Carry Me Like Water

I wept through this book over a three day business trip. I was a 68 year old man, sitting in the window seat on a cross-country flight, using drink napkins (I only had coffee!) to wipe away the tears and blow my nose. (On Southwest, which I love and hate to criticize, we were packed in to tightly to reach for my handkerchief.) In the evening, in the motel I was sobbing. In my house, as I finished the last 150 pages on my return, I was sobbing so loudly my family came to check on me! Whatever the author intended--and his story is not really, sad, it's merely a true story, an honest one--it touched unmourned issues in my own life like no other book I've read. I doubt another reader would have this experience. I'm not sure I would if I read it again. It's insightful and touching, truthful and non-judgmental--even those who do terrible things--and there are a number of them--don't elicit our hate. The author doesn't go for that revenge motive. One merely looks on, perplexed, at the needless violence of abusive parents or street gangsters or unfeeling employers, and feels a loss for the tortured psychological development that made them what they are. And one hopes for healing and forgiveness in each situation. For those who've suffered needless hate, this book may be a healing read, or it may seem far afield--not all of us, after all, have rich relatives. But anyone who has suffered will at least feel a resonance in their own experience and be touched for the better.

This book is so beautifully written and full of sadness and true joy, love, truth of life. I have read this book at least ten times and I love it more each time I read it. My only disappointment is in how this book was converted to electronic form. Does no one read the pages after it's converted? There are SO MANY BLATANT errors that are not in the hard copy of the book. I looked forward to being able to store this book on my phone and re-reading it whenever and wherever I felt like it... I feel like these errors are an offense against the author and the readers. People pay for the e-copy of this book and it's littered with errors that should have been corrected! Apologies should be made to the author and to every person who has spent their money on the disappointing electronic version of this book. This beautiful book deserves better than the treatment it got when turned into an electronic copy.

Great story but the Kindle version is just full of spelling errors/typos.

I love this book, I've read this novel around five times. I even purchased a copy for a dear friend of mine. I had to recommend it to her, she loves it as well. I'm just now getting ready to start it again.Get a copy and you, too will fall in love with it,.Recommended by Laura Sanchez

I am REALLY impressed by Benjamin Alire Saenz. I loved 'Aristotle and Dante...' and 'Carry me like Water' is a great story.BUT the Kindle edition of this book is littered with typographic mistakes that I'm guessing came from the use of optical character recognition software on a printed book, and an obvious absence of good proof reading. The consequence is that "shirt" becomes "shin", "born" becomes "bon", "like" becomes "tike" and "lake", "take"... etc etc.I'm nearly half way through, and it does seem to be improving, but at 43%, "overinflated tire" became "overinflated lire" (which is quite funny really). "You begin to stop needing..." became "you need to slop needing..." which isn't funny.Benjamin Alire Saenz deserves better.

A story about losing and finding, about despair and hope, about friends and family. A story about coming home to yourself.

Excellent book. I live in El Paso and I can relate to the author's keen knowledge of our city and its people. He made his characters come to life.

Carry Me Like Water is ingenious because of the way it incorporates magic realism. In order for a book to be considered magic realism, the core of the story has to be realistic with fantastic elements mingled in ever so casually.Imagine a coy flirt at a bar. She's intriguing to people because she knows how to capture their attention, without having to surrender to blatant attention getting tactics, such as the party socialite. The same thing applies to magic realism. The minute these elements take over the novel, you can argue the book is no longer magic realist.And that is unfortunately the main problem with Saenz's character, Lizzie, who is given a psychic gift. Her new abilities, at times, take over the story and become distracting. (That same flirt from the bar that was mysterious, is now screaming, "Look at me! Look at me!") Lizzie loses purpose and all the threads that bring everyone together are no longer special with a histrionic women at the center of these events.There is still plenty to be praised about Carry Me Like Water. Saenz's ability to write powerful, imaginative prose is awe inspiring. Every single page is filled with several poetic lines strung together to create a powerful image. Knowing that his words capture moments perfectly, Saenz becomes opportunistic and uses his writing ability to address cultural issues, the AIDS epidemic, religion, gay culture and several more taboo subjects.The story's focus is on Diego a deaf-mute in El Paso, and the remaining cast who can be found in California such as Helen, Helen's best friend Lizzie, and Jake, a gay man coping with the HIV virus. As the story progresses, secrets become unraveled and all of a sudden every character is connected to one another through fate and unexpected events. The focus is not so much on what ties them together, rather how the events that bring them together changes them for the better or worse.At times you may start to think that the whole cast of characters will suffer tragedy after tragedy as Saenz takes great pleasure in torturing his characters. Will these characters ever see the light? However, there is a balance to his Guantanamo Bay-character-torture tactics. Every character's story line (with the exception of Lizzie) follows a natural progression and reaches a logical conclusion rather than a Disney-esque ending.I'm a lover of Disney endings, but had he done that, it would have been a huge disservice to the novel. He eventually manages to reign in Lizzie so that the reader can enjoy the story, rather than focus on her selfish, all consuming, obnoxious behavior. Their are plenty of obnoxious characters in Carry Me Like Water, but only Lizzie detracts from the novel suggesting that somewhere along the line Saenz lost control of the character. Thankfully though, this behavior doesn't last long. (Even the desperate gal at the bar realizes her mistake and comes up with a better method for gaining attention.)It's an amazing story, despite that one flaw (Lizzie) that you can enjoy. It's not preachy, but it does highlight different segments of society that we as a society tend to shun or ignore for one reason or another.However, that being said there are some warnings: 1. Don't read the book if you usually are the sort to censor or ban books. You won't like this. 2. Don't read the book if a hurricane just passed through your area and you're without electricity and wanted a fun light read. This is not it. 3. Don't read the book if you have strong feelings towards immigration, homosexuality, religion, and other subjects that you feel are either fundamentally right or wrong. If you don't believe in gray areas, you will be disappointed. This book won't change your mind and all it will do is upset you and make you wonder if you can join the people in bullet point 1.All in all, an amazing book.I give it 4.5 out of 5 stars. (Lizzie just had to ruin it.)

Il libro, come tutto che lui ha scritto, è molto bello.Comunque, è un grande peccato e molto fastidioso che il libro è PIENO d’errori ortografici.

Compelling , gritty , earthy like a really good wine difficult to put down and utterly absorbing. The characters were real as was the environment and the action. Brilliant writer who has crsfted a wonderful book about life and the underclass.

Eine wunderschöne, berührende Geschichte. Sehr komplex und unfassbar gut geschrieben. Leider hat das Lektorat versagt. Sehr viele Fehler.Nichtsdestotrotz: lesen!!!