A virtuous man once walked on water, but today men walk on the water surrounding our city, pouring in the poison and disease that dissolves the bonds of home, faith, and country.Men Walking on Water begins with an intriguing scene: It is December of 1927 and one of the cars in a rum-running operation has fallen through the ice on the Detroit River; taking with it a full load of booze and twenty grand in cash. Not only will the motley crew need to inform the hapless driver's new widow of the accident, but someone will need to suffer the consequences of telling their iron-fisted boss as well. This opening scene and what immediately follows is really well done, and as author Emily Schultz's intent was evidently to explore the ripple effects of this accident across a wide range of characters, there was an opportunity for the whole thing to be exciting and complex...but it all just fizzled out for me. In the end, I found the characters to be flat, the writing to be dull, and the plot to be predictable. Just not for me.
We men believe we can walk on water. We think we are capable of anything. We are not. We are mortal.I was so bored by this book that that's all I can muster up for a review.
I really tried, but I couldn't make that review any longer; the book bored me too much to even make it amusing for me to pick apart. I read Men Walking on Water because of this list of "the most anticipated books of the first half of 2017". Just to bulk out this page, here are links to my reviews of the other books I've read on that list:
Son of a Trickster by Eden Robinson
The Lonely Hearts Hotel by Heather O’Neill
One Day We’ll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter by Scaachi Koul
American War by Omar El Akkad
Little Sister by Barbara Gowdy
The Last Neanderthal by Claire Cameron
We’ll All Be Burnt In Our Beds Some Night by Joel Thomas Hynes
Dr. Edith Vane and the Hares of Crawley Hall by Suzette Mayr
I only read some of these books because of that list (many I had already read when I first thought to Google for such a list), but oddly, it's the books that I did read because of this list that I regretted the most. Huh.