Drowning Ruth: A Novel (Oprah's Book Club)
by Christina Schwarz
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Book Summary Information
Author: Christina SchwarzEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2001-07-31
ISBN: 0345439104
Number of pages: 368
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Book Reviews of Drowning Ruth: A Novel (Oprah's Book Club)
Book Review: Blood is as thick as water; Drowning Ruth
Summary: 5 Stars
Christina Schwarz has worked very hard indeed to create her bestselling novel, "Drowning Ruth." A light epic novel that carries a family over the course of a quarter century starting from just before the first world war through the start of the second world war. All of our central characters are female: two sisters, a daughter, a local friend who becomes close to the daughter and the haunting consequences of life, never brought on by sin or by vengence but rather the typical difficulties of life.The plot is one that unfolded for me within the first seventy pages and held no surprises for me, though as a writer myself my current book utilizes a similar technique. Besides, given honest, caring human condition, the story really could not have unfolded any other way. In regard to plot and heart break, I compare it to McCullough's "The Thorn Birds". In regard to the beauty of each crafted sentence it mixes between Barbara Kingsolvewr and Shiurley Jackson.
That in itself is enough to encourage you to read this book. The entire novel is the result of an act done udring a moment of horror; this is true melodrama in the sense that we watch how ordinary people react to extraordinary situations. Nlt every melodrama is a "Sweeney Todd". This one is subtle, rich with intelligence and curushingly beautiful.
"Drowning Ruth" is compelling and becomes a fast read. Some may claim this to be a feminist work or perhaps historical fiction though I do not. This is a carefully crafted novel about human condition and the things poeople had to do in order to avoid cultural outcasting during the twentie's and thirties. Our Central Character is a sad woman named Amanda (Mandy and Amy as well, depending upon whom is supplying her knick-name) a college educated registerred nurse who suffers from what is surely post traumatic stress dissorder the onset of which occurs during the last year of war while working a Chicago hospital. However the onset of this illness is not at all war-related and a single evening destroys any chance Amanda had to ever have a "normal" life. She returns home to her sister, Mathilda (Mattie - the use of knick names are abundant on all women except for Ruth. I'll let you decider why.)Because the story isn't told chronologically, we get to know Mattie well, despite the fact that she drowns in the lake where her family owns an island within the early pages of the book. Amandea takes on the care of Ruth and then, when Mathilda's husband,Carl returns home from France, a wounded soldier, they settle into a new routine; a family where each of the three members are an island.The island on which they live becomes both a fortress and a metaphor for safety. As with all the men in this book, Carl is dispensed with quietly after a misunderstanding that causes him to leave for work and Amanda and Ruth are once again alone together moving from the farm on the mainland to the cottage on their island.
This is a book about communication, love, dedication and family values. This is a book that assures us that even one hundred years ago, people were the same as they are today. This is a book that causes you to silently urge the characters toward choices because we are given more information than they are. So as Amanda and Ruth move through their lives the multitudes of roads not taken would appear to be straight and well matted, while the roads they DO travel are circuitous and require a bit of work with a syth. Ms Schwarz chooses a place to stop telling her story though it is clear that the story could continue on- perhaps even into the 21st Century. But less is more and Schwarz knows this. We get to know our characters so well that we can clearly understand what the next fifty years will bring anyway.
"Drowning Ruth" is beautifully crafted with a voice that sings.
Summary of Drowning Ruth: A Novel (Oprah's Book Club)
?POWERFUL . . . SUSPENSEFUL . . . RICHLY TEXTURED . . . [A] CHILLING, PRECOCIOUSLY GOOD START TO A BRIGHT NEW NOVELIST?S CAREER.??The New York Times
?[A] gripping psychological thriller . . . In the winter of 1919, a young mother named Mathilda Neumann drowns beneath the ice of a rural Wisconsin lake. The shock of her death dramatically changes the lives of her daughter, troubled sister, and husband. . . . Told in the voices of several of the main characters and skipping back and forth in time, the narrative gradually and tantalizingly reveals the dark family secrets and the unsettling discoveries that lead to the truth of what actually happened the night of the drowning. . . . Schwarz certainly succeeds at keeping the reader engrossed.?
?FRANCINE PROSE
Us Weekly
?DEFT AND ASSURED . . . [WITH] STRONG CHARACTERS AND A PLOT LONG ON TENSION AND SURPRISES.?
?Time
?A strong sense of portent and unusually vivid characters distinguish this mesmerizing first novel about horrifying family secrets and nearly annihilating guilt. Drowning Ruth is a complex and rewarding debut.?
?ANITA SHREVE
Author of The Pilot?s Wife
?RIVETING . . . A VERY SUSPENSEFUL TALE, ONE THAT WILL KEEP READERS UP SHIVERING IN THE NIGHT.?
?USA Today
Oprah Book ClubŪ Selection, September 2000: For 19th-century novelists--from Jane Austen to George Eliot, Flaubert to Henry James--social constraint gave a delicious tension to their plots. Yet now our relaxed morals and social mobility have rendered many of the classics untenable. Why shouldn't Maisie know what she knows? It will all come out in family therapy anyway. The vogue for historical novels depends in part on our pleasure in reentering a world of subtle cues and repressed emotion, a time in which a young woman could destroy her life by saying yes to the wrong man. After all, there was no reliable birth control, no divorce, no chance of an independent life or a scandal-free separation.
Christina Schwarz's suspenseful debut pivots on two of the lost "virtues" of the past: silence and stoicism. Drowning Ruth opens in 1919, on the heels of the influenza epidemic that followed the First World War. Although there were telephones and motor cars and dance halls in the small towns of Wisconsin in those years, the townspeople remained rigid and forbidding. As a young woman, Amanda Starkey, a Lutheran farmer's daughter, had been firmly discouraged from an inappropriate marriage with a neighboring Catholic boy. A few years later, as a nurse in Milwaukee, she is seduced by a dishonorable man. Her shame sends her into a nervous breakdown, and she returns to the family farm. Within a year, though, her beloved sister Mathilde drowns under mysterious circumstances. And when Mathilde's husband, Carl, returns from the war, he finds his small daughter, Ruth, in Amanda's tenacious grip, and she will tell him nothing about the night his wife drowned. Amanda's parents, too, are long gone. "I killed my parents. Had I mentioned that?" muses Amanda.
I killed them because I felt a little fatigued and suffered from a slight, persistent cough. Thinking I was overworked and hadn't been getting enough sleep, I went home for a short visit, just a few days to relax in the country while the sweet corn and the raspberries were ripe. From the city I brought fancy ribbon, two boxes of Ambrosia chocolate, and a deadly gift... I gave the influenza to my mother, who gave it to my father, or maybe it was the other way around.Schwarz is a skillful writer, weaving her grim tale across several decades, always returning to the fateful night of Mathilde's death. Drowning Ruth displays her gift for pacing and her harsh insistence on the right ending, rather than the cheery one. --Regina Marler
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