Memory of Water: A Novel

By Emmi Itäranta

An amazing, award-winning speculative fiction debut novel by a major new talent, in the vein of Ursula K. Le Guin.

Global warming has changed the world’s geography and its politics. Wars are waged over water, and China rules Europe, including the Scandinavian Union, which is occupied by the power state of New Qian. In this far north place, seventeen-year-old Noria Kaitio is learning to become a tea master like her father, a position that holds great responsibility and great secrets. Tea masters alone know the location of hidden water sources, including the natural spring that Noria’s father tends, which once provided water for her whole village.

But secrets do not stay hidden forever, and after her father’s death the army starts watching their town—and Noria. And as water becomes even scarcer, Noria must choose between safety and striking out, between knowledge and kinship.

Imaginative and engaging, lyrical and poignant, Memory of Water is an indelible novel that portrays a future that is all too possible.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Jun 10, 2014
• ISBN: 9780062326164

Emmi Itäranta

Emmi Itäranta (b. 1976) was born in Tampere, Finland, where she also grew up. She holds an MA in Drama from the University of Tampere and an MA in Creative Writing from the University of Kent, UK, where she began writing her debut novel Memory of Water. Itäranta’s professional background is an eclectic blend of writing-related activities, including stints as a columnist, theatre critic, dramaturge, scriptwriter and press officer. She lives in Canterbury, UK.

Book preview

PROLOGUE

Everything is ready now.

Each morning for seven weeks I have swept the fallen leaves from the stone slabs that form the path to the teahouse, and forty-nine times I have chosen a handful among them to be scattered on the stones again, so the path wouldn’t look too much like it had been swept. That was one of the things my father always insisted on.

Sanja told me once the dead don’t need pleasing. Perhaps they don’t. Perhaps I do. Sometimes I don’t know the difference. How could I, when they are in my blood and bones, when all that is left of them is me?

I haven’t dared to go to the spring in seven weeks. Yesterday I turned on the tap in the house and held the mouth of the waterskin to its metal. I spoke to it in pretty words and ugly words, and I may have even screamed and wept, but water doesn’t care for human sorrows. It flows without slowing or quickening its pace in the darkness of the earth, where only stones will hear.

The pipe gave a few drops, perhaps a spoonful, into my waterskin.

I know what it means.

This morning I emptied the rest of the water from the skin into the cauldron, brought some dried peat from the shed into the teahouse and placed the firestarter next to the hearth. I thought of my father, whose wishes I had violated, and my mother, who didn’t see the day I became a tea master.

I thought of Sanja. I hoped she was already where I was going.

A guest whose face is not unfamiliar is walking down the path, offering me a hand I’m ready to take. The world will not spin slower or faster when we have passed through the gate together.

What remains is light on water, or a shifting shadow.

PART ONE

Watchers of Water

‘Only what changes can remain.’

Wei Wulong, ‘The Path of Tea’

7th century of Old Qian time

CHAPTER ONE

Water is the most versatile of all elements. So my father told me the day he took me to the place that didn’t exist. While he was wrong about many things, he was right about this, so I still believe. Water walks with the moon and embraces the earth, and it isn’t afraid to die in fire or live in air. When you step into it, it will be as close as your own skin, but if you hit it too hard, it will shatter you. Once, when there were still winters in the world, cold winters, white winters, winters you could wrap yourself in and slip on and come in to warm from, you could have walked on the crystallized water that was called ice. I have seen ice, but only small, man-made lumps. All my life I have dreamed of how it would be to walk on frozen sea.

Death is water’s close companion. The two cannot be separated, and neither can be separated from us, for they are what we are ultimately made of: the versatility of water, and the closeness of death. Water has no beginning and no end, but death has both. Death is both. Sometimes death travels hidden in water, and sometimes water will chase death away, but they go together always, in the world and in us.

This, too, I learned from my father, but I now believe I would have learned it without him just as well.

I can pick my own beginning.

Perhaps I will pick my own end.

The beginning was the day when my father took me to the place that didn’t exist.

It was a few weeks after I had taken my Matriculation Tests, compulsory for all citizens the year they came of age. While I had done well, there was never any question that I would remain in my current apprenticeship with my father instead of continuing my studies in the city. It was a choice I had felt obliged to make, and therefore, perhaps, not really a choice. But it seemed to make my parents happy, and it didn’t make me miserable, and those were the things that mattered at the time.

We were in our garden behind the teahouse, where I was helping my father hang empty waterskins to dry. A few of them were still draped on my arm, but most were already hanging upside down from the hooks on the metal rack. Sunlight filtered in veils through their translucent surfaces. Slow drops streaked their insides before eventually falling on the grass.

‘A tea master has a special bond with water and death,’ my father said to me as he examined one of the skins for cracks. ‘Tea isn’t tea without water, and without tea a tea master is no tea master. A tea master devotes his life to serving others, but he only attends the tea ceremony as a guest once in his lifetime, when he feels his death approaching. He orders his successor to prepare the last ritual, and after he has been served the tea, he waits alone in the teahouse until death presses a hand on his heart and stops it.’

My father tossed the waterskin on the grass where a couple of others were already waiting. Mending the skins didn’t always work out, but they were expensive, like anything made of durable plastic, and it was usually worth a try.

‘Has anyone ever made a mistake?’ I asked. ‘Did anyone think their death was coming, when it wasn’t time yet?’

‘Not in our family,’ he said. ‘I’ve heard of a past-world master who ordered his son to prepare the last ritual, settled to lie down on the teahouse floor and walked into his house two days later. The servants thought he was a ghost and one of them had a heart attack. The tea master had mistaken the servant’s death for his own. The servant was cremated and the master lived for another twenty years. But it doesn’t happen often.’

I slapped a horsefly that had landed on my arm. It darted off just in time with a loud buzz. The headband of my insect hood felt tight and itchy, but I knew taking it off would attract too many insects.

‘How do you know when your death is coming?’ I asked.

‘You know,’ my father said. ‘Like you know you love, or like in a dream you know that the other person in the room is familiar, even if you don’t know their face.’ He took the last skins from me. ‘Go and get two blaze lanterns from the teahouse veranda, and fill them for me.’

I wondered what he needed the lanterns for, because it was only early afternoon, and this time of the year even the nights didn’t drown the sun in the horizon. I went around the teahouse and took two lanterns from under the bench. A stiff-winged blazefly was stirring at the bottom of one. I shook it into the gooseberry bushes. Blazeflies liked gooseberries best, so I kept shaking the branches above the lanterns until there was a handful of sleepily crawling flies inside each. I closed the lids and took the lanterns to my father.

He had lifted an empty waterskin on his back. His expression was closed behind the insect hood. I handed the lanterns to him, but he only took one of them.

‘Noria, it’s time I showed you something,’ he said. ‘Come with me.’

We walked across the dried swamp spreading behind our house to the foot of the fell and then up the slope. It wasn’t a long walk, but sticky sweat glued the hair onto my scalp. When we reached the height where the boulder garden began, I took my insect hood off. The wind was so strong that there weren’t as many horseflies and midges here as around the house.

The sky was pure and still. The sun felt tight on my skin. My father had stopped, perhaps to choose his route. I turned to look down. The tea master’s house with its garden was a speckle of floating green in the faded landscape of burned-out grass and bare stone. The valley was scattered with the houses of the village, and on the other side rose the Alvinvaara fell. Far beyond its slopes, where the watering areas were, loomed a stretch of dark-green fir forest. Yet further that way was the sea, but it couldn’t be seen from here even on bright days. In the other direction was the slowly decaying trunk tangle of the Dead Forest. In my childhood there had still been occasional birches that didn’t grow higher than to my waist, and once I had picked a whole handful of lingonberries there.

A path ran along the border of the boulder garden, and my father turned to it. On this side the slope of the fell was full of caves. I had often come here to play when I was younger. I still remembered when my mother had once found me here playing mountain trolls with Sanja and a couple of other kids. She had yelled at my father, who had forgotten to look after me, and dragged me by the arm all the way home. I wasn’t allowed to play with the children from the village for a month. But even after that I had sneaked to the caves with Sanja whenever my mother was on research trips, and we had played explorers and adventurers and secret agents from New Qian in the Mediterranean Desert. There were dozens of caves, if not hundreds, and we had explored them as thoroughly as we thought possible. We had kept looking for secret passageways and hidden treasures, the kind you’d read about in old books or pod-stories, but never found anything more than coarse, dry stone.

My father stopped outside the mouth of a cave that was shaped like a cat’s head, and then passed through it without a word. The entrance was low. My knees rubbed against the rock through the thin fabric of my trousers, and I had trouble bringing the lantern and the insect hood in with me. Inside the cave the air was cool and still. The lanterns began to glow faintly as the yellowish glint of the blazeflies grew in the twilight.

I recognised the cave. We had fought about it one summer with Sanja, when she had wanted to use it for the headquarters of the Central And Crucially Important Explorers’ Society of New Qian. I had insisted that there was too much wasted space, because the cave grew steeply lower towards the back, and that it was too far from home for convenient smuggling of food. Eventually, we had opted for a smaller cave closer to my house.

My father was crawling towards the back of the cave. I saw him stop and push his hand right into the wall – so it seemed to me – and I saw the movement of his arm. The rock above him made a faint screeching sound as a dark hole opened in it. The cave was so low there that when he sat up, his head was already at the level of the hole, and he slipped through it, taking his lantern with him. Then I saw his face, when he looked at me through the hole.

‘Are you coming?’ he said.

I crawled to the back of the cave and felt the wall where I had seen him open the hatch. All I could see in the wavering light of the blaze lantern was the coarse rock, but then my fingers found a narrow shelf-like formation behind which there was a wide crack, and I discovered a small lever hidden in it. The crack was nearly impossible to see because of the way the rock was formed.

‘I’ll explain later how it all works,’ my father said. ‘Now come here.’

I followed him through the hatch.

Above the cave there was another one, or rather a tunnel which seemed to plunge right into the heart of the fell. On the ceiling, right above the hatch, there was a metal pipe and a large hook next to it. I had no idea what they were for. On the wall were two levers. My father turned one of them, and the hatch closed. The glow of the lanterns grew bright in the complete darkness of the tunnel. My father removed his insect hood and the waterskin he had been carrying and placed them on the floor.

‘You can leave your hood here,’ he said. ‘You won’t need it further ahead.’

The tunnel descended towards the inside of the fell. I noticed that the metal pipe ran along its length. I had no space to walk with my back straight, and my father’s head brushed the ceiling at times. The rock under our feet was unexpectedly smooth. The light of my lantern clung to the creases on the back of my father’s jacket and the darkness clung to the dents in the walls. I listened to the silence of the earth around us, different from the silence above the ground: denser, stiller. And slowly I began to distinguish a stretching, growing sound at its core, familiar and yet strange. I had never before heard it flowing free, entirely pushed by its own weight and will. It was akin to sounds like rain knuckling the windows or bathwater poured on the roots of the pine trees, but this sound wasn’t tame or narrow, not chained in man-made confines. It wrapped me and pulled me in, until it was close as the walls, close as the dark.

My father stopped and I saw in the lantern light that we had come to an opening between the tunnel and another cave. The sound thrummed loud. He turned to look at me. The light of the blazeflies wavered on his face like on water, and the darkness sang behind him. I expected him to say something, but he simply turned his back on me and went through the opening. I followed.

I tried to see ahead, but the glow of the lanterns did not reach far. The darkness received us with a rumble. It was like the roar of heated water at the bottom of an iron cauldron, but more like the sound of a thousand or ten thousand cauldrons when the water has just begun to boil and the tea master knows it’s time to remove it from the fire, or it will vanish as steam where it can no longer be caught. I felt something cool and moist on my face. Then we walked a few steps down, and the light of the blazeflies finally hit the sound, and I saw the hidden spring for the first time.

Water rushed from inside the rock in strings and threads and strands of shimmer, in enormous sheets that shattered the surface of the pond at the bottom of the cave when they hit it. It twisted around the rocks and curled in spirals and whirls around itself, and churned and danced and unravelled again. The surface trembled under the force of the movement. A narrow stream flowed from the pond towards the shelf of stone that the doorway we had come through was on, then disappeared into the ground under it. I could see something that looked like a white stain on the rock wall above the surface of the water, and another lever in the wall further away. My father urged me on, to the edge of the pond.

‘Try it,’ he said.

I dipped my fingers in the water and felt its strength. It moved against my hand like breathing, like an animal, like another person’s skin. It was cold, far colder than anything I was used to. I licked my fingers carefully, like I had been taught to do since I was very young: never drink water you haven’t tasted first.

‘It’s fresh,’ I said.

Lantern light folded on his face when he smiled, and then, slowly, the smile ran dry.

‘You’re seventeen, and of age now, and therefore old enough to understand what I’m going to tell you,’ my father said. ‘This place doesn’t exist. This spring dried a long time ago. So the stories tell, and so believe even those who know other stories, tales of a spring in the fell that once provided water for the whole village. Remember. This spring doesn’t exist.’

‘I’ll remember,’ I told him, but didn’t realise until later what kind of a promise I had made. Silence is not empty or immaterial, and it is not needed to chain tame things. It often guards powers strong enough to shatter everything.

We returned through the tunnel. When we came to the entrance, my father picked up the waterskin he had left there and hung it from the hook on the ceiling. After making sure that the mouth of the skin was open, he turned one of the levers on the wall. I heard an electric noise, similar to the noises the cooling appliances in our kitchen made, and a roar yet different from before, as if captured in metal. In a moment a strong jet of water burst from the ceiling straight into the waterskin.

‘Did you make all this?’ I asked. ‘Or mother? Did she plan this? Did you build this together?’

‘Nobody knows for certain who built this,’ my father said. ‘But tea masters have always believed it was one of them, perhaps the first one who settled here, before winters disappeared and these wars began. Now only the water remembers.’

He turned both levers. The rush of water slowed down and died little by little, and the hatch opened again.

‘You first,’ he said.

I dropped myself through the hole. He closed the skin tightly, then lowered it carefully into the cave where I took it from him. When the hatch was closed again, the cave looked like nothing but a cave with no secrets.

The glow of the blazeflies faded swiftly in the daylight. When we walked into the garden, my mother, sitting under the awning, raised her eyes from the notes she was taking from a heavy book on her lap. My father handed his lantern to me. The shadows of leaves swayed on the stone slabs, as he walked towards the teahouse with the waterskin on his back. I was going to follow him, but he said, ‘Not now.’

I stood still, a lantern in each hand, and listened to the blazeflies bouncing against their sun-baked glass walls. It was only when my mother spoke that I thought of opening the lids of the lanterns.

‘You’ve burned again in the sun,’ she said. ‘Where did you go with your father?’

The blazeflies sprang up into the air and vanished into the bushes.

‘To a place that doesn’t exist,’ I said, and at that moment I looked at her, and knew that she knew where we had been, and that she had been there too.

My mother didn’t say more, not then, but calm vanished from her face.

Late that night, when I lay in my bed under an insect net and watched the orange light of the night sun on the pine trees, I heard her speaking with my father in the kitchen for a long time. I couldn’t make out the words they were saying, yet I discerned a dark edge in them that reached all the way to my dreams.

CHAPTER TWO

The ground was still breathing night-chill when I helped my father load the broken waterskins on the low cart at the back of the helicycle. Their scratched plastic surface glinted in the morning sun. I fastened the thick straps around the skins, and when I was certain they were sufficiently steady, I flung my seagrass bag on my shoulder and got up on the seat of the cycle.

‘Use Jukara,’ my father said. ‘He’ll give you a discount.’ Jukara was the oldest plasticsmith in the village and my father’s friend. I hadn’t trusted him since some waterskins he had repaired the year before had broken again after only a few uses, so I said nothing, merely moved my head in a way that could be interpreted as a nod. ‘And don’t take all day,’ my father added. ‘We have guests coming in tomorrow. I need your help with cleaning the teahouse.’

I stepped on the pedal to start the helicycle. One of the solar panels was broken and the motor was acting up, so I had to pedal almost all the way along the dusty pathway through trees of wavering gold-green scattered around our house. Only just before the edge of the woods did the cycle settle into a steady, quiet spin. I steered the cycle and the cart carefully to the wider road, locked the pedals and let my feet rest on them as the cycle moved unhurriedly towards the village. The morning air felt crisp on my bare arms and there weren’t many horseflies yet. I removed my insect hood, letting the wind and sun wash over my face. The sky was a dry, bare blue, and the earth was still, and I saw small animals moving in the dust of the fields in search of water.

After I had passed a few houses at the edge of the village, the road forked. The way to Jukara’s repair shop was to the left. I stopped and hesitated, and then I continued to the right, until I saw the familiar chipped-blue picket fence ahead.

Like most buildings in the village, Sanja’s home was one of the past-world houses, a one-storey with multiple rooms, a garden and a garage from the time when most people still owned fast past-tech vehicles. The walls had been repaired repeatedly, and Sanja’s parents had told me there had once been a nearly flat roof without solar panels, although it was hard for me to imagine.

When I stopped outside the open gate, she was standing in the front yard, emptying the last of a waterskin into a metal tub and cursing. The front door was open and a barely audible flow of pod-news was drifting from inside the house through the insect curtain covering the doorframe. Sanja wasn’t wearing an insect hood, and when she looked at me, I saw that she hadn’t slept.

‘Bloody sham sold me salt water,’ she said, furiously tucking her black hair behind her ears. ‘I don’t know how he did it. I tasted the water first, like I always do, and it was fresh. His prices were atrocious, so I only bought half a skin, but even that was wasted money.’

‘What sort of a container did he have?’ I asked as I steered the cycle through the gate to the yard.

‘One

Reviews for Memory of Water

[markon_305303 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Noria Kaitio is her father’s tea apprentice in a village in the occupied Scandinavian Union in New Quian. This world has been shaped by oil wars in the past and a present with little of the technology we are used to and a water shortage due to environmental contamination. About the same time her father shares the place that doesn’t exist with Noria, her mother, a scientist investigating the contaminated areas of Scandinavia, decides to take a university post in a city on the coast of New Qian. This is Noria’s story and her thoughts as she and her friend Sanja seek to navigate the world they live in. Choices and questions of who to trust figure throughout this lyrical novel.

[lgcullens · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This story is a slow burner in a future climate changed world, with portents dribbled out sparingly.
The writing is accomplished with fleshed out characters, but a bit drawn out in inundating one in thoughts of water, snow and ice of a distant past, heat, and insects; and the descriptive text is verbose more often than not.

Nevertheless, the story held my attention, at my point in life evoking a doleful feeling overall.

[ma_washigeri · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Felt like a young adult book to me but but I struggle to explain why. The protagonist is a young adult but that doesn't explain it. I liked the slow pace and the tough ending, the water and the tea, but the village didn't really come alive for me.

[junipersun · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Excellent portrayal of a society centuries after sea level rise has reshifted geographic boundaries with consequent change in political rulership. Presumably set in a Finland which is now under the control of a Japanese-like society, access to clean water is strictly rationed, and people scavenge in "past-world" dumps for items to be repurposed.. Noria, age 17, has learned to be a Teamaster under her father's tutelage. A new Water Police suspects him of having an unregulated source of water. After her father's death, Noria now has to make decisions about this secret. This is complicated by relationships with the local villagers, Mikoa, her dear friend, is trying to support her sister & out-of-work parents. Other villagers are suspicious or desperate enough to do anything. Noria is either naturally intuitive or has been well-trained in reading the unsaid motives behind others' actions. She also has a zen-like perspective on life and the choices one makes.Then ending is not what you'd expect from a usual suspense theme.Heard as audio book. The reader's rhythm and voice greatly added to feeling like you are in a different culture, where one must weigh the consequences of one's actions.

[judithproctor · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A curious book. Beautifully written with text that draws on varied imagery, and uses both the nature of water and the tea ceremony to reflect the narrator's thoughts and her approach to life.In this post-climate change world, water is in very short supply, and the government use the water supply to control the population. Finland, one of the last inhabitable areas has been ruled for a long time by people of Chinese origin and some of the names and customs reflect this. Much technology has been lost and people scavenge the waste dumps of the past for useful items, or things that can be converted into useful objects.It works well as a background and was pretty convincing overall. the only item that really threw me out of the book was an almond tree (almonds need large amounts of water and I can't see them being grown in a region with severe water shortages).

[tldegray-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I just finished this book like ten minutes ago, I'm still very emotional. The ending sucked all the breath right out of me. It was painful and hopeful. Actually, that's it; that's the book: painful and hopeful.

A dystopian future in a world where waste ran rampant, climate change went unchecked, and water is scarce and rationed by the military. A story of tradition and change as viewed through a hereditary skill. A testing of friendship, family, and love.

It's quite lovely.

[amsee-2 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

“Water is the most versatile of all elements. It isn’t afraid to burn in fire or fade into the sky, it doesn’t hesitate to shatter against sharp rocks in rainfall or drown into the dark shroud of the earth. It exists beyond all beginnings and ends.”Set in a post-apocalyptic world where water is at a premium, Memory of Water is the story of seventeen-year-old Noira is an apprentice tea master, learning from her father the intricacies of the tea ceremony that has been passed down through the generations. Her education consists not only of the secrets of the tea ceremony, but also the tangible secret of a spring, hidden from the government and known only to the tea master of her village. Foraging through the plastic graveyard of garbage from the times before, Noira and her friend Sanja find a silver disc that speaks of water in the Lost Lands, which the government insists have no potable water and are inaccessible.As war rages on in distant parts of her country, water rationing becomes stricter and stricter until Noira has to make difficult choices–to move to the city to be with her mother, to attempt an expedition to the Lost Lands or not, and whether or not to continue to commit water crime by hiding the spring and help those in need in her village.This beautifully-wrought story is part coming-of-age novel, part warning, both about nurturing the planet and man’s inhumanity to man.

[albertgoldfain · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A tense and tender novel that frames a coming of age / apprenticeship story against the beginnings of a very plausible water-scarcity dystopia. The tension is occasionaly released through valves of childhood friendship, wonder, and a mystery surrounding a lost history.

[brakketh-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

In a world of scarcity post climate change water is a precious commodity. A story of traditions versus a military regime with political overtones.

[shetreadssoftly · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Memory of Water by Emmi Itäranta is a highly recommended, sensitive dystopian novel set in a future where water is scarce and controlled by the military.

Noria Kaitio, 17, is studying with her father to continue the family tradition of tea master. Set in future Finland, now part of the New Qian empire of Asia and Europe, global warming has made many areas of the world uninhabitable. Water shortages are common and what water there is is strictly controlled by the military and rationed out. When Noria learns the secrets of being a tea master, a role traditionally only held by males, and all the teahouse ceremony involves, she also learns a bigger secret: the location of a hidden spring unknown to anyone but her father.

Major Bolin has been protecting her father but when Commander Taro comes on the scene it becomes clear that he is suspicious and plans to discover their secret and destroy her family.

Noria also explores the plastic filled landfills of garbage with her friend Sanja, who is able to repair many broken things. They find a disk that mentions yet another secret, a secret Noria also wants to learn.
This dystopian novel by Finnish author Itäranta is set in one small area of a very change future world. Although some of the large global scale catastrophes are hinted at or mentioned, the setting remains in this one small part of Finland and the story stays focused on the effects the new world has on one person in that small part of the new world.

The writing in Memory of Water can be described as poetic, delicate, atmospheric, and expressive. The juxtaposition of a hard, harsh world being described in beautiful prose can be startling, but the contrast helps set the tone of despair even as the carefully crafted writing flows along so seductively. While there is tension in this novel, it is not overwhelming. It flows along at an even pace, picking up speed slowly.

Although not stated, I'd place this among other YA dystopian fiction selections based on the age of the character and the uncomplicated linear plot. The writing is a step up from most YA selections, however.

Disclosure: My Kindle edition was courtesy of HarperCollins for review purposes.

Excerpt
harpervoyagerbooks.com/2014/05/27/excerpt-of-the-memory-of-water-by-emmi-itaranta/

[altheaann · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Blurb comparing a book to Ursula LeGuin? Gets me to read it every time...

Yes, I can see where the comparison came from. It probably reminds me most of the feel of LeGuin's 'Annals of the Western Shore' trilogy. The similarity is not so much in actual content, but in what is dwelled on; the themes and pace.

This will also appeal to those looking for post-apocalyptic YA who are interested in more thoughtful, character-oriented stories instead of just action.

The setting is a dystopian future Scandinavia, which has been under an oppressive Chinese (New Qian, that is) rule for generations. Water is mysteriously scarce, and controlled by the corrupt and brutal military junta. Noria is a young woman who has brought up in the tradition of the tea ceremony, a ritual that helps give peace and stability to people whose lives have too little of those elements. She has a secret. Her family knows the location of a secret fresh water spring. When she is left alone in the world, will she choose to keep her knowledge to herself, even as her friends and neighbors go thirsty?

The themes of secrets, knowledge, sharing and trust run through the story, contributing to a lovely and satisfying tale. No, the author is not as masterful as LeGuin - but few are.

I received a copy of this title through the Goodreads First Reads giveaway. Much appreciation for the book.

[chaiya_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Memory of Water is hauntingly lyrical, made me cry, and broke my heart. What might happen in the future if potable water was controlled by the government, and your family ran the town's only tea house?This book checks all my boxes: central female characters, psychologically complex, science fiction based on science, fiction that makes you think. Probably my favorite novel from 2014. (I read the English version of this novel.)

[sturlington_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

In a far future where water has become scarce due to climate change, a young girl tries to master the tea ceremony while keeping the family secret of the underground spring hidden near her house.This short dystopian novel was well written, slow and elegiac, musing on water and the loss of snow in what was formerly the Scandinavian region. Not a lot happens, but neither does the story unfold exactly the way I expected. While I greatly enjoyed the writing, I found myself wishing the world had been a bit more fleshed out. Clearly China has achieved some kind of global dominance in this future vision, but the details are hazy, perhaps purposefully, since a lot of history has been lost following a general collapse of civilization. Still, there is an obsession with the past; mining the dumps for bits and pieces of old junk that can be reused, Noria and her friend discover an old CD that they figure out how to play and learn about an expedition farther north where there may be water. They also learn a terrible secret, which is never revealed in the text, but which I assume is that the climate change they suffer under was caused by people. Even though the vagueness could be frustrating, I thought this was a rewarding read, quite different from other dystopians featuring a teen protagonist.Read in 2015 for the SFFCat.

[daemon6-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Good speculative dystopian fiction. Primarily a portrait of one girls attempt to make a difference in a brutal world. Finely wrought writing and believably complex characters.

[flying_monkeys_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Imaginative and engaging, lyrical and poignant, Memory of Water is an indelible novel that portrays a future that is all too possible.I will not forget Noria Kaitio anytime soon. She was such a real person, a strong female, yet a teenager nonetheless; I liked her immediately. The world in which this novel was set ... whew, I can still feel the horseflies against the insect hood and the sand and sun beating down relentlessly. Such evocative imagery coupled with a wholly believable and completely frightening premise made this a novel I will remember forever even if I'm not brave enough to re-read it anytime soon.4.5 stars"Of all silences I had encountered this was the gravest and most inevitable: not the silence of secrets, but of knowing (195)."

[nwhyte-2 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I really liked The Memory of Water, and am prepared to forgive its standard plot for the twist ending, the intriguing setting and the beautiful style!

[davecapp-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

What is History? A haunting and exceptionally well told story from a simple individuals viewpoint in a far from utopian future. Emmi Itäranta's story telling has the impact of Kate Wilhelm (where late the sweet birds sang), Ayn Rand (Anthem or We the Living), or even Ursula LeGuin (Left Hand of Darkness, Dispossesed).

[strider66_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Pros: lyrical prose, philosophical, characters face difficult choicesCons: slowIn a world where water is tightly controlled by the military, Noria Kaitio is training as her father’s apprentice to become a tea master. Tea masters historically had a duty to preserve sacred springs, and her family has kept the knowledge of one in the fells behind their house secret for decades. But Noria finds it hard to keep the secret as her best friend Sanja and their village suffer under harsher and harsher conditions. This is a novel about the importance of water and how people survive under challenging circumstances. It’a a novel that questions motives and wonders who’s trustworthy in a world where helping others will get you killed.There’s very little action and the story is unravelled slowly. There’s foreshadowing of the ills to come and some gorgeous, lyrical prose. There’s also a lot of contemplative passages, mostly about water, but also about being in the moment, noticing the little things that always escape notice. It’s a novel about thinking deeply about life and appreciating the life you have, because life is always changing and you can never regain what you’ve lost.Despite the slowness with which the plot unfolds, the novel is a quick read. The characters and the situations they find themselves in are intensely interesting.It’s a beautiful novel, and sad. And while it contains hope, it acknowledges that sacrifices are required and that not everyone lives to see better days.

[rachelep-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I won this book from Goodread giveaways. I well written, smooth, fast read about a futuristic dystopian society. A time when water is scarce and supplied by military. The main character is training to be a tea master with her father. She learns of many generations of secrets. She has to make some dangerous choices ,wonderful read.

[titania86_1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Memory of Water takes place in the future where water is very expensive and quite scarce presumably because of global warming and climate change. Our era is a distant past and very little of us is known to them. The book is lyrically written and flows very well. I would have liked to see a clearer picture on how the characters would live their day to day lives with so little water. If you really think about it, so much of what we do every day involves water. There were numerous other small things that seemed a little incongruous in the story. How did no one else notice how much water their family uses? Why didn't Noria leave faster when she knew someone posing as her mother was sending messages? These and many other questions grew frustrating and made the book not easy to enjoy. I loved the inclusion of the Japanese style tea ceremony even if it seemed quite impractical for the setting.

[msbaba · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

“Memory of Water,” by debut author Emmi Itäranta, is an impressive and lovely literary work of speculative fiction. The overall mood is somber and meditative. The novel is set sometime in the distant future in the far north of Europe, probably in what was once Finland. The author does not make it clear how far it is in the future. What she does reveal is that after our era, there was a period of global oil wars together with abrupt climate change. Then a century followed during which mankind recovered and readjusted…and similar to the Middle Ages, many books were burned and much knowledge about the past was lost. In the new world order, time is now divided into three parts: the Past World, the Twilight Century, and New Qian Time. Earth no longer has glacial or polar ice. Worldwide sea levels have risen, reclaiming much of the land and drowning most major coastal cities. Oil and oil-based technology has disappeared. What energy there is appears to be entirely solar.In this new world, fresh water is scarce, highly valued, and in the complete control of the military. The government also controls what people can know about the present and the past. Everywhere it’s hot and dry. What was once Norway and Sweden are now Forbidden Lands unfit for human life because of some Past-World catastrophe. The present world is unstable and wracked by wars. Freedom to travel is severely curtailed. New Qian has taken over what was once Europe and many Asian customs have been absorbed into a new blended culture. This novel is the story of seventeen-year-old Noria Kiatio, the daughter of a Japanese-style ritual tea master, a position that holds great respect, and responsibility. Noria is studying to follow her father’s career path. As the book opens, Noria is ready to learn the family secret. It is a secret that dates back through an unbroken line of tea masters over many generations. Exceptional tea needs exceptional water and the Kiatio family controls a secret underground spring. In this world of severe water shortage and water rationing, owning a private hidden spring is a crime punishable by death. I found this novel slow to start. It wasn’t until I was at least halfway before the pace picked up and I was compelled to finish. But the early problem with pacing was more than balanced by an abundance of elegant, original, and thoughtful prose. Many of the passages were as exquisite as delicate haiku. For example: “Secrets carve us like water carves stone. If we let another person into the silent space a secret has made within us, we are no longer alone.”This is a very subtle and elegiac book. It must be read carefully and closely. The reader needs to stop at times to contemplate the inner meaning suggested by the prose. This is necessary for enjoyment as well as comprehension. If you read some of the reviews available online, you will find that some people were disappointed that the book did not reveal the details of the world-changing truth that Noria and her friend Sanja discover in an ancient past-world garbage dump. They are mistaken. The book does reveal all that is necessary about this discovery; however, it does this very indirectly, mostly through emotion, and only with the faintest hint at basic facts. What is given, is entirely enough…and exquisite in its brevity, clarity, and emotional shock. To have given more would be to spoil the overall Zen-like quality of the revelation. I was shocked and the more I thought about it, the more my eyes started to brim with tears. In my estimation, the ending was perfect…full of the horror of comprehension and fierce persistence of hope.The author wrote this book simultaneously in Finnish and English. It has won three Scandinavian literary awards. In retrospect, I am surprised by what a strong affect this book had on me. I was moved far more than I thought I could be by this theme of oil wars, global collapse, abrupt climate change, and accumulated knowledge lost.I did not realize what a strong reservoir of responsibility I maintain for what is happening to our world. This book tapped directly into that deep hidden vein of guilt. I am glad it provided some release.I look forward eagerly to future novels by this deft, sensitive, and skilled storyteller.

[passion4reading_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Noria is the daughter of a tea master and his apprentice, living in an unnamed village in what is now Finland, and what Noria calls the Scandinavian Union – under New Qian occupation – at an unspecified point in the distant future. Very soon it becomes clear that the world we know today has changed beyond recognition by global warming and the relentless plunder of Earth’s resources: the region where Noria and her family live is surrounded by desert; water is so scarce that it is rationed, and such a precious commodity that it is even used as currency, while the military controls the entire supply; there are no more winters, and the images of snow and ice can only be found in books; the world has run out of its oil reserves, so Noria’s village represents a curious mixture of a low- and high-tech society; wars were fought over oil and water in the past, while there is an ongoing war somewhere on the continent. Before Noria’s graduation ceremony that will see her become a tea master in her own right, her father takes her into the fells and shows her a secret spring that generations of tea masters – as watchers of water – have had the duty to protect, and makes her promise that she honour the secret too. But events have already been set in motion that will make Noria realise that sometimes it is the duty of a tea master to break with tradition …One of the joys of discovering a new author is that you don’t always know where – or for that matter when – you’ll end up; this is exactly the case here. Memory of Water is a thought-provoking coming-of-age tale written in the most beautiful, almost lyrical, prose, but there’s no getting away from the fact that the portrayed events are very bleak and that from the opening lines of the prologue the novel is moving towards its inevitable conclusion. One of the things that struck me was that Noria’s society appears to be dominated by women; there are men around, but they are usually of Noria’s father’s age and traders or merchants, and there is a distinct lack of young men, and I could only assume they were away fighting in the war; the men that do appear in the village are often not local and in the military, and as such to be feared. There is a tangential thread to the story about a past-world expedition that took up too much room in the novel and left too many questions unanswered, and one of these highly unlikely coincidences that are difficult to get away with, even when they’re written with the best intentions; yet for all that, there is some memorable imagery to be found within its pages: for example, the so-called plastic grave, where Noria and her friend Sanja like to dig for artefacts from the past-world; secrets acting like water; the painting of a blue circle on the door of someone’s house where the military decides a water crime has been committed; a poignant version of a cremation, where the dead person’s water is used to nourish the earth; and the ancient Greek notion that one has to cross the river to the underworld after death takes on an added significance. There were also powerful scenes that spoke to me as a mother, especially when they cannot provide water for their thirsty and sick children; coincidentally, my son had a high temperature this week and it felt like a complete luxury to simply open the tap and give him all the cold, clean water he needed straight away after reading about how the rations given out to the villagers are never enough. No second guesses where the author’s sympathies lie in the current environmental debates, and I believe we can all do with acting more responsibly, but for all that her novel does not come across as preachy. I can only guess that the epilogue contains a glimmer of hope, but I personally can’t see it and the novel is simply too bleak to be picked up again.I will end this review with the most powerful sentiment the novel has to offer in my opinion, spoken by Noria’s friend Sanja: when talking about the people in the past-world, she tells Noria that it is not them but their relics she’s thinking of, because they didn’t think about them, i.e. future generations, either.(This review was originally written as part of Amazon's Vine programme.)