The Fifth Season [Hardcover]

Robert C. S. Downs (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 2000

Downss first novel in ten years tells the story of one mans attempt to reconcile the dimensions of his life in the face of his parents decline. Sixty-year-old Teddy Neel, an able professor, is son to Able and Lillian Neel, who are living and dying in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. The rift between father and son has been wide at times. Now Able, a captain of industry in his prime, is losing a kidney to cancer, while Lillian, who is largely blind, is in the midstages of Alzheimers, a matter cloaked by her husbands protective ruses. As Teddy visits them, their lives and true charactersand his ownare revealed in the stark minutiae of the every day. In on-rushing and meticulous present tense, Downs lets us witness the love and beauty, the pain and frustration, of the day-to-day needs in The Fifth Season .

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

For readers who have struggled with stubborn, aging relatives who refuse the care they need, Robert C.S. Downs's The Fifth Season will trigger waves of recognition. The setting is Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Ted Neely flies in to visit his parents at their oceanfront condo, the place they bought when they reached retirement years ago, when they could enjoy the community of seniors, golf games, dinners at the club. Now in their 90s, Able and Lillian no longer leave the house much, and many of their friends have died. Their refrigerator is full of frozen dinners and sour milk. Able, Ted's recalcitrant, penny-pinching father, has just returned from the hospital where doctors removed a cancerous kidney. Lillian is clearly sinking into Alzheimer's, time folding up around her like the night sky.

The Fifth Season is an appropriately slow-moving book, a story of details, worries, and the logistics that must be dealt with before Able and Lillian become completely helpless. Ted fights with his father, gets him to agree to bring a nurse into the home, then his father fires her. Throughout his life, Ted has been overshadowed by his successful and famous brother, and his narration is a gloomy poetry--beautiful and strange, suffused with the loneliness of a neglected child. Puttering around the spare bedroom while his parents sleep, he muses, "I feel a weight the likes of which I've never known, as if I'm able to glimpse eternity and it is a yellow room with blue flowered wallpaper and a small, narrow bed." To ease his depression he goes for a walk along the ocean where, "standing at the railing, it's almost a wind, the sound through the palms like knives flying through the night." It is a lovely, bleak image, appropriate to the world this accomplished writer so painstakingly creates. --Emily White

From Library Journal

When Teddy Neel goes to Fort Lauderdale to care for his 90-year-old mother (partially blind and with Alzheimer's) while his father has surgery for kidney cancer, he confronts not only his parents' struggle with old age but also their complicated emotions as they reconcile the desire for independence with the need for care. His father's unwillingness to relinquish control over his life forces Ted to rethink his entire relationship with his parents and his brother, Benny, who has a gambling problems. Downs (Going Gently) examines this last stage of life in minute detail, highlighting issues like surrendering privacy and the range of emotions children go through in watching their parents decline. Nicely done if not as probing as one might like, this is an optional purchase for most libraries.
-Joshua Cohen, Mid-Hudson Lib. Syst., Poughkeepsie, NY
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Counterpoint Press; 1 edition (February 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1582430489
• ISBN-13: 978-1582430485
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,557,330 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A writer's writer, May 6, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: The Fifth Season (Hardcover)

Robert C.S. Downs is the sort of writer that other writers read to learn how it's done. This book, valuable for all the reasons that other reviewers have noted here, also happens to be the best written new novel I've read in years. I had almost concluded, sadly, that no one was doing this anymore, developing characters so fully human and about whom the reader must have maddeningly mixed feelings. The aged father, Able Neel, is as fully realized a character as any I've encountered, and son Teddy's anger, resentment, pain, and, not incidentally, love for his parents, come through with an emotional potency that is remarkable.The Fifth Season deserves a wide readership. It has much to say, to the casual reader and to any writer looking for a model or for inspiration.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars fine art, October 30, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: The Fifth Season (Hardcover)

As more pulp fiction continues to saturate our American cultural life, it is increasingly delightful to find an author who can show us anew the fine art of the novel. This story and its author find a poignant way to touch the reader with exquisite character, image, and emotional tone. We are carried through the story and leave it with an experience that cannot be summarized - it can only be conveyed through each and every word that Downs lays out. This is the true sign of fine art. A very memorable read.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A candid, unflinching, compelling novel., April 4, 2000

By 

Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Fifth Season (Hardcover)

The Fifth Season eloquently examines one son's attempt to take care of his elderly parents in the face of their harrowing decline. Within hours of visiting his aging parents in Fort Lauderdale, 60 year old Teddy Neel sees that his parents are in a lot worse shape than he imagined. His father, Abel, is in four-point restraints having lost his left kidney to cancer. His mother, Lillian, is largely blind and in the midstages of Alzheimer's. Author Robert Downs brings every character to life with a meticulous prose allowing the reader to witness the love and beauty, the pain and frustration each parent passes through as Able and Lillian pass through the winter of their lives to enter their fifth and eternal season -- and the son who loves them and would spare them any suffering, if he could. The Fifth Season is unflinching, candid, and compelling.