Quince Water

Odile Marrowgate · 2,140 readers · 1,072 reviews

Two sisters inherit a flooded orchard and eleven years of unopened letters. The novel moves between the wet spring of the inheritance and the long winter that follows, holding both without ever telling the reader which one it prefers.

Marrowgate writes in short chapters that behave like weather. Readers on Hollowbind have shelved it most often beside quiet family novels and slow-burn literary fiction.

Reviewing Quince Water

4.0 / 5

There is a stretch near the middle where I very nearly gave up, and I am glad I did not, because everything the opening half quietly sets up gets paid back twice over. The interior life of the older sister is drawn with far more patience than I have any right to expect from a novel of this length.

The recorded edition is worth a look as well, and the readers are matched carefully to the sisters. Ilsa Vreede in particular carries the last third, and her handling of the flood chapter is the only reason the slow opening is forgivable at all.

I will be handing this one round for months.

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I read the recorded edition