At the Water’s Edge is more similar to Water for Elephants than Ape House in tone and time period, maybe that’s why I preferred it to the other Gruen novel I read this year.
Maddie is an American society wife during WW2; she is married to Ellis Hyde although their relationship is constantly entwined with Hank, Ellis’ best friend. Colonel Hyde, Ellis’ father, discovered the Loch Ness monster and took the blurry pictures people are so skeptical of; in a drunken state Ellis berates his father’s work in front of an entire New Year’s Eve party. The next morning, Ellis & Maddie are kicked out of the Hyde mansion and they form a plan with Hank to travel to the Scottish Highlands to find the Loch Ness monster for themselves.
Once in Scotland, Ellis begins to show sides of his personality that concern Maddie. I loved the romance and the interspersing of real history into the non-fiction story line. Maddie was fun to root for, despite her shortcoming and the mistakes she made. Ellis’ evil turn may have been a bit over-exaggerated but it served the novel well; Maddie wouldn’t have come into her own sense of purpose if she didn’t have her husband as such a strong opposing force. Gruen populated her novel with rich supporting characters and despite the fantastical plot it felt rooted in something real.
“The monster—if there was one—never revealed itself to me again. But what I had learned over the past year was that monsters abound, usually in plain sight.”
