Water Studies: New Voices in Maritime Fiction

R.G. Moyles is professor emeritus of English at the University of
Alberta, the co-author of Imperial Dreams and Colonial Realities:
British Views of Canada, 1880–1914, and the author of The Salvation
Army and the Public.

Although this collection is said to feature “new voices,” all of the
writers included in it have been published, and only three or four of
the sixteen are really “new” writers. Another caveat is that the
volume’s title, Water Studies (the title of the first story, as well),
does not correspond with any unifying motif in the pieces themselves.
The editor rather naively believes that since all the writers live on
the East Coast, “their lives and their writing cannot help but be
shaped in some manner, obscure or conspicuous, by this proximity to
water.” Nonetheless, they are all very good writers, and two in
particular—J. Maureen Hull and Kathy Diane Leveille—are standouts.
Although Water Studies is certainly worth reading, its generally sombre
tenor is such that it is unlikely to engage the general reader.