The youth's scepticism causes Tom to change his teaching approach to telling tales drawn from his own recollection.īy doing so, he makes himself a part of the history he is teaching, relating his tales to local history and genealogy. One of Tom's students, Price, questions the relevance of learning about historical events. The students in Tom's school have grown increasingly scientifically oriented, and the headmaster, a physicist, has little sympathy for Tom's subject. Tom has been married to Mary for as long as he has been teaching, but the couple have no children. As the world sets its clocks according to Greenwich Mean Time, this is a place where time begins. Tom Crick, fifty-two years old, has been history master for some thirty years in a secondary school in Greenwich. This personal narrative is set in the context of a wider history, of the narrator's family, the Fens in general, and the eel. The plot of the novel revolves around loosely interwoven themes and narrative, including the attraction of the narrator's brother to his girlfriend/wife, a resulting murder, a girl having an abortion that leaves her sterile, and her later struggle with depression. Major themes in the novel include storytelling and history, exploring how the past leads to future consequences. It has characteristics associated with postmodern literature, such as a fragmented narrative style, where events are not told in chronological order. Waterland can also be said to fall under the category of postmodern literature. For this reason, it is associated with new historicism. Waterland is concerned with the nature and importance of history as the primary source of meaning in a narrative. In 1992, it was adapted into a film, starring Jeremy Irons. It won the Guardian Fiction Prize, and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. Waterland is a 1983 novel by Graham Swift, set in the Fenland of eastern England.

Waterland by graham swift