Water

Like the Book of Genesis as filmed by Harmony Korine, J. A. Tyler's Water is a necropastoral in which 'return to nature' comes as a dark threat. There are no havens here, only a landscape at once dead and dazzling, at once before and after, at once post-nuclear and pre-historic, in which a constant electric hum both interrupts and links events with its neutral, fatal current. As Tyler manipulates a deliberately constrained vocabulary-Boy, Girl, Land, Ocean, Woods, Axe, Egg-a minutely configured and reconfigured universe comes into view in which bodies are conducting materials for violence and rain pours down as relentlessly and ambiguously as existence itself. Tyler pursues this vision with stamina and acuity: dead-on, a dead-eye.

-Joyelle McSweeney, author of Percussion Grenade

Of Boy, of Girl, of Land, of children - Heather, Jen, Jack, John - of teachers, of Noah, of Tangleweeds, of zzzzzzzzzz, of people, of axe, of fathers, of mothers, of families, of rain, always the rain. J. A. Tyler's Water chokes us with these things and more. One thing becoming another, becoming another, and glimpses of how they came to be, where they are now, where they are headed; all of it with a language and rhythm that carries us along, ugly and surreal. Water envelops, nonstop, soaking.

-xTx, author of Normally Special