Two artists, Vivi and Teo, she in her 40s, he in his late 80s, she an artist still looking for her creative identity, he, a national brand nd the creator of the ballet school in Israel, meet in a coffee in Tel Aviv. Vivi is the waitress there and he is usually having his coffee there. Slowly slowly, they are connecting not only through their creative searches, but by their individual personal stories.
I couldn't leave the first half of When We Danced on Water, by Evan Fallenberg and I cannot clearly mention one single reason for that. The writing flows beautifully with extraordinary descriptions of dance and debates about art, but there is also the impulsive artistic ambiance of Tel Aviv that I miss so much once in a while.
But as I was advancing through the second part, my disappointment grew as I started to see story flaws everywhere. First, Vivi's Berlin failed love story: it takes place too fast, seems just to fill up some narrative space before the most important story - which actually occupies the most place - Teo's, takes place. On the other hand, Teo's story, which takes place during the war while he is kidnapped by a sadistic German official with whom will share a villa in Grunewald for a couple of years, apparently the same villa where Vivi lived during her Berlin adventure, would deserved a larger space and is what really matters in the story. It would have been worth a book in itself.
The last quarter is also taking place too fast and looks equally artificial. The events leading up to the end seemed for me just added up details with a kitschy soap opera taste. I grew up more and more disappointed, although sparkles of brilliance were still spread all over the book, such as Vivi's artistic idea to recreate life stories based on pictures, material memories, in addition to personal narratives.
When We Danced on Water is a book that has many interesting ideas and make you think about the destinies of the characters, but personally would have expected a more coherent story. Although, after so many literary approaches, writing a fiction novel with episodes taking place during Shoah is becoming more and more difficult and requires a lot of creativity to produce a good yet literary balanced story.
Rating: 3 stars
