The Watermark, Sam Mills
The Watermark has been a long time in the making. Upon reading Sam Mills’ mammoth novel of metafiction, a romance dragged through literary metamorphosis, it is clear why.
Augustus Fate, an enigmatic author living a reclused life, captures people’s psyche for characters in his book. To this end, Rachel and Jaime become trapped in novels, while their bodies remain unconscious in the real world. These physics demands a feat of imagination, but Olivia Wilde’s deja-vu infused Don’t Worry Darling is a helpful comparison.
Things go up a notch when the characters enter books within books. Mills crafts each world with rich layers, convincing as novellas in their own right, and as if written by different authors entirely. 2014 Manchester reads like Sally Rooney as our protagonists tumble through hazy, hedonistic young love, while 1861 Oxford is built from similar strictures to Dickensian London. The romance is forced into many forms, but remains the core of each era, the motivation for making it back to real life – although what that is exactly is increasingly elusive.
Mills’ characters, even those buried in three layers of fiction, endure the existential narratives they occupy. Reminiscent of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Mills’ plot is idiosyncratic, playful despite its macabre undertones. The Watermark achieves fantasy without detriment to character realism and emotional integrity.
Each world muses, in its own way, on the passing of time, the mortality of love and the tortured artist. With an immense landscape of time and place, Mills offers continuous commentary on free will versus fate, and the subliminal input of media and politics on our decisions and opinions; can we ever be sure that our thoughts are our own? The Watermark leaves us with a reminder to take control of our personal and romantic narratives before somebody else does.
Mills’ ambitious work of metafiction, packed with characters gone awry and a romance tested by a whiplash trajectory, offers a colourful, dizzying adventure plot, but also philosophical questioning of our connection to reality and truth: who dictates the narrative?
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