SOURCE: A review of The Forms of Water, in Belles Lettres, Vol. 9, No. 2, Winter, 1993, p. 50.

In the following review, Berch offers a positive assessment of The Forms of Water.

A well-structured novel, like a well-designed house, can be quite pleasurable no matter how it is furnished. Whether the subject matter of The Forms of Water—children without parents who later become childish parents, the ways families repeat themselves, the importance of home—is of interest to all readers or not, the book is crafted with such care, it can be appreciated on that level alone.

The Forms of Water is the story of a family that fell apart a generation or two back, when their New England village was removed to build a reservoir, and then one son went to World War II and never got over it. Shortly thereafter, the son and his wife died in a...