The cover text reads:

One summer morning in 1943, lock-keeper Henry Crick finds the drowned body of a sixteen-year-old boy. Nearly forty hears later, his son Tom, a history teacher, is driven by a bizarre marital crisis and the provocation of one of his students to forsake the formal teaching of history -- and tell stories . . .

Waterland is a classic of modern fiction: a vision of England seen through its mysterious, amphibious Fen country; a sinuous meditation on the workings of time; a tale of two families, startling in its twists and turns and universal in its reach, Compulsively readable, it is a novel of resonant depth and encyclopaedic richness, mixing human and natural history and exploring the tragic forces that take us both forward and back. It is also a book about beer, eels, the French Revolution, the end of the world, windmills, will-o'-the-wisps, murder, love, education, curiosity, and -- supremely -- the malign and merciful element of water.

This is #737 on the https://www.listchallenges.com/1001-books-you-must-read-2018 list.

There are four strands to this story, one outlining the history of the Fens and the families involved, one dealing with the events around the drowning in 1943, one describing Tom's marital crisis, and one relating to teaching an alternative syllabus to his history students. The first one is a bit hard going to start with, but then it starts to have more bearing on the others, and the book really starts to get going when you get to the 1911 Coronation and you begin to find out more about Tom's grandfather, his brother and his wife.

[to be] left in the minibieb beside the Tolkienwinkel