water is a triumph of the empathetic imagination, a female writer’s compassionate exploration of three generations of husbands and fathers: their cruelty and vulnerability; their hard-heartedness and capacity for tenderness; their overweening confidence and a shameful fear of failure. The novel is also exquisitely written; every sentence is beautifully crafted. ”
“Really beautifully rendered characters . . . [Myfanwy Jones] is a sublime kind of writer.”
“Why this novel? Because we need empathy, understanding, some magic and hope more than ever in our lifetimes.”
“How I loved this book. Myfanwy Jones writes like a dream. Her deftness and care with language, and the astute decisions she makes — both in what to include and what to excise — are always thoughtful and always deliberate. Again and again I marvelled at how skilful Jones is with this novel. It’s a terrific achievement.”
“A sensitive novel that leaves much unanswered. I like that.”