Seacoast Review of Weight of Water

How is the novel "Weight of Water" different?

Fascinated by the Smuttynose story, bestselling author Anita Shreve used much of the historical detail, including authentic dialogue from Wagner’s trial transcript and Maren’s deposition. Shreve’s contemporary protagonist Jean James visits Smuttynose on a photography assignment, and comes to the conclusion that Maren, not Wagner, committed the crime. While researching the story at the Portsmouth Athenaeum, Jean James finds and purloins a lost letter by Maren confessing to the crime. The plot moves back and forth between the 1873 tale and the story of five people on a sailboat. Jean is sailing with her husband, a Pulitzer Prize winning poet, her young daughter, the poet’s brother and his sexy girlfriend. Both stories come together at the end in a stormy conclusion.

Is the film faithful to the novel?

Very much so. You can tell because the Smuttynose history, the best part of the novel, shines through clearly to become the best part of the movie. The contemporary story on the yacht is compressed a little to 17 hours. That helps make that part of the tale especially contrived. The main character’s daughter is largely left out of the movie plot, allowing for more sexual teasing between Hurley and Penn. That, I think, was a really bad decision. The Penn-Hurley relationship, more than anything, hurts the film. IT is lackluster, contrived and just stupid. The presence of the daughter, as Anita Shreve imagined the story, would have softened things. Viewers I talked to were confused by the two plots, but this is the way the novel moves too. The back and forth is confusing in the text too. Shreve did a nice job of comparing the crowded house on Smuttynose in winter to the cramped space on the yacht in summer. Features like that worked well. The comparison between the erupting psychology of Maren and Jean James, however, didn’t work for me in the book or in the novel. It may be sexist, but over the years I find women, they liked the novel or not, all finished the book. Most men I know abandoned it after reading only a couple of chapters.

Is the novel faithful to history?

This is the stickiest point of all. The novel starts out reciting chapter and verse from the Isles of Shoals guide books. In fact, in the film, the contemporary characters are reading from the very guidebook – written by a local man named Laurence Bussey who is president of the Smutynose Steards – that we hand out to visitors on the island.

The film opens with historic images of the real Louis Wagner, and an accurate map of the Isles of Shoals from one of Peter Randall’s books. The trial scene is well staged, but in reality, Maren did not testify in court. But, of course, as the protagonist concocts her fictional "Maren" theory, the fun goes out of the story for us historians. The imagined incest subplot that bubbles under the surface seems gratuitous to me and most people I’ve talked to. It distracts from the facts of the case, kills the drama, and adds a layer of 21^st century fiction that seems pretty silly if you know the character of the actual women in their time period.

Since the confession letter by Maren in the novel is fictional, the author then has to warp the facts to fit the fictional story and the realism quickly turns to sensationalism. By creating fictional motivations to make Maren, and not louis, the killer, the author loses the drama and horror inherent in the historical event itself. This is a bigger flaw in the film than in the novel since it is easier to imagine these events than to actually watch them in Technicolor. Something about the big screen makes it all the more improbable.

And this blending of fact and fiction bothers people?

It bothered me a lot when the novel first came out, but I’m over it. Fiction is powerful and, although Weight of Water is clearly a novel, readers have no way of knowing where the truth ends and the fiction begins. I still wince when people who don't know the history say "I think Maren did it." Of course, they don’t have the actual details. They are talking about a fictional Maren and confusing her with the real person. That seems unfair to her memory. But that is the nature of historical fiction. I once wrote a mystery novel of my own and fiddled with history and fact, and even though my novel never even found a publisher, I’ve become more forgiving about the role of the novelist. And if nothing else, the novel has brought more attention to the history itself. We were afraid, for awhile that the film would lead to a attack of souvenir hunters on the island (which actually happened in real life after the 1873 murders), but so few people saw the film that it has had almost no impact on island visitors.

My personal problem here is twofold. First, I don’t think the Maren theory works. The real story about Louis Wagner, to my mind, is so much more compelling than the silly "conspiracy" theories. I don’t think an alternate view is needed, and all the trumped up themes of jealousy and sexuality make less sense to me than the facts in the case – Louis, a thief, turned violent when caught. Secondly, I find it troubling that an actual living person -- a woman who most likely was victimized, traumatized and nearly killed -- is depicted as the murderer. Maybe it’s just karma, but I’d hate to read a novel in which my grandmother was treated that way. The story is so well crafted that people cannot tell where the history leaves off and the fiction begins.

So you believe Louis Wagner did it.

I do. In fact, seeing the story so well depicted on the big screen only confirmed my belief. Ciaran Hinds, the actor who played Wagner, did a great job of getting his smarmy personality across. Wagner had a way with ladies, but he was a slacker and a liar. "Weight of Water" of course, does not show Wagner rowing out to the island, or delivering a pitiful alibi in court, or running away to Boston by train the day after the murder -- having shaved, cleaned up and bought new clothes with the money he stole. Wagner was seen rowing into town the next morning by witnesses. He gave up without a word when arrested in a Boston hotel the next day. None of this really appears in the novel. It all makes much more sense than Maren hacking up her own sister and sister-in-law because of some bottled up sexual dysfunction. C’mon. get real.

But didn’t Wagner say he was innocent? And who could row that far?

Let’s not go there. Every murderer on death row says he’s innocent. OJ Simpson still says he’s innocent. Wagner was a sleazy guy, but he was a fisherman, the kind of guy who rows a dory for a living. Rowing to Smuttynose is not an impossible task. A local wooden boat builder told me a good rower can do it today in three hours. There’s an annual rowing race here every year.

The key to Wagner’s guilt, I think, is that he never expected to get caught. He was going to slip into the back cove at the island, steal the money, and take off without being seen. But things went badly, and he was spotted by women who knew him well. He reacted violently to silence them. One got away, and silenced him.

Wagner ended up finding only about $15 in the house, that prosecutors said was how he purchased new clothes and a train trip to Boston. Remember, it was Maren who identified Wagner. If Louis Wagner had been seen by even one person in Portsmouth on the night of the murder, Maren’s accusation would have been disproved. But despite his elaborate fictional defense, he had no alibi. He was not seen at any of the Portsmouth bars that he reportedly visited, especially odd also for a man who did not drink alcohol, but said he was lying drunk in public that night. He didn’t show up at his boarding house that night on Marcy Street (then Water Street). There is plenty of damning circumstantial evidence.

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