Sweetwater: A Novel (Hardcover)

by Roxana Robinson (Author) "The cabin was cool and dark, smelling of wood..." (more)
Key Phrases: leg men, New York, Marilyn Hornby, Roxana Robinson (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist
Critically acclaimed but not well known, Robinson will reach a broader audience with this hold-your-breath novel of loss and love. Devoted to her work for Environmental Protection Resources, Isabel is trying hard to recover from the shock of her first husband's death. She likes Paul's thoughtfulness and convinces herself that a peaceful rather than passionate second marriage is appropriate. Loving wilderness, she embarks optimistically on a vacation in the Adirondacks with Paul's parents and brother, Whitney. But rather than contentedly contemplating nature, Isabel finds herself embroiled in tricky family conflicts. Alarmed by Paul's simmering fury and dangerously attracted to Whitney, she is assailed by painful memories of her harrowing first marriage, which Robinson skillfully sets in chilling counterpoint to the increasingly heated dynamics of Isabel's present predicament. As family strife turns incendiary, forest fires erupt on the drought-afflicted landscape, and Isabel fights for her life in an emotional and literal inferno. Writing with rapturous intensity of nature both wild and human, Robinson forges a love story of unusual complexity and satisfaction. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review
?Sweetwater is a repository for all of Roxana Robinson?s writerly gifts, most notably her keen eye for the details that make up the veneer of social and familial life and her awareness of the darker psychic rivers that run below that surface. She is a master at moving from the art of description to the work of excavating the truths about ourselves.? ?Billy Collins

?There is such quiet power in this fateful novel, present from the start and gathering to its culmination: a story of loss and remarriage, and of the harm done to, and by, vulnerable men and women. This is cool, intrepid writing, not a word wasted, creating a human tension that reflects our endangered world.? ?Shirley Hazzard

?In four previous works of fiction, Robinson established herself as an astute and sensitive chronicler of domestic tensions, particularly among affluent families in wealthy enclaves of Manhattan and exclusive summer abodes. Here she broadens her canvas to introduce larger social issues....Sweetwater succeeds as a moving study of a woman?s emergence from a suffocating life.? ?Publishers Weekly (starred review) -- Review

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 336 pages
• Publisher: Random House; 1st edition (May 13, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 037550916X
• ISBN-13: 978-0375509162
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.2 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #499,282 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Wallace Stegner meets Barbara Kingsolver in the Adirondacks, July 7, 2003

By	"nancybooks" (Northbrook, Il USA) - See all my reviews

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.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A brilliant exploration into the heart, September 11, 2003

By A Customer

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.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Lion in Water, July 11, 2005

By	lb136 "lb136" (New York, NY USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Sweetwater: A Novel (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.