What do readers think of Flat Water Tuesday by Ron Irwin? Write your own review.

This is a great story, I liked it a lot. It's so suspenseful, that I at times tried to squeeze key words on the page with my mind to find out what happens next, to no avail. I even called the phone number on page 271 hoping that would help; it didn't but I got a surprise at who was on the other end.
It wasn't until I turned the page, that I found what was happening next, and I couldn't stop turning pages quick enough. It almost drove me to drink, but I refrained. I enjoyed the book more because it has a Connecticut connection, my home state.
Overall, this is a page-turner that I will not soon forget. I recommend this book to fans of suspense/thrillers.

This is one good book! I know zilch about crew, and until now, could have cared less. The characters and the story have given me a new sport to cheer for. The protagonist, Rob Carrey, is a successful failure, a guy who tries and tries, and with every turn hits a roadblock, but keeps on going. Maybe he didn't follow the path laid out for him, but the path he blazes is interesting and littered with full characters and events. I hope to see a lot more from Mr. Irwin!

Flat Water Tuesday is the story of 5 members of a high school rowing team & their coach who share experiences during their senior year at an exclusive school. It is told by Carrey, one of the team members, an 'outsider' to this world of privilege, recruited because of his rowing skills. Eventually they share a tragedy as often befalls teenagers who engage in reckless behavior.
Interspersed in the story are details of the hard work it takes to train & excel in a sport, in this case, rowing. Also interspersed throughout, an adult Carrey tells of his present life & we see it is not working. However, it is not clear as to how this relates to his earlier days. The transitions between these time periods were disjointed & made little sense to me.
I found this book to be just OK. Although it was well written, I couldn't get invested in these characters & so I wouldn't recommend it.

I feel like I have read a hundred books similar to this. Do we really need another prep school book? There are some elements that make this book unique: the very detailed descriptions of the mechanics of training for and competing in crew; the career of the main character as an adult, which is a documentary filmmaker, adds some interesting elements; and the obstacle in the romantic relationship of the main character as an adult was one of the more gruesome elements I have read in a novel.
Aside from these unique features, however, I mostly found that the familiar tropes of prep school fiction were present. The poor kid who is really the smartest character in the book and is only able to come to the school because of some amazing talent he has. The wealthy student who can't survive under the weight of the pressure and expectation heaped upon him by his parents. The gruff teacher who rarely says it but cares fiercely for his students. The troubled female student who struggles with becoming a woman and leaving her childhood behind. I just felt like there wasn't enough new here for me.
It probably is important to note that I am not and have never been much of an athlete and so the long montages of training and competition for slots on the team and trying to win the big race just did not resonate for me. I think that for someone who had an experience where being on a sports team was an important part of their formative years this book may have more impact.

I fully anticipated enjoying this book. I tend to enjoy coming of age novels and, having attended a prep school, enjoy reading novels with a similar setting. For the most part, I did enjoy the story. I liked the characters as they all seemed complex and damaged and I was fully expecting an ending that would tie them all together and answer some of the questions that were posed throughout the novel. Unfortunately the ending did not meet my expectations. I felt that the author created a complicated story and then left the reader hanging. It just didn't come together which is unfortunate because the story had a lot of potential. Also the crew information dragged at times although it was somewhat integral to the story. If one knows nothing about the sport the story probably won't interest them.

Flat Water Tuesday is the compelling story of 5 teenage crew members and their coach at a prep school. It was filled with vivid descriptions of the life and surroundings of the crew team. I would recommend this for it's moving story and the gorgeous depictions of the life of a crew team.

It took quite a while for me to get interested in the story even though the book's premise hooked me right away. Part of it was because the author was trying far too hard in the beginning. His writing style kept getting in the way of the story. The story line kept getting lost in a forest of metaphors. I was very annoyed by this particularly when the metaphor filled paragraphs were about things that were totally irrelevant to the story like the plane trip back from South Africa. Meandering descriptive paragraphs about a plane ride are just filler to make the book longer. The other problem was that even though the Fenton years were by far the more interesting story, the author's "voice" as a teenager never seemed genuine to me. There was too much extrapolation of adult conceits onto his teenage characters.

I'm breathless and exhausted. I chose this book because I wanted to learn about the sport of rowing – and I did. But that's not sufficiently true because for 3 days and 300 pages I lived and breathed (panted?) it. However, although rowing provides the bones of the narrative, it is the storylines of the individual members of the crew of one boat that provide the flesh and propels the reader from an attention grabbing first chapter forward to a conclusion, which at first felt unsatisfying but then perfectly right. This is a book I will be recommending to fellow readers. I also think it would make a good choice for a book club.