The novel’s ultimate antagonist, the town’s richest landowner, never quite becomes an outright psychopath.

A sheriff’s deputy carries out terrible orders, but is severely affected by PTSD from the war. The neighbour who enslaved Prentiss and Landry is obviously capable of great evil, but Harris portrays him mainly as simple. Harris is at pains to create morally complex characters, demanding empathy for the least empathetic. This is heart and emotional intelligence you can’t fake. With its feel for emotion, it reminded me of Kazuo Ishiguro, or, truly, Jane Austen. One would take a bite, and then the other, and it was in these slight recognitions – no different from the way they exchanged deep breaths while falling asleep – that the brushstrokes of their marriage coalesced day after day, night after night, the resulting portrait rewarding but infuriatingly difficult to interpret. She brought two plates to the table, returned moments later with two cups of coffee. Here, for instance, is a simple dinner scene between George and Isabelle: At its best, it works magnificently, and I was deeply moved by the trials of many of the characters. It is a boldly sentimental novel, spending most of its time in its characters’ emotional worlds. Grief hangs heavily over the early chapters of this book, a kind of stillness and gathering that soon gives way to a more action-packed, propulsive story than you might first imagine, as Prentiss, Landry and the Walkers come under threat from Old Ox’s disgruntled former slavers. George and his wife Isabelle grieve for their son Caleb, reported dead after deserting the Confederate army.

It’s only weeks since the Civil War ended, and Union soldiers occupy the town to keep the peace. Although content for the moment in their freedom in the woods, George soon invites them to work on his land, which has until now lain fallow. But in the woods he finds something else, two newly freed brothers from the property next door, the younger Prentiss, and the giant, mute Landry who delights in the small moments of beauty among cruelty, the sweetness of water of the title.

These woodland jaunts are regular recreation for him, stalking a black, hairy beast that sometimes walks on two legs, sometimes on four, a beast he and his father have been after since childhood. The Sweetness Of Water begins with wealthy landowner George Walker walking in the woods on his property near the fictional Georgian town of Old Ox.

The sweetness of water nathan harris