Silver Water by Amy Bloom

Silver Water by Amy Bloom

Silver Water is one of the short stories of the book called, “Come to Me” by Amy Bloom. It is the story of a family, written from the point of view of one of the daughter of the family. The story revolves around parents and the two daughters ‘Rose’ and ‘Violet’. The story is about how Rose became psychotic and how the family struggles, remaining intact throughout to give full care and support to Rose. Rose’s father was a psychiatric, he tried every possible way to bring her child get back to normal, the mother was a musician who supported Rose every time. Violet, the narrator of the story, speaks about their experiences after Rose got her first psychotic attack which changed their whole life, their experiences with different psychiatrists who treated Rose, and how the condition got worst after the death of Rose’s favorite Psychiatrist. The story progresses in great sorrow of the family, and ends with the heart breaking death of Rose.

Amy bloom is an American writer; she has practiced psychotherapy, and recently is the University Writer in Residence at Wesleyan University. Amy has used the name of various drugs which have been used for psychotic patients, as she herself is a psychotherapist she knows the name of the drugs, and also know what a psychotic patient goes through. This could be one reason that Amy was able to write the story so nicely making it true at every instance.  At no point of time in the story you will feel dis-connected from it. Her psychotherapist skills added a realistic flavour to the story.

I like the story, as I could connect to it very much. It does not look like a fiction to me. The manner in which the story has been told, the pain of the family members, the portrayal of every setting was very realistic. While reading I was actually imagining each and every character and the settings. Though the story was very sad, I liked the courage with which the family members supported Rose. They tried to give her every possible element for leading a normal life, like letting her join the choir group in the church. The best part of the story to me was when Rose was behaving inappropriately in front of the doctors and the family members were laughing to it, accepting to what Rose is like. “Mr. Walker read Rose’s file in front of us and then watched in alarm as Rose began crooning, beautifully, and slowly massaging her breasts. My mother and I laughed, and even my father started to smile. This was Rose’s usual opening salvo for new therapists”.  This showed their acceptance to the condition of Rose and rather than getting sad they were all very courageous and supportive.

Another incident which touched me was when violet came back home on Sunday and was doing gardening with her father, the way she had explained the whole scene was so realistic that I could actually imagine them doing gardening on happy Sunday afternoons. “I came on Sunday, in the early afternoon, to help my father garden, something we had always enjoyed together. We needed and staked tomatoes and killed aphids while my mother and Rose were down at the Lake. I didn’t even go into the house until four, when I needed a glass of water”.  Though I could feel the hidden sadness in their life at that point but I liked the way they were tackling with the whole situation.

My interpretation of the story did not really match with other group members, as I did not liked the fact that by the end of the story they were all very sad and distressed, all the courage and determination they had in the beginning was fading away by the end, though they were all very closely bound to and were also consoling each other but, that utter sadness and the silence in the house was bothering me while reading the story. With every drop in Rose’s condition, there hope was also dropping. I felt that they had given up to the situation and were filled with immense sorrow and pain. In the discussion among the group members it came out that, it is human nature of getting sad and distressed, as they all knew that nothing can be done to improve the condition of Rose, it was humane to get sad and hopeless. The discussion helped me to see the story through a different lens, which I was not applying earlier. Before discussion my understanding of the story was very linear but after discussing it with the group members I could actually think about the story differently.

As a reader I could not really interpret much about myself, as there was no different approach which I used to read this story, whenever I read any novel or book, I gets engaged totally in the story and feels every emotion, and even makes imaginary characters, same thing I did while reading Silver Water. I was actually imagining every situation happening in front of me with imaginary characters and me getting sad and happy with the happenings of the story along with the characters.