The Waterworks was the popular choice for this month’s Reading group commemorating the writer EL Doctorow. It came top by a considerable margin. This is both good and bad news.
It’s good news because The Waterworks is an underrated classic. It’s complicated, fascinating, surprising, unsettling, mesmerising … I could throw “ings” at it all day. I love it more every time I read it and I want to press it into as many hands as I possibly can. In that sense, it’s the ideal choice.
But it’s bad news because, for reasons unfathomable, this wonderful novel doesn’t appear to be widely available here in the UK.
On the one hand this lack of new hard copies (you can still buy it on audiobook and secondhand) makes me all the more keen to evangelise. It’s a pity that this great novel by such a fine writer isn’t in print. It’s scandalous that it isn’t even available as an ebook. I hope that by looking at it on the Reading group we can try to encourage the publishers to do the decent thing and bring it back into circulation.
On the other hand, if people can’t get hold of it, that’s clearly a problem for the Reading group, so – alas – I shan’t dwell too long on The Waterworks. But I’ll work on the principle that reading more of a great writer can only be a good thing, as well as the fact that Doctorow novels tend to be nice and short, and suggest we also take a look at another popular choice, his breakthrough novel, The Book of Daniel. This novel is in print, and it’s in the Guardian bookshop. It’s also very good.
By way of encouragement, we’ve got 10 copies of The Book of Daniel to give away to the first five readers in the UK to post: “I want a copy please” – along with a nice, constructive comment relevant to its author – in the comments section below.
If you’re lucky enough to be one of the first to comment, don’t forget to email Laura Kemp with your address (laura.kemp@theguardian.com), as we can’t track you down ourselves. Be nice to her, too.
Finally, some advance warning. This year marks the 100th anniversary of the publication of Joseph Conrad’s classic “island tale”, Victory. Happily, it’s definitely still in print. Let’s look at it here on the Reading group in October. Onwards!
