false <![CDATA[Drowning Ruth]]> http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1166694112m/15814.jpg 5171 22 For 19th-century novelists--from Jane Austen to George Eliot, Flaubert to Henry James--social constraint gave a delicious tension to their plots. Yet now our relaxed morals and social mobility have rendered many of the classics untenable. Why shouldn't Maisie know what she knows? It will all come out in family therapy anyway. The vogue for historical novels depends in part on our pleasure in reentering a world of subtle cues and repressed emotion, a time in which a young woman could destroy her life by saying yes to the wrong man. After all, there was no reliable birth control, no divorce, no chance of an independent life or a scandal-free separation.<p> Christina Schwarz's suspenseful debut pivots on two of the lost "virtues" of the past: silence and stoicism. <I>Drowning Ruth</I> opens in 1919, on the heels of the influenza epidemic that followed the First World War. Although there were telephones and motor cars and dance halls in the small towns of Wisconsin in those years, the townspeople remained rigid and forbidding. As a young woman, Amanda Starkey, a Lutheran farmer's daughter, had been firmly discouraged from an inappropriate marriage with a neighboring Catholic boy. A few years later, as a nurse in Milwaukee, she is seduced by a dishonorable man. Her shame sends her into a nervous breakdown, and she returns to the family farm. Within a year, though, her beloved sister Mathilde drowns under mysterious circumstances. And when Mathilde's husband, Carl, returns from the war, he finds his small daughter, Ruth, in Amanda's tenacious grip, and she will tell him nothing about the night his wife drowned. Amanda's parents, too, are long gone. "I killed my parents. Had I mentioned that?" muses Amanda. <blockquote> I killed them because I felt a little fatigued and suffered from a slight, persistent cough. Thinking I was overworked and hadn't been getting enough sleep, I went home for a short visit, just a few days to relax in the country while the sweet corn and the raspberries were ripe. From the city I brought fancy ribbon, two boxes of Ambrosia chocolate, and a deadly gift... I gave the influenza to my mother, who gave it to my father, or maybe it was the other way around." </blockquote> Schwarz is a skillful writer, weaving her grim tale across several decades, always returning to the fateful night of Mathilde's death. <I>Drowning Ruth</I> displays her gift for pacing and her harsh insistence on the right ending, rather than the cheery one. <I>--Regina Marler</I> 1737200 2000 Drowning Ruth (Oprah's Book Club) total:6513|5:804|4:2304|3:2538|2:717|1:150| 6513 22434 8208 622 3 9 false false Sat Dec 01 00:00:00 -0800 2007 Sat Dec 15 19:05:32 -0800 2007 Sun Dec 16 20:51:21 -0800 2007 sitting, which I very rarely do anymore. It was a page-turner. But for all the wrong reasons.

See, the book opens with a young nurse, Amanda, going home to...more...]]> 4 3 false false Wed Mar 01 00:00:00 -0800 2006 Sun Aug 26 14:55:40 -0700 2007 Sun Aug 26 15:00:59 -0700 2007
"But a sense that there might also exist some entirely different destination, one that h...more...]]> 5 1 false true Sun Nov 16 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Mon Oct 20 09:21:32 -0700 2008 Wed Nov 19 16:45:44 -0800 2008 once more...]]> 3 1 false false Sun Apr 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Tue May 29 14:13:48 -0700 2007 Tue Jun 12 13:12:36 -0700 2007 more...]]> 4 1 false false Tue Oct 28 07:49:05 -0700 2008 Tue Oct 28 07:49:05 -0700 2008 more...]]> 3 1 false false Tue Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Sun Jan 06 09:59:57 -0800 2008 Sun Jan 13 12:25:23 -0800 2008 more...]]> 3 1 false true Wed Jul 09 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Thu Jul 10 07:53:48 -0700 2008 Fri Jul 11 06:36:55 -0700 2008 more...]]> 4 0 false false Sun Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2006 Sat Jan 03 13:26:38 -0800 2009 Sat Jan 03 13:27:22 -0800 2009 more...]]> 3 0 false false Fri Dec 01 00:00:00 -0800 2006 Mon Dec 29 20:32:26 -0800 2008 Mon Dec 29 20:34:00 -0800 2008
A bit too much like Marilynne Robinson's Housekeeping, which I didn't like either; I fel...more...]]> 0 0 false false Tue Sep 01 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Sun Nov 15 14:41:36 -0800 2009 Sun Nov 15 14:56:11 -0800 2009 more...]]> 4 0 false false Sat Aug 01 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Mon Aug 03 12:22:14 -0700 2009 Mon Aug 03 19:14:55 -0700 2009 more...]]> 4 1 false true Mon Jun 01 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Tue Jun 23 17:28:30 -0700 2009 Tue Jun 23 17:37:59 -0700 2009 1 more...]]> 4 1 false false Tue Jul 01 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Sun Jun 29 10:22:50 -0700 2008 Wed Jul 09 22:01:09 -0700 2008 more...]]> 4 0 false false Sat Oct 03 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Tue Oct 06 10:17:48 -0700 2009 Fri Oct 16 14:34:31 -0700 2009 Ms. Houseman
Honors World Literature
16 October 2009
Book Review

Christina Schwarz
Drowning Ruth
New York: Random House, Inc., 2000
338 pp. $23.95
0-385-50253-2

Slipping away from life, hanging by a thread, and trying ...more...]]> 4 1 false false Fri Sep 01 00:00:00 -0700 2006 Sat Sep 08 06:42:00 -0700 2007 Sat Sep 08 06:46:10 -0700 2007 more...]]> 2 0 false false Tue Jan 20 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Sun Jan 04 08:28:19 -0800 2009 Tue Jan 20 12:04:02 -0800 2009 more...]]> 3 1 false false Tue May 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Wed Feb 13 22:56:22 -0800 2008 Wed Feb 13 22:58:15 -0800 2008 4 0 false false Mon Mar 02 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Fri Feb 27 11:21:01 -0800 2009 Mon Mar 02 13:27:24 -0800 2009 more...]]> 4 0 false false Fri Dec 05 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Mon Dec 01 19:13:43 -0800 2008 Fri Dec 05 15:33:39 -0800 2008 1
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"I killed my parents. Had I mentioned that?" muses Amanda.

I killed them because I felt a little fatigued and suffered from a slight, persistent cough. Thinking I was overworked and hadn't been getting enough sleep, I went home for a short ...more...]]> http://www.goodreads.com/book_link/follow/8?book_id=15814