WRIT IN WATER

The dying John Keats examines his life in this literary novel.

Though he’s now remembered as one of the great English Romantic poets, Keats saw little success in his short lifetime. In 1821, he died of tuberculosis in Rome at the age of 25. The tombstone erected by his friends explains that on his deathbed, he desired “in the Bitterness of his Heart / at the Malicious Power of his Enemies” only these words: “Here lies One whose Name was writ in Water.” Taking its cue from this poignant epitaph, the novel dissects the reasons behind Keats’ bitterness through a life review conducted with the nightingale that inspired the famous “Ode.” At issue is the universe’s judgment of Keats, the nightingale acting as a spirit guide. By revisiting important people (such as his brother, Tom, and fiancee, Fanny Brawne) and events in his life, Keats observes his vices and virtues weighed in the balance. On one side of the scale is the poet’s heavy sense of failure from bad reviews, painful memories, poverty, guilt, and unrealized goals. On the other side, the scale is lightened not just by Keats’ poems, but also by his acts of kindness, one of which links back to the nightingale. In his previous novel, The Voice at the Door (2013), Sulzer also drew on a poet’s biography (Emily Dickinson’s). The empyreal-plane setting matches the fey quality of many Keats poems, underscored by the book’s dreamlike vignettes and heightened language. The story’s drama can lead to some rather purple prose, as in “Misery and loyalty were the twin channel markers of those dark waters where my soul had begun to sound the depths,” but these are balanced by more down-to-earth passages and quotations from Keats’ poems and letters.

A lyrical and imaginative, if occasionally overwrought, exploration of Keats.