Review: The Water Lily Pond

The Water Lily Pond is a 2016 science fiction novel by our own Michael Siegel. Also a famous painting by Monet, which is not a coincidence; the book’s main character, Walter Winston, is, at 128, the greatest living American painter (upgraded, somewhat grudgingly by some critics, from greatest living African-American painter), and many of the milestones in his long life are paintings.

Winston’s being 128 is the main science-fictional touch in this book. In the near future, modern medicine makes aging a solved problem if you take the right medicine every day. Kids who grow up on it might live indefinitely, while people like Winston who had already begun to age will have somewhat expanded lifetimes. In fact, he’s outlived his wife and all of his close friends and is largely solitary when the symptoms that his remaining time is short begin.

Winston’s talent has led to a largely happy life, starting from unpromising beginnings in the ghetto of rural Georgia: good friends, a loving and supportive wife, a child, grandchildren, and great grandchildren, all of whom are part of his life, but like everyone he has regrets and questions about things past, so he travels from his current home in Monterey to his previous homes in reverse chronological order, just him and the versions of his wife and friends that live in his head, to try to discover the truth about things that happened in his past. Some of what he finds is surprising, some not, but by the end he does find closure.
I particularly appreciated one thing Winston learns, because I’ve seen it described first-hand but rarely seen it discussed. One of the hardest things the early black baseball player faced was being in the minor leagues. Their teams were often in the deep South, and they faced violent racism from the entire white community, including their coaches and teammates. (Ironically, this is one issue Jackie Robinson didn’t face; his one year in the minors was in Montreal.)

This is a gentle, contemplative book, without much in the way of conventional action, but my attention never flagged, and I found the ending entirely satisfying. The Water Lily Pond is available for Kindle at amazon.com.