Susan Paterson’s first novel, Where Light Meets Water, offers readers the various pleasures of the traditional Bildungsroman. Spanning the years 1847 to 1871, it centres on the life of Thomas Rutherford, a man torn between devotion to his work as a mariner and an abiding passion for painting seascapes. The predominant use of an omniscient narrator provides unfettered access to his conflicted inner life and, less frequently, to that of his spirited wife Catherine. The vivid depiction of a host of global settings, including London, the markets of Calcutta, Melbourne during the gold rush, and an increasingly prosperous Dunedin, adds to the effect of a densely particularised and amplified world. Immersive and absorbing, the novel is a triumph of the old-fashioned art of verisimilitude.
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