«En el verano de 1963 yo me enamoré y mi padre se ahogó». Así arranca esta extraordinaria novela sobre el paso de un adolescente por los oscuros recovecos de la pasión adulta. Agua salada es una revisión contemporánea de la novela corta de Turguénev Primer amor, pero ambientada en un paisaje estival de agua, cielo y arena bellísimos. En ella, con momentos tan poderosos como los de cierto Nabokov o el Salinger más celebrado, se relata de manera apasionante los trascendentales «sucesos amorosos» que cambiaron a una familia para siempre.

En una remota isla de la costa atlántica, en un lugar idílico que siempre ha sido fundamental en las vidas de todos ellos, el quinceañero Michael y sus padres inician sus habituales y apacibles vacaciones… Hasta que la aparición del amor y las pasiones, tanto las juveniles como adultas, quiebra esa calma intocada hasta entonces.

Hay en estas páginas distintas formas de amor: el sensual, el paternal o filial, el romántico… Magistralmente, Charles Simmons explora el corazón mismo de la necesidad de sentirnos deseados, la complejidad de los vínculos padres-hijos y la adolescencia de un chico con todos sus anhelos, confusiones y desengaños. Y lo hace con una prosa tan luminosa como los paisajes de esta fascinante novela.

This is a strong, yet tender story that has one of the most intriguing first lines I've ever read: "In the summer of 1963 I fell in love and my father died." With this one line, I was hooked—I had to read this book. This is skillful novel about an inexperienced fifteen-year-old boy's summer vacation that centers on his discovery of lust, love, and loss. While reading the book, I was always surprised to see the aged author's photo on the dust jacket because the story feels like ... well ... youth itself. Using the experiences of one brief summer at the ocean, Charles Simmons has captured the mind, heart, and yearnings of an intelligent boy who is quickly becoming a young man. ( )

In a seaside house, fifteen-year-old Michael lives with his parents who seem to be struggling in their marriage. Life doesn’t get easier, at least for Michael’s mother, when two beautiful women, a mom and her photographer daughter move nearby into the family’s rental cottage. Michael, of course, imagines himself falling in love with the beautiful daughter who is five years his senior. His goal during the summer is to ignore Melissa, the girl his mom always seems to be pushing at him and make Zina, the photographer, his girlfriend.

What captured me from the beginning was the novel’s seaside setting. Myself spending a week at the ocean yearly, I was pulled in quickly by the description of waves, a sailboat boat, and, yes, even a stingray. What annoyed me a bit was that the setting was purely fictional. I wanted to map it somewhere specific so I could feel it even more.

Another thing that bothered me was that my copy of the book had a picture of a blonde woman on its cover. When I started reading the novel, which was written in first person, I thought the narrator was the blonde woman. I came to find out that neither was the narrator the woman but also the photographer was a brunette. So what did the cover art have to do with the story?

Nevertheless, the prose was pleasing, and I found that it did captivate me enough to pull me along to its conclusion rather quickly. That speaks well for the story. I was not familiar with this author prior to reading this book, but I can see picking up another of his novels in the future. This is a good read for anyone interested in seeing how a teenage boy views himself in relation to his family, his best friend, and to the young women in his life. ( )