Made of Water and Stars

A review of Lynn Hutchinson Lee’s “Night Divers” in Cli Fi: Canadian Tales of Climate Change (Exile Editions, 2017)
By Derek Newman-Stille

Like in Nina Munteanu’s “The Way of Water”, Lynn Hutchinson Lee’s “Night Divers” explores the quasi-religious potential of water. Water in “Night Divers” represents the multiplicity of religion, first situating water as something attached to greed and power by creating groups like the Brothers of the Waters of Life and their PrayGuards, who are willing to kill to maintain their control over water, and secondly through the quasi-folk magic involved in submersion in water. Characters under the tutelage of Grace, a former nun for the Brothers of the Waters of Life begin to jump off of cliffs into the small amount of water remaining in a hidden quarry, and through the process experience magical moments of transcendence as they submerge into the water. In beautiful prose, Lynn Hutchinson Lee reveals the ritual magic of submersion in water. “I felt my hands, my palms, nerves, fingertips, really felt them. Something had been moved around. Everything out there, inside me. My lungs, voice, bones, skin, all made of water and stars”.

“Night Divers” brings attention to the way that scarcity invites control and the way that corporate interests in water can reinforce themselves through social practices, policing access to water to unsure that corporation and politics are intertwined.

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