Water Music is Boyle's first novel, and it introduces several techniques that the author will use again in his later works. The profusion of literary references recalls that Boyle has a Ph.D. in English, and Boyle sees fit to call upon his encyclopedic knowledge of literature for the ironic purpose of showing how literature has failed along with all other civilized institutions. It is Boyle's sense of the absurd that makes him immune to charges of exhibitionism as he drops literary names.

Boyle's first novel also includes music as a theme. Music will be a feature of Boyle's subsequent novels as well. The mixture of fact and fiction in Water Music will become a hallmark of Boyle's novels, all of which begin with a loosely historical pretext with which the author takes comically nihilistic liberties.