Customer Reviews

The Fifth Season

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

I recommend this novel to all readers who seek to make sense of their parents' demise. In The Fifth Season, Robert C.S. Downs captures the tragic (and comic) moments that many "adult children" experience as they try to come to grips with their parents' mortality. This is a beautifully written story.

Anyone who has aging parents can relate to Teddy's experience in The Fifth Season. Able and Lillian could be my parents; this could be my family. Robert Downs has written a touching portrayal of getting old and what it's like for the child to become the parent and the parent the child. Responsibilities suddenly shift and it's a painful experience for all. The Fifth Season has just the right amount of tension and humor. It makes you realize that life goes by quickly and each moment should be savored. However, it also says that even in life's most difficult season, there is much to hold onto and enjoy. Beauty never fades and love never dies. It just changes. I highly recommend this book.

Most families have or will enter a period when a loved one has entered this final stage, "The Fifth Season". Downs captures this experience with such remarkable clarity and detail that one has the same elevating experience enjoyed in viewing superior cinema. The book brought back personal memories in a way that is not only beautiful but enduring. A marvelous contribution.

Downs has captured, in spare but evocative prose, the downhill path of an aging couple that also opened the way for subtle but meaningful expressions of love between father and son. As a portrait of a person with Alzheimer's disease, the situation that Lillian Neel finds herself in, it is unerring. Downs brilliantly but ever so quietly suggests how confusion and memory loss are experienced, how a loved one tries to protect while also feeling shame, and how the possibility of breaking through on a noncognitive level can be transformative once we recognize its power.

I have spent the past 30 years working in the field of gerontology and the humanities. I plan to use this book in teaching and in writing. I highly recommend it to health care practitioners as a way to see beyond the person who often gets dismissed as the "Alzhimer's patient" as if there is nothing else to the person but his or her disease.