Deepwater

by Matthew F. Jones

Book Overview

A sexy, riveting psychological thriller about a young man with an unknowable past who lands in a small town, seduces a man's wife and steals his beloved dog. Nat Banyon is young, handsome and slightly... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1582340595
• ISBN13: 9781582340593
• Release Date: October 1999
• Publisher: Bloomsbury USA
• Length: 304 Pages
• Weight: 1.35 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 6.5" x 9.6"

Customer Reviews

Intense, with a capital I

A highly riveting, frightening read. The people in this book are so real and multilayered that I had the glancing-over-my-shoulder feeling reading about them that I had, without being aware of it, often crossed paths with them in many corners of America. The emotions and tensions within each of them is palpable. And the story's plot evolves so subtle(ly), and so within the context of the underlying story, that it's final mind-bending conclusion is both impossible to foresee and, in retrospect, clear as a bell. And what a rich, fertile, complex world somewhere (or maybe anywhere is the point) in rural mid-America this all happens in. What a skillful piece of work. I agree with the earlier reviewer who said that Jones is a one of a kind (it's hard to know who to compare him to completely uncompromising writer whose work has to now mysteriously remained beneath the commercial radar. This is the third of his novels I have read. Though each one is much different from the others, they all left me with the same from the gut, powerful and lasting impression. I strongly recommend this book and this writer to anyone who likes both a great story and great writing.

As good as advertised

I was never quite comfortable while reading this book, which is part of what made it such a powerful read. The apparent straightforward style of the writing belies the complexity of the characters and of the story unfolding around them at the Deepwater Motel and helps to create an eerie and increasingly dark sense of anticipation. The book draws you further and further into the world it creates in the way of a current slowly drawing a swimmer into a whirlpool. With stunning descriptiveness and powerful imagery Jones creates a deceptively beautiful world and characters all too real to feel comfortable around. A dizzying and in the end very frightening story. And tremendously well written.

A Chilling, erotic tale

A phsycologist friend of mine passed this book on to me, hyping it as one of the most intriguing character studies he'd ever come across. I couldn't agree more, though the book is also a first class, and very edgy mystery. Nat Banyon, the book's drifter protagonist is a character who is immediately likable and remains that way even after all we learn about him. Jones's mastery (think of being in Jim Thompson's world as seen by someone with the literary gifts of Cormac McCarthy)is in slowly revealing more and more of this outwardly simple man's tormented inner life, a life that he himself is only remotely (and sometimes not at all) in touch with. The seething emotions inside of the man, and the root of those emotions, are so accurately and eerily drawn I found myself feeling as if I were actually inside of Banyon's head and wanting on one hand to escape from it, while on the other feeling irresistably drawn to getting to the very core of what makes him the personality he is. A very disorienting feeling indeed. And the real beauty of the book is that it can on one level be read as a straight noir mystery, as it is easy to read and has a very compelling plot in the real world, outside of Banyon's head. But each sentence in the book is so compact and artfully drawn as to portray much more than what is actually happening on the page. Even when this guy seems only to be driving a car, hitting a punching bag, painting the side of building, making love to his boss's wife, you can feel, through Jones's simple but compact sentences, the anger, fear, paranoia seething just under his surface. What this book isn't, thank God, is a by the numbers, formulaic mystery. What it is a frightenigly accurate, downright scary portrayal of a walking time bomb, who doesn't even know his fuse is lit. Great work.

Much more than just a great mystery, a great book

For even more than the great story it tells, its charged erotocism, and its suspense, which is nearly unbearable, I loved this book for its exploration and dead-on depiction of two of the most complex, compelling, and, ultimately, frightening fictional characters (Nat Banyon and Herman Finch) I have come across in a long while. Part of the beauty of the story comes from the fact that it is at the same time both absolutely unpredictable and completely consistent with the characters Jones has created. And what characters they are! (made even more frightening for their total believability and because you can't help but like something in each one of them). A truly remarkable achievement. I highly recommend this book and will certainly read more of this author's work.

"Deepwater": An Unsettling Vision

I read the new book by Matthew Jones, "Deepwater," and liked it very much. The central character, a young drifter named Nat Banyon, is portrayed as one who would score very low on a personality trait that psychologists call "need for cognition." These are people, not at all rare, who given a choice between thinking, analyzing, figuring things out, solving puzzles, or otherwise using their cognitive potential, would just rather not. They prefer doing, feeling, and perhaps intuiting. They are more reactive, and less interested in detailed, long-term, cognitive planning. Given that the story centers upon an internal dialogue of sorts, of one faced with powerful dilemmas, it seems remarkable to me that Jones could find a way to portray the conflict experienced in the largely non-cognitive fashion that is essential to such a character. A Dostoyevsky protagonist faced with a similar conflict would think it to death. To portray a conflict in terms of thinking about its various ramifications and implications can be enlightening, and such an analysis may ring true for certain types of people, but it would not work for the Nat Banyon character Jones has created. Banyon's love for the young wife of an older man he has come to regard as a father figure, even as an older incarnation of himself, leads him to experience an emotional disorientation. He finds himself doing things which later seem to him to be at odds with his vaguely sensed values and his uncertain self-concept. He does not dwell on these issues, however, but is much more inclined to focus his attention on mundane tasks, such as painting a wall, or fixing a pump. He is capable of doing such jobs well. These tasks require some attention, but not a lot of thought. This is exactly suitable to his inclinations. The important issues of conflict, while he does not address them in a straightforward cognitive fashion, nevertheless consume him emotionally, and precipitate behaviors that hurl him towards an uncertain conclusion. Some readers may become uncomfortable with the tact Jones has taken here. One might have preferred it if the wife/mistress had been more developed as a character, and if she had not been so minimized as the relationship between Banyon and the husband looms larger and larger in its relative importance. It may also have been easier for the reader to be presented with a wife/girlfriend who is the goal over which men contest, with one winning and the other losing, but that would be the conventional approach. The story alludes to such a way of looking at this conflict, but opts for a more complicated if less uplifting and entertaining interpretation. Jones is not interested in developing a resolution for the reader in which all bits and pieces neatly fall into place. Reality is much more messy and unsettling. A work may still be art, even if it is not something you would want to hang on your wall.