The Woman Who Walked on Water

The Woman Who Walked on Water is a beautifully crafted, dark fable, the story of a woman’s search for meaning, from the author of The Double Life of Liliane.

Adele leaves her comfortable life in Connecticut for India, to follow a guru she has met in Chartres Cathedral. Her departure confounds her family and neighbors: Adele is beautiful; she is lucky; she possesses charisma; she is a champion swimmer whose stamina and grace astound the patrons of the exclusive resort in the Caribbean that her family visits each year. Adele’s husband cannot understand what the Indian guru – an elusive, ever-changing man who indeed seems privy to some of life’s mysteries – can give Adele that he cannot. Her two children worry as she grows gaunt and begins to look older than her years, and as her letters arrive less and less frequently.

As we watch Adele’s deepening spirituality, The Woman Who Walked on Water compellingly gives life to the writings of Rumi, Laotzu, and the Upanishads, which infuse this work with their wisdom. Yet what also emerges is a troubling portrait of a woman alone in a foreign country, surrounded by a family and culture not her own, in a dry and dusty city. Lily Tuck portrays with acumen, pathos, and humor a woman who may have found enlightenment. She also leaves us questioning Adele’s fate, and our own desires for transcendence.