‘Everyone I love is here,' Brendan says. ‘So what do you do? You might love a piece of rock, but it won't love you back.'
Exiled in post World War II London, Brendan and his son Hugh are among the thousands of Irish and other immigrants rebuilding the ruins. A cultured Irish woman, Sara, has taught them to read, and is their only friend until Hugh breaks away from his tyrannical father and meets Elizabeth, a Londoner who lives with her German lover.
As Erica Wagner remarked in her review in The Times, ‘Through the interweaving and the overlapping of these relationships, Casey examines how human nature is shaped by sorrow; how people will find a way – sometimes, it seems, despite themselves – to take comfort from others, to make homes where they can, even among the ruins.'
Philip Casey's second novel, The Water Star, confronts the central Irish experience of the twentieth century: exile. It is distinguished by the finely wrought lyricism that has characterized much of his poetry. His first novel, The Fabulists, won acclaim; his new one confirms that he is a writer with a gift for uncovering the tortuous impulses of his characters with a lucid and affecting eye. -John Tague, TLS
...his characters are vivid, subtly shaded, often tragic, but there's no wallowing in misery here - on the contrary, a life-affirming tenacity and humour, reinforced by an elegant cyclical structure and more than a hint of mysticism, makes The Water Star a pleasure to read....
An intelligent, memorable, moving novel. -Arminta Wallace, The Irish Times
The lives of these characters become totally absorbing as different versions of important events are related from their respective viewpoints. Casey has brought alive the dilemmas of a lost generation and made them vivid and memorable.-The Good Book Guide The Water Star is a compelling series of life stories at a crucial point in modern history; it is equally compelling as an imaginative analysis of national versus private identity, of how people may transcend the bogus boundaries of their lives through small acts of honesty and kindness. -Sharon Barnes, IMAGE
