From Kirkus Reviews
On his first outing, Glickman takes us into the deep waters of political turmoil in a tale that carries its resemblance to All the King's Men a bit too heavily and far. When we first meet Ben Shamas, he is having a hard time of it: Two years after the death of his only child, he has divorced his wife, left his law firm, and lost his ambition. Although he allows himself an occasional drunken binge, work has become his preferred escape: ``Most activities that cause you to forget your preoccupations, who you are, or what day it is--drugs, alcohol, sex, violent exercise--are transitory or have unpleasant sequels, or both. But work is safe and predictable.'' Ben plods cheerlessly away as an appeals attorney and tries not to dwell on things until Jeannie Parrish, a childhood friend, comes to him with a problem. Jeannie's brother Bobby is running for the US Senate, and Jeannie is worried that a shady real-estate deal she made a few years back will be found out and used against Bobby in the campaign. Can Ben help? He tries, and is quickly enmeshed in an escalating series of intrigues and political dirty tricks. An old college classmate threatens to expose Bobby as a quondam acid-head; the opposing candidate's campaign manager (a childhood friend of Ben's) discovers that Bobby was treated by a psychiatrist. As if this weren't enough, Bobby's wife (once Ben's girlfriend) starts coming on to Ben over telephones that turn out to be tapped. The overriding motive for all the schemes seems to be vengeance; neither the problems themselves nor the anger behind them turns out to be especially deep, however, since in the end they are cleared up quickly, neatly, and with small surprise. A skillful exposition of very little: Glickman seems to have mastered the politician's art of using rhetoric to inflate the mundane without transfiguring its shape. -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
Review
...a political novel that restores one's sense of the human depth, the psychological pressures, and the moral questions that go with the territory. A richly rewarding novel with complex, believable characters who develop in the course of engaging in vividly and intelligently rendered experiences. -- Christian Science Monitor
...arresting. On the brink of a new political season, it's nice to read a novel in which what happens in a campaign is less important than what happens to the people engaged in it. -- The New York Times Sunday Book Review
Sounding the Waters is taut and involving, written so cleanly it squeaks....Glickman is best at showing how the 1960's slogan 'The personal is political' has been stood on its head. Today the political devours the personal. -- The Los Angeles Times Sunday Book Review
Suspenseful...masterly...marvelous. This beautifully engaging work -- with its deft turns of phrase -- resonates with a well-told tale. It has tough dialogue when necessary, pastoral description when warranted, urban sophistication when needed. Sounding the Waters creates a rip tide of excitement. -- The Providence Journal
This is the novel Primary Colors promised to be, but Glickman takes the high road, turning his back on cheap gossip and making fictional politicians seem quite real. Dramatizing the complicated process of running for office and contrasting it against the starkness of human motives and desires, he's produced a cliffhanger of a novel, right down to the final speeches of the final debate of the closing days of the campaign. -- Alan Cheuse, National Public Radio
From the Inside Flap
ive first novel calls to mind All the King's Men--tales of private drama played out in the public arena. Through the eyes of characters who are absorbing, complex, and all too human, we see a telling picture of an election campaign in which all politics is not only local, but personal.
