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Title: Drowning Ruth by Christina Schwarz ISBN: 0-345-43910-4 Publisher: Ballantine Books Pub. Date: 31 July, 2001 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.73 (278 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Secrets shape character in this first novel
Comment: Chosen for Oprah's Book Club before publication, this first novel opens in 1919 and takes place in a straight-laced Wisconsin farming community where shame is a powerful motivator and secrets can blight lives.
Amanda Starkey, suffering a nervous breakdown, leaves her job as a nurse caring for wounded soldiers and returns to her family's farm on Nagawaukee Lake. Her parents dead, Amanda's sister Mathilde lives there with her three-year-old daughter Ruth, waiting for her soldier husband Carl to come home from a French hospital. Over the summer, the sisters move to the house Carl built on the lake island Amanda has always thought of as hers. Then, shortly before Carl's return, Mattie dies, drowns in the lake under mysterious circumstances.
The child, Ruth, remembers that she drowned too, a claim Aunt Amanda dismisses as a dream. "But Ruth maintained that she had drowned, insisted on it for years, even after she should have known better."
His leg badly wounded, Carl, bewildered and grieved, faces a difficult child who doesn't remember him and a sister-in-law who has everything well in hand and impatiently checks his questions about Mattie's drowning.
The story is told through various points of view, primarily Amanda's and Ruth's, but other characters as well, from Ruth's schoofriend to the wife of Amanda's former lover, Clement, a man the reader is unaware of until a chance meeting preceeds Amanda's second breakdown.
The details of the devastating affair emerge in bits, remembered very differently by Clement and Amanda, while Carl's memories of his marriage blur and give way to brooding suspicions and little Ruth excersizes a child's power over her world through willful stubborness.
Schwarz reveals her characters through flashback memories - Amanda and Mattie's childhood and Carl's fears of inadequacy, and through the guilt and love that shape and drive each of them. She examines the roles of shame and secrecy and the reverberations of these powerful motivators in the lives of innocents.
The innocent at the core, Ruth, exerts more control over her life as she grows and seizes a more central role in the novel. Torn between loyalty to Amanda and her own drive for independence, Ruth makes clandestine visits to the lake island where she last lived with her mother, seeking signs of her there. Moody and unsocial, she is ignored at school until one popular girl befriends her. Unwilling to return to her friendless state, Ruth endlessly entertains Imogene, who, she realizes, craves drama. "It took a lot of effort, sometimes, to have Imogene for a friend."
Amanda struggles to contain herself, to allow Ruth her own life. But she has kept so much bottled up that a spark of disobedience can blow apart her carefully constructed normalcy - the everyday aspect of a woman without secrets. When Amanda loses control it's scary and dangerous, giving rise to questions: Have the events of her life unbalanced her? Or was she so precariously poised that all she needed was a nudge? And, of course, what role did she play in the death of her beloved sister?
Schwarz' writing is deceptively plain, like her stalwart country characters. Her prose flows with easy grace, creating an atmosphere of brittle peace and brooding portents. Danger shimmers around each ordinary event as the secrets wriggle and push their way closer to the surface, moving inexorably to a cataclysmic, ambivalent, poignant climax.
Rating: 4
Summary: Addictive
Comment: DROWNING RUTH is one of the most emotionally involved stories I have ever read. Schwarz does an excellent job with character development. You actually feel like you can relate to each character in their unique situation as it pertains to the story. I have to disagree with another reviewer who said that the plot leaves alot to be desired (not in those exact words). I think Schwarz does a wonderful job involving different perspectives to tell the same story and that the plot, although somewhat simple, unfolds in a dramatic storytelling. It is easy to follow but not in the least bit, boring. I was engrossed in reading it from the first paragraph. I do feel as though she doesn't tie everything up completely at the end. Other than that, great read.
Rating: 5
Summary: Excellent
Comment: Definitely worthwhile. Intriguing plot. Good character development. The story has some twists and turns but not so many that the plot become convoluted. I like a book that keeps me engaged and thinking throughout. This novel did just that. I passed this book on to my sister who enjoyed it as much as I did.
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Title: While I Was Gone by Sue Miller, Sue Miller ISBN: 0345443284 Publisher: Ballantine Books Pub. Date: 12 May, 2000 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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Title: A Virtuous Woman by Kaye Gibbons ISBN: 0375703063 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 05 November, 1997 List Price(USD): $11.00 |
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Title: Fall On Your Knees (Oprah #45) by Ann-Marie MacDonald ISBN: 0743237188 Publisher: Scribner Pub. Date: 24 January, 2002 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: Black and Blue by Anna Quindlen ISBN: 0440226104 Publisher: Dell Pub. Date: 02 February, 1999 List Price(USD): $7.99 |
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Title: House of Sand and Fog by Andre Dubus III ISBN: 0375727345 Publisher: Vintage Books Pub. Date: 16 November, 2000 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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