Book review: The Water of Life (Uisge Beatha) by Daniel Marchildon
I’ve just finished reading The Water of Life on my Ipad. I think it’s a story that needs to be read in the book version with real pages so you can go back to check on who, what, where and what time things happened. Or it could just be me still adjusting to e-books. There’s so much going on as the story travels through time to the present and then the twist in the end (which I didn’t see coming).
Life is a circle with a good bottle of whiskey in the middle and this story proves it.
But seriously, this is a smooth story with lots of ingredients that mix and meld so well you just want to keep reading to find out more about the people who have been so touched by “the water of life”. I think each branch of the family could do with their own novel! The writing style easily carries the reader from Scotland in the 1700s to contemporary Canada and weaves such a wonderfully rich story that it’s a shame to come to the end. The descriptions are so well done that I kept wanting to share a “dram” and I’m not even a whiskey drinker. Heartily recommend you read it too.
“The Water of Life (Uisge Beatha)” by Daniel Marchildon and published by Odyssey Books, Canberra.
