The Watermark by Sam Mills is a truly wacky and audacious piece of metafiction which tells the story of celebrated reclusive author Augustus Fate who kidnaps Jaime and Rachel so he can trap them in his novel to give more depth to the characters. As they try to escape, they hop between different books and find themselves in Oxford in 1861, Manchester in 2014, Russia in 1928 and London in 2047. The pastiches of different genres are all well drawn as Jaime and Rachel fight against the characters created for them with their real selves. ‘The Watermark’ could easily have become overwhelmed by the sheer number of ideas bursting out of it, and some of them are inevitably more successful than others depending on your genre preferences (I personally struggled with the Russian section). However, the relationship between Jaime and Rachel hangs it all together, and Mills pulls off a dizzying narrative about the boundaries of fiction, reality and fate.
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Tag Archives: Sam Mills
Books I Read in January 2025
Non-Fiction I Have Read Recently: Part Two
The Fragments of my Father by Sam Mills is a memoir about the author’s experience of being a carer for both of her parents in different circumstances. Her father has had mental health problems including schizophrenia since she was a child. Her mother was later diagnosed with cancer and died in 2012, after which Mills became the main carer for her father. Mills interweaves a bit of literary biography of Virginia and Leonard Woolf and Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald and how their relationships were shaped by caring responsibilities. I might have expected the literary biography elements to feel like unnecessary padding to the book, but Mills makes a convincing case that Leonard has sometimes been unfairly portrayed as a controlling husband when Virginia’s illness meant that he had to make difficult decisions in her interests in his role as her carer. Mills also explores the impact of being a carer on her own creative life as a novelist as well as setting up and running the indie publisher Dodo Ink. She is very frank about the guilt she feels when taking even the briefest break away from her caring duties and how this has affected her relationships with other people. With around 6.5 million unpaid carers in the UK alone, ‘The Fragments of my Father’ makes an exceptionally strong case towards the need to improve financial and emotional support for those making personal sacrifices every day in order to provide care for their loved ones.
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