Customer Reviews

Woman In Red

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Fellow Readers,
You are in for a treat. I have read all of Eileen's books; each one gets better and better. This one takes the cake! The characters reach right into your heart and stay there throughout the entire journey. I found myself speaking to Alice, her son Jeremy, and Colin while they lived through every twist and turn in this page-turner. This book will keep you wanting more until finally you reach the conclusion. Happy REading!

Lois Goetz

Eileen Goudge never disappoints. The characters are so well-defined that the reader has no trouble imagining physical characteristics to match the personalities of each. The story has the main plot, as well as sub-plots, going back and forth in time. There is mystery, romance, alienation, suspense, and a surprise ending. This is a "must read"!

This was a book hard to put down but I had to give it a 1/2 point off because of the sloppy research about the cardinal being in the San Juans (mentioned more than once) but 1/2 point added due to the setting (a fictionalized Orcas Island, called Gray's Island in the book). Basically it's about Alice Kessler who has just returned to Gray's Island after nine years in prison for attempted murder of the man responsible for the death of her young son. Arriving on the same ferry is Colin McGinty, a 9/11 widower there to settle his grandfather's estate. Alice needs to reconnect with the son she left behind, now a teenager who doesn't seem to want to have much to do with her, and facing ostracization from the community (the man she attempted to murder is now the town's powerful mayor). Interwoven is a poignant story from the 1940s which just happens to be about Alice's grandmother and Colin's grandfather.

I'd recommend it to anyone who enjoys powerful family dramas -- it does get a little melodramatic toward the end and that kept it from being an 5-star read. But overall, I enjoyed it and it was a smooth, quick read and was never dull. Oh and my town even gets a brief mention toward the end!

This is one of those books that you start reading and drop everything that you're doing to continue reading it until the last page. It was beautifully written and kept my interest in the characters until the very end. I enjoy all of her books, but this one is the best by far.

This was not an engrossing, cannot put it down kind of book, but it was not so awful that I could not read the entire thing either. If anything, the occurences were all too coincental to be realistic. The ending was also a little too happy and pit pat. The characters made numerous bad life decisions, but it all goes away and makes a happy ending. I enjoyed the world war two parts more than the present day and wish there had been more details and story in that time period. I related more to Eleanor in 1942 dealing with conflicting emotions about love, life, war and making the hardest choices a woman could make than I did with Alice in the present day, having run over a man with her one remaining son in the car, putting his life at risk to revenge the death of her other one. Otherwise, the book was well written.

I've enjoyed Eileen Goudge's past books--she really knows how to tell a story--so I expected to enjoy this one just as much. And there's lots about WOMAN IN RED to recommend it as an engaging, entertaining novel. But one aspect of the book ruined the rest for me entirely, and I'd like to discuss it without giving away any spoilers, but still give it a fair hearing. Simply this: the protagonist's son is said, even in the promotional blurbs for the book, to have been "falsely" accused of rape. Yet when I came to the scene upon which this supposed "false" accusation of rape was made, I could come to no conclusion other than that what the son committed WAS, indeed, by any fair real-world standards, rape.

Goudge obviously tries to write a lot of factors into the situation to mitigate it: the young man was locked into a room with a young woman by "friends" who were up to no good; he was drunk and therefore not in a state to exercise good judgment; the young woman was also drunk (and thus, it's implied horribly; "fair game"; after all, she isn't resisting him enough!); she appeared to be "coming on" to him at some points (although not right up to the time the deed is done, and she didn't force him physically to do what he did); we're aware that the young man feels down on himself because he's still a virgin and pressured by his "friends" to have sex; and there are many implications that somehow doing so with this young woman would be no big deal because she's definitely not inexperienced or naive.

But that is precisely the problem! What the author seems to be ignoring is that, first of all, she makes it clear that sexual intercourse did take place, and that it took place when the young woman was too thought-impaired to be able to make a sound judgment about it or make a serious effort to resist. This was a drunk young man taking advantage of a drunk young woman, and while both may be drunk, only one of them was in a real position to force sex, and that was the young man. Goudge also shows us his rationalizations in which he tells himself why it's OK to go ahead: she came on to him at one point (yes, but she called him by another name, proving that her judgment is impaired); she's drunk, so why shouldn't he take advantage of it; he really wants not to be a virgin anymore; she's been with other guys so one more can't possibly matter. In short, he makes up all the excuses for what he's doing that have been used to excuse men for rape since time began: She didn't resist enough, she didn't take care of herself enough, oh, and she's not a virgin--she said yes to other men before, so she had no right to say no to this one this time! The young man even justifies plunging ahead without a condom using the exact same reasoning: She's not a virgin, so she's probably on the pill! Never does the possibility of disease from this supposed sexually overactive young woman occur to him.

One of the key elements to the reader's liking and feeling empathy with the protagonist is that we agree with her that her son isn't guilty and doesn't deserve to be railroaded into a conviction by the mayor of the town, who is obviously unlikable for other reasons, such as having pushed for her to get the maximum sentence for her own misdeed that was triggered by his obvious wrongdoing. But I, for one, could not, because I could only keep thinking over and over again: "That wasn't consensual sex; that wasn't just poor judgment on the part of a young man; that was RAPE." I didn't want the charges to be dropped, or for him to go to trial and be cleared by her new lawyer friend after said lawyer friend dragged the young woman's reputation through the mud. I wanted it said, plain and clear, that it was not okay to have sex with a woman just because she's drunk, or just because you're drunk, or just because someone locked you in a room and expected you to do it before they let you out, or just because she had sex with other guys, or just because she was so drunk she thought you were someone else she wanted to have sex with. It's NOT. It's RAPE. And for it to be presented here by Goudge, as it was, as a technique to bring the protagonist and her estranged son back together, and to draw together her and the lawyer romantically, as they all join forces to get the boy off the hook, only made me think: "The assumed premise here is that the sons of nice, decent women can't possibly be guilty of rape. But they CAN."

I think that's a terrible message to send to her women readers. It sets the parents of sons against the parents of daughters, sending the message that young girls have the sole responsibility for rape prevention. When the signals get crossed because young people are drinking and partying and now there's a young man and a young woman together alone, should it always be the girl's fault if sex ensues? Or are we going to finally start telling our sons: "You shouldn't take advantage of a girl in an impaired state. You shouldn't allow your own judgment to be compromised either. You shouldn't try to make a girl feel she has to have sex with you just because you're alone or she's had it with other boys. You shouldn't go ahead when you're not sure she wants to just because you want to. It's RAPE. It's WRONG. Don't DO IT. And even when it's fully consensual, don't do it without a condom, unless you want to risk getting a terrible disease or being responsible for a pregnancy!"

Ironically, there's also a near-rape scene in this novel, but in this one, it's clear we're supposed to be on the side of the potential victim. After all, she's a good person, right? But when you think about it, this rape too could be rationalized. After all, we know she had consensual sex with the very same man long ago and enjoyed it. She let him into her house alone...what was she thinking? Wouldn't a jury of her era have heard those arguments from the defense lawyer if she had been raped and the case brought to trial?

I know all this stuff isn't romantic, and Goudge is a romance author. But there's no reason that in a contemporary romance novel, real-world realities--like, it's not really smart for a teenage boy to have sex with a girl without a condom--can't be part of it. And if Goudge wanted to really present a scenario in which this young man was falsely accused of rape, she could have written it so much more easily. Have the sex never take place at all! The young man pulls back at the last minute, realizing somehow through his drunken haze that it would be wrong--or maybe he just can't physically do it because he's too drunk. But the girl lies and claims he went ahead, because she feels pressure from her parents and friends to say he did, and it's her word against his. Then have her guilt about lying about the SEX TAKING PLACE (not about the so-called consensuality of it) cause her to recant.

With that one small change, Eileen Goudge could have made a big, big difference in how I feel about this novel. As it is, I feel all she's doing is helping perpetuate myths about rape, and she's perpetuating them amongst women, and mothers of sons no doubt...so that they will go on being carried into more generations. She's just one tiny piece of the message, but all the little pieces over the years add up...and as a result, we will get another generation of people who still feel it's primarily the female's job to prevent rape by not having too much sex, dressing modestly, staying out of dark and dangerous places at night, and not allowing herself to be in compromising situations. And that if a male finds himself in a position to have sex with a female even if he doesn't have her clear consent, he should just go ahead, and she has no right to blame him afterward.

I have to say this book went on a different path than I thought it would, with surprising twists and turns to the story that I hadn't suspected or expected. When I read a review, I typically want to know if others enjoyed the book - not the plot of the story, so I won't get into that.

I think this is her best book since "Garden of Lies", which was the first I read (and I think may have been her first published book). The central characters are people who have lived, loved and lost and don't come to the party, so to speak, without baggage. The multi-generational sub-plot and shift in timelines is what distinguishes the story overall.

While I enjoyed the book and would recommend it, (and perhaps I'm being overly critical), some of the secondary storylines and characters weren't really fleshed out enough to make the book feel as suspenseful as it would have been otherwise. It may well be that it would have been too difficult to do so with so many characters and intersecting plots that converge for the finish, but it made for a less engrossing book overall.

I do recommend it, especially if you're tired of Chick/Mommy/Hen Lit and want a well written book with a plot you won't be able to guess within the first 10 pages.

Eileen Goudge wrote some great sagas in the beginning. Trail of Secrets was the book that initially hooked me. Thorns of Truth actually constituted a good sequel to Garden of Lies, and let's be honest "good sequal" is often an oxymoron.

Ms. Goudge detoured for a time into a more flowery, more soap opera-y genre, but it appears that she is circling back to home plate in a beautiful way.

The love story of the preceding generation was much more compelling than that of the subsequent generation, which almost always seems to be the case with nearly every author.

I would love to read a blockbuster - by anyone - in which a two (or three!) generation saga has equally good love stories all the way across the board.

Ms. Goudge is one author on a relatively short list that I believe would have the mettle to do this.

Speaking of mettle, you should check out this author's biography. She is a one-time welfare mom that blazed her own trail and found great success. Perhaps that is her best story of all.

As I read this book I was a little disappointed from what I thought it would be about. Throughout the book, I found it kind of sappy, a little "Danielsteelish," but not badly written like Steele's. There were too many stories and I found myself wanting the whole book to be about Eleanor and William. I enjoyed reading about their love story. I wasn't sure what was the main plot in this book. At any rate, I didn't mind the book. I rated it in my head as I was reading. Usually it was 3 stars. But when I read the last page, the whole book became worth it for me. The last couple of pages deserved 5 stars. I think this is targeted for women, and would generally be enjoyed. I wouldn't recommend it highly, but I wouldn't tell you not to read it either. So you decide.

"Woman in Red" by Eileen Goudge is a tender tale about love, family, honor, and justice. The story is set in two separate eras on a popular summer resort island within the gorgeous San Juan Island group near Seattle. The novel focuses on the interlocking lives of three families. In the present is the awkward lurching-toward-the-inevitable romance of Alice Kessler and Colin McGinty--both barely-hanging-on survivors of life's cruel injustices. In the past, some 60 years earlier during World War II, is the tender tragic love affair between Alice's grandmother, Eleanor, and Colin's grandfather, the famous American realist painter, William McGinty. Eleanor is the rapturous "Woman in Red" in William McGinty's best-known masterpiece--this is a painting made famous by unmistakably capturing the true face of all-radiant love. In both eras, these two families are shattered by events with mysterious ties back to a third family. Here corruption runs deep, power is all-important, and greed is the name of the game. For decades, they have been one of the richest and most powerful families on the island--this is the family of the current mayor, Owen White.

The interlocking mysteries of how these three families touch each other's lives unfold skillfully. Goudge takes time to carefully develop her major characters. I never lost interest, or stopped caring about them. The device of two parallel and interlocking love affairs kept me reading even when I knew I should have been doing other things.

The ending is satisfying, although perhaps too neatly resolving the many threads of conflict--but it is an ending that is, nonetheless, unexpected and original. Goudge is an artful storyteller; she knows how to keep her readers' attention at all times. If I find any fault with her writing, it is that there is little sparkle and uniqueness to her prose, but I can forgive that in a good storyteller.

I recommend the book as a mature, realistic, and enduring romance. I can visualize this book as a blockbuster movie with the same strikingly beautiful actress playing both Alice and her grandmother. If it does, I'll probably be one of the first to see it!