Tag Archives: Sophie Elmhirst

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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