An exceptional author; you can't wait to see what the characters will do, and they do not disappoint. Canin is truly gifted.

Based on Canin's short stories, I confidently expected to love this novel. I am not going to argue that Carry Me Across the Water is a bad book, but I was not nearly as impressed as I expected to be.

I am not sure that I am smart enough to exactly pinpoint what did not work. I certainly appreciated it as I was reading it. As I sit here now to try to find the words to describe the flaws, I keep coming up with "forgettable" and "weak". All the same, "weak" is not correct. Canin is too good of a writer for that. "Diluted" is maybe more appropriate. It is as though what I like about his short stories is not concentrated enough to hold my attention here throughout the book. August Kleinman is an interesting enough character. The events in his life should also have been interesting enough. But still, it just didn't do it for me.

There is enough of the flavor here of personal taste to suggest that you try the novel for yourself to see what you think. Since I cannot really define why it did not work, it may well be my issue rather than the novel's. Still, I think that I am going to circle back around to his short stories and remember what I liked so much in the first place.

Three stars, really. But I cannot give a writer this strong less than four stars.

Canin, a writing professor at the University of Iowa, reminds me of Richard Yates in that I refer to each of them as a writer's writer. Both of these writers have very different strengths (and their lives have other points of intersection), but each has a way of producing work that is technically wonderful, while at the same time being an entertaining story. In this instance, Canin weaves a story about August Kleinman, a Jewish man who escaped the Holocaust and fought oversees in the Pacific. The story weaves August at multiple time periods and we jump from perspective to perspective seamlessly. That's the strongest aspect of this novel - the way Canin takes us to different points in August's life, while maintaining our complete and utter belief that this is the same person at different developmental stages in each instance. Another way to look at this novel is through its "tightness." Canin does a great job of linking things together and of providing closure to almost every single detail that he includes. This novel seems like it could have been written in two days or two years.

I highly recommend the book to people who enjoy reading technically saavy material. Rarely will you find work that is successful at pushing itself stylistically without compromising the plotline. Buy it and enjoy.