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Table of Contents
About The Book
AN UNIMAGINABLE APOCALYPSE.
A SCARED YOUNG GIRL.
A STUBBORN OLD WOMAN.
NEITHER WILL SURVIVE WITHOUT THE OTHER.
Pam is in her mid-seventies, widowed and hiding from the world behind a caustic sense of humour. Her health is declining, and she’s afraid of dying alone, but her most pressing concern is complaining to the council about her waterlogged garden.
When Pam’s ten-year-old neighbour, Charlotte, is foisted upon her, a tentative friendship begins to unfurl, cracking open Pam’s hard exterior.
But the puddles in the garden become pools, and then sinkholes. Nowhere seems safe. With no help coming, Pam and Charlotte can only shelter in place for so long – eventually, they know they must attempt to navigate a catastrophically altered world.
The Water Takes is a work of astonishing literary imagination with the urgent page-turning propulsion of a thriller. Full of surprises and revelations, with a sense of humanity that is never clichéd or sentimental, The Water Takes will make you laugh and cry – and it will stay with you forever.
‘Made me laugh and roar and weep.’ KATE MILDENHALL
'Dizzyingly good.' JACQUELINE BUBLITZ
About The Author
Photograph © Sarah Walker
Sarah Walker is a Naarm/Melbourne-based writer and artist. She writes about anxiety, intimacy and absurdity, in both fiction and non-fiction. She has a particular interest in the body, and the ways in which it escapes our control, as well as how apprehension of disaster impacts our sense of the present. Her first book, The First Time I Thought I Was Dying, a collection of non-fiction essays about the unruly body in late capitalism, won the 2021 Quentin Bryce Award. In 2025, she was awarded the Kill Your Darlings Creative Nonfiction Essay Prize. Sarah is also an award-winning photographer and fine artist, whose work has been commissioned across multiple countries. You can find her work online at sarahwalker.work.
Product Details
- Publisher: S&S/Summit Books (March 31, 2026)
- Length: 304 pages
- ISBN13: 9781761633324
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Raves and Reviews
‘The Water Takes is an intimate epic; both a dazzling paean to hope and a staggering monument to loss. While Walker’s prose pulls tighter than a garotte wire, her characters are drawn with unspeakable tenderness. She has gifted us a uniquely Australian odyssey that trawls the deep wells of our collective anxieties and turns them into something heartfelt, horrifying, and wholly original.’
– Jordan Prosser
‘The Water Takes is a beautifully written blend of looming menace and sharp humour, along with a tender and timely reminder that connection is what saves us when catastrophe hits. This is dystopian fiction that feels as real, as human, as anything I've read. A dizzyingly good debut.’
– Jacqueline Bublitz
‘Atmospheric and utterly harrowing, Walker has written a disquieting account of grief and fortitude in a drowning world. This book devastated me.’
– Emily O’Grady
‘The Water Takes announces a new and exciting voice in Australian fiction. This beguiling, bedevilling novel about sinkholes and small towns had me gripped from the first page. Both a page-turning odyssey of survival and a heartfelt story of care and connection, The Water Takes is a novel we'll be talking about for years.’
– Dominic Amerena
‘What do you do when the world starts drowning? The Water Takes is haunting, terrifying and still somehow hopeful. Seventy-something Pam is one of the most vivid characters I’ve ever encountered – she made me laugh and roar and weep. I am in awe of Sarah Walker and this book.’
– Kate Mildenhall
Resources and Downloads
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Book Cover Image (jpg): The Water Takes
Trade Paperback 9781761633324
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