The Lake's Water is Never Sweet

In her English-language debut, award-winning Italian novelist Giulia Caminito follows a teenage girl as her family transitions from Rome's impoverished outskirts to a fraught new beginning in a tranquil lakeside town, capturing the disillusionment, loneliness, and rage that defined a generation.

In the 1990s, Gaia's family moves from the neglected peripheries of Rome to an idyllic lakeside town twenty miles away, in search of a new life that will lift them out of poverty. Each of them bears their own scars: Gaia's strong-willed mother is fiercely determined to secure a better future for her children at any cost; her father, a once proud man, now suffers in bitter silence after a devastating accident; her anarchist older brother rebels against the political apathy he sees at home; and her young twin brothers wordlessly bear witness to a family in decay.

When Gaia meets two local girls, Agata and Carlotta, the trio builds a fragile friendship throughout their adolescence based as much on their insecurities and jealousies as it is on their mutual affection. Gaia's encounters with callous boys and contemptuous teachers convince her that she might always be an outsider-excluded from a privileged life and perhaps even beyond the possibility of happiness. Faced with bullying and betrayals among her peers and immense pressure from her mother to excel, Gaia turns inward and her world becomes increasingly insular. Then tragedy strikes her friend group. As more friends slip away and her family fractures, Gaia vows to make the world pay for all the things it has denied her.

Winner of the Campiello Prize, The Lake's Water Is Never Sweet is an unflinching portrait of a generation, striving to make a place for themselves in a world markedly different from the one their parents promised them. With psychological acuity and stylish prose, Caminito takes us into the volatile, searching mind of a young woman torn between her desire to connect with others and her drive for self-preservation. In a novel that has been acclaimed by readers around the world, Caminito shows how tenderness and fragility often lie just beneath the surface of simmering fury.

“Raw, radiant, and relentless—Giulia Caminito's unforgettable novel ignites like a match struck in darkness, inviting readers into a world where beauty and brutality exist in perfect, devastating harmony. You won't just finish this book; you'll emerge from it transformed. Achingly intimate and visceral.”—Chelsea Bieker, author of Madwoman

“The Lake’s Water Is Never Sweet powerfully evokes the lonely rage of being female, poor, young, bright, and powerless. Giulia Caminito’s Gaia is a heroic antiheroine with flaming hair and an indomitable will, and this novel is a firecracker, illuminating as it colorfully explodes.”—Kate Christensen, PEN/Faulkner award-winning author of Welcome Home, Stranger 

“Achingly stylish and emotionally resonant, The Lake's Water Is Never Sweet maps the razor's edge between tenderness and violence, revealing how the wounds of social inequality can transform a young woman's yearning for connection into something far more dangerous. This is a stunning and profoundly moving novel from an outrageously gifted writer.”—Kimberly King Parsons, author of We Were the Universe

“Both harsh and hypnotic, this deeply observed coming-of-age story hinges on two ideas: betrayal by others, betrayal of self. In a series of breathtaking and heartbreaking moments, we watch in what often feels like real time the awakening of a brave girl.”—Betsy Lerner, author of Shred Sisters

“A devastating, tender, utterly beautiful coming-of-age story. I am in awe of Caminito's writing, both unflinching and generous.”—Ayşegül Savaş, author of The Anthropologists

“Caminito’s gripping narrative takes many twists and turns but always remains focused on her compelling protagonist, so painfully vulnerable and unhappy that we understand even her most egregious acts. . . . Ferocious and riveting.”—Kirkus Reviews

“Mesmerizing . . . Marked by aching realism, this volatile coming-of-age novel is about the precariousness of growing up.”—Foreword Reviews 

“Giulia Caminito adds her name to the list of talented novelists with a sharp style that recounts the harshness and precariousness of life in neglected neighborhoods, similar to Silvia Avallone or Elena Ferrante.”—La Croix

“[A] beautiful coming-of-age novel.”—El Mundo

“[The Lake’s Water Is Never Sweet] will never let you go.”—Der Spiegel

“This new work breathes the same life as [Caminito's] earlier writings, with a sharpness in style that aptly conveys the challenges of growing up—acknowledging true friends over fair-weather ones and finding pride in one’s authentic self.”—L'Express

“If the torments of adolescence are universal, the harsh poetry of The Lake’s Water Is Never Sweet gracefully reminds us how it is a unique drama for each individual.”—Lire

Giulia Caminito's first novel, The Big A (Giunti, 2016), won the Bagutta Opera Prima Prize, the Berto Prize, and the Brancati Giovani Prize. She is also the author of The Day Will Come (Bompiani, 2019), The Lake's Water Is Never Sweet (Bompiani, 2021), and Amatissime (Giulio Perrone, 2022). The Lake's Water Is Never Sweet won the 2021 Campiello Prize and was a finalist for the Strega Prize. Caminito's books have been translated in over 20 countries. She lives in Rome.

Hope Campbell Gustafson's previous book-length translations includeCommander of the Riverby Ubah Cristina Ali Farah andIslandsNew Islands: A Vagabond Guide to Romeby Marco Lodoli. From Minneapolis, now living in Brooklyn, she also works for the Civitella Ranieri Foundation.

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