Customer Reviews

Sweetwater: A Novel

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This is the second book I have read by this author. She has an astounding talent for weaving a story. One thing she can do that many people can't is description. Detailing everyday events in ordinary people's lives turns tedious and boring in the hands of many writers. With this author, reading her description is like listening to a beautiful piece of music. Her plots center around tensions between people stuck together whether they like it or not (usually family members), and build to a catastrophic crescendo. The last part of this book is lived by the reader along with the characters. She also knows her subject matter. She gave a really accurate picture of what is was like for a person suffering from a major mental health disorder, and for the person's family. She made the valid point that no matter how supportive and sympathetic others may be, they can't cure the condition. She also gets across the fact that other people's behavior, good or bad, does not cause the condition (although it may help or aggravate it). The illness is no one's fault. I also liked her discussions of environmental issues, including the argument around the family dinner table (think back on it when you have finished the book). I personally will want to get my hands on everything this author publishes.

This novel caught me by surprise. I expected the writing to be good, but it's nearly perfect. Robinson has created highly believable characters and a story line that grips from beginning to end. The persona of Isabel is beautifully wrought. The reader can worry about her, get annoyed with her, understand and love her. As for her new family: I felt as if Robinson invited me to stand in a corner of that rustic retreat and observe the action. It was a great visit.

I loved this book.
Intensity of time and place similar to Stegner's Crossing to Safety.
Main character, Isabel, is a grown up woman (what a nice change!) going with her second husband to meet his family at their compound in the Adirondacks. This plot is successfully interspersed with her thoughts of her first marriage, work, and grown child.
Isabel is an environmentalist, and her sometimes lectures on the subject evoke Kingsolver.
Somewhat predictable in part, but a cliffhanger ending redeems it.
Refreshing to read about a successful adult woman dealing with themes of love, abandonment, mothering, career, identity.
Very well written, engrossing.
I will be discussing this with my bookclubs when it comes out in paperback.

Roxana Robinson, author of the unforgettable "This Is My Daughter," returns to the topic of broken families in "Sweetwater."

Isabel Green, the book's passive-aggressive protagonist (you could hardly call her its hero) has in her mid-40s drifted into her second marriage, to Paul Simmons, after the death of her first husband; and she is now visiting her inlaws--in their summer lodge in New York State's Adirondacks area. For the first time she meets her parents-in-law, Douglas and Charlotte, and her brother-in-law Whit. Against a background of drought and the possibility of forest fires, an old family feud is played out in front of Isabel--who's exactly the wrong person to be the audience. She's one of those people who can take any bad situation and make it worse.

Isabel's a mess. She works in environmental protection and has spent her entire adult life in New York, Baltimore, London, and New York again. Now she's actually seeing "the environment" for the first time; it's more than she expected. In flashbacks we learn that her first husband was bipolar and suffered from serious bouts of depression. She has an adolescent son she has no idea how to talk to (she won't discuss drugs with him because she's afraid she might learn he's taking them); and when she calls her first husband's doctor to learn how he is progressing with his latest treatments, she is curtly told he cannot discuss the case with her (implying she's the cause of his illness), and she does not even confront him.

Roxana Robinson relates all this in a lean photorealist prose style. There is no excess; but she tells you everything you need to know. Her descriptive passages are so lush, you'll probably smell the fish in the water, and the smoke and ash of an oncoming forest fire. The tale unfolds in traditional novel style--no picture inserts; just one typeface; no blank pages. And while there are sections in the early chapters that might just as well come supplied with the label FORESHADOWING in Arial bold, when the events occur or issues are resolved, the resolution never happens quite the way you'd suppose.

Superb.

This is a wonderful book with a subtly interwoven plot and a mystery at the heart of it. I can't imagine that anyone wouldn't like this novel. This is a very fine writer in wonderful form, and I couldn't put "Sweetwater" down even though I had many other things pressing. I'm online just to order everything else I can find by Roxana Robinson.

I love the written word and enjoy many authors. I enjoy them so much that I forgive inaccuracies and suspend belief for the sake of the story. I also forgive just adequate writing because an author's characters and plot are well developed. But with Roxana Robinson's novel Sweetwater, none of that was necessary. All I had to do was settle in and devour what has become one of my all-time favorite novels.

Isabel Green took a vacation from life following the death of her first husband. Then she met Paul Simmons, married him because it seemed right, and attempted to reconnect again with the world.

Seven months after her marriage to Paul, he and Isabel travel to the Simmons' summer lodge in the Adirondacks. There Isabel struggles to connect with and understand her husband, his complicated parents and his brother, who appears to have a thorny relationship with Paul. Isabel's time at the lodge brings up the painful reality of her first marriage and awakens feelings that she doesn't understand - and that evoke guilt.

Everything in Robinson's book is married to the environment, reflects the delicate balance between nature and the humans that inhabit the world, and speaks of the author's deep relationship with nature.

Robinson's prose is fluid; her character's are complex, rich with flaws and deep emotions. The plot is compelling and unique. It is expertly constructed and the ending is both sad and satisfying at the same time. I can't wait to read Robinson's other works.

Robinson has a knack for telling stories about people starting over and this novel is so fine in that regard. But "Sweetwater" isn't only about starting over but locating self in the world such that both benefit, or, at least, hope to.

This is a quiet book in the midst of which a fire rages literally. Yet it's the fires raging below the surface that captures the reader's attention and holds it perfectly to the end which is imperfect but that's not Robinson's fault since she merely reflects the imperfect world in which we live. Yet, that ending, aspires, at least, to perfection.

I loved this novel, finest kind.

And, if you're one who revels in nature, the refection of it in this book is a special treat.

Pair erupting forest fires and an environmentalist involved with a family simmering with incendiary conflict, and you've got the makings for an atypical story of love and loss. Isabel, recently widowed, is looking for love in all the wrong places, starting with the wilderness on a vacation in the Adirondacks with new man in her life, Paul, his family, and his dangerously attractive brother. This all makes it sound like some sappy romance novel - and it's not. It's a rapturous paean to love of life and love of nature, penned by a gifted writer.

I don't understand how it would be possible for anyone NOT to find this book compelling! It has the best of everything: a splendid writer in top form, a complex, interwoven tale full of mystery and suspense, and a book that illuminates how we manage to survive our own lives in spite of guilt and grief and circumstance. I extend congratulations and gratitude to Roxana Robinson!

I was truly drawn in by this novel. The evolution of the characters was fascinating and the climatic scenes made my heart pound! I loved reading this one.