Drowning Ruth by Christina Schwarz
Book Title: Drowning Ruth
Author: Christina Schwarz
Genre: Fiction
My Grade: B-
# of Pages: 342
Summary: Drowning Ruth is a haunting debut novel about the ties that bind families together and the insidious secrets that can rend them apart. The year is 1919. The setting is a family home on Wisconsin's Lake Nagawaukee. Convinced that she is making her patients worse instead of better, Nurse Amanda Starkey has decided to take leave of her past tending wounded soldiers and return home to the farm where she grew up, "where the snowy hills were as white as bleached linen and where my sister rocked her little girl to sleep beside the kitchen stove while she waited for her husband to come back from the war. I knew that at home where I belonged I could set myself right again."
Amanda does return home, and she is a welcome sight to her sister Mattie and Mattie's three-year-old daughter Ruth. But their peaceful reunion is shattered one year later when Mattie drowns mysteriously somewhere between the shores of the Starkey farm and the family island where the women had been taking refuge. When Mattie's husband (and Ruth's father) Carl returns from the war, he finds no space for grieving. Rather, he finds that Amanda has taken her new role as Ruth's caretaker. With a frightening intensity that she is determined to keep the details of his wife's drowning in frozen lake Nagawaukee shrouded in mystery.
Told alternately in the voices of Amanda, Mattie and Ruth, the novel gradually unfolds a family history marked by the madness and deception, misguided loyalty and ill-fated love. Masterfully and relentlessly, first-time author Schwarz peels away the layers of these deeply troubled women, knowing at once the power of the myths we tell ourselves and the freedom that comes with breaking free of their hold. In Amanda's case, we learn that she has harbored insecurities since her childhood, and that her naivete got her into trouble long before she returned home during the war. Now, she confesses, "she [is] bone tired of all this running and hiding, of living alone with a monstrous hump of truth strapped to my back."
Equally tormented is Ruth, whose memories of her mother's death become more vivid as she gets older. She cleaves to her aunt, the only other witness that mysterious frozen night, even as she senses something deeply unnatural about their attachment to one another. As she says of Amanda: "If I change my name and went to the ends of the earth and never came back still she wouldn't let me go. She was stuck like a burr in my hair. No, it was deeper than that - she was inside me like a bone or an organ. She'd seeped into my blood with the air I sucked into my lungs."
Love, loss, guilt, lies - these are the narrative strands that run throughout this deftly woven tale of three women and a shocking turn of events that changes their lives forever. Hauntingly narrated and grippingly paced, Drowning Ruth is a remarkably accomplished and mesmerizing debut. Author Christina Schwarz possesses a unique understanding of the American landscape and the people who live it, and in Drowning Ruth, she has created an unforgettable tale of the people who live on it, and in Drowning Ruth she has created an unforgettable tale of the people we call home.
My Thoughts: I wasn't as impressed with this book as I thought I was going to be. Something I always tell other people: don't go into a book with expectations. I should have listened to my own advice, then maybe I would have enjoyed the book a little bit more. But this being Schwarz's first novel, I'm not going to complain too much, because it was still pretty good.
It was a little too jumpy, just all around, writing, plot line, characters. While they weren't all over the map, they didn't stay on the same line. I also think Schwarz put herself in a hard place with some of the characters because a few of them served a purpose while at the same time seemed pointless. You know those types of characters I'm talking about? Those are almost as annoying as the ones who have no point at all. But I think she put herself in a hard place because they couldn't have been written out.
Also, it seemed that Schwarz had some difficulty catching Ruth's age when she was younger. I couldn't figure out what age she was supposed to be because she was never acting her age. Unless it was said what age she was supposed to be at certain times, I wouldn't have had a clue.
You can easily get past all those for a very interesting story. It's slow going at the beginning, but give it a chance because once you get into it you'll love it. It's sort of like a mystery with an unexpected twist. You think you know the whole story halfway through, but you really don't. There's a lot more than meets the eye.
Next Book: The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini • review
Back to the Book List.
Author: Christina Schwarz
Genre: Fiction
My Grade: B-
# of Pages: 342
Summary: Drowning Ruth is a haunting debut novel about the ties that bind families together and the insidious secrets that can rend them apart. The year is 1919. The setting is a family home on Wisconsin's Lake Nagawaukee. Convinced that she is making her patients worse instead of better, Nurse Amanda Starkey has decided to take leave of her past tending wounded soldiers and return home to the farm where she grew up, "where the snowy hills were as white as bleached linen and where my sister rocked her little girl to sleep beside the kitchen stove while she waited for her husband to come back from the war. I knew that at home where I belonged I could set myself right again."
Amanda does return home, and she is a welcome sight to her sister Mattie and Mattie's three-year-old daughter Ruth. But their peaceful reunion is shattered one year later when Mattie drowns mysteriously somewhere between the shores of the Starkey farm and the family island where the women had been taking refuge. When Mattie's husband (and Ruth's father) Carl returns from the war, he finds no space for grieving. Rather, he finds that Amanda has taken her new role as Ruth's caretaker. With a frightening intensity that she is determined to keep the details of his wife's drowning in frozen lake Nagawaukee shrouded in mystery.
Told alternately in the voices of Amanda, Mattie and Ruth, the novel gradually unfolds a family history marked by the madness and deception, misguided loyalty and ill-fated love. Masterfully and relentlessly, first-time author Schwarz peels away the layers of these deeply troubled women, knowing at once the power of the myths we tell ourselves and the freedom that comes with breaking free of their hold. In Amanda's case, we learn that she has harbored insecurities since her childhood, and that her naivete got her into trouble long before she returned home during the war. Now, she confesses, "she [is] bone tired of all this running and hiding, of living alone with a monstrous hump of truth strapped to my back."
Equally tormented is Ruth, whose memories of her mother's death become more vivid as she gets older. She cleaves to her aunt, the only other witness that mysterious frozen night, even as she senses something deeply unnatural about their attachment to one another. As she says of Amanda: "If I change my name and went to the ends of the earth and never came back still she wouldn't let me go. She was stuck like a burr in my hair. No, it was deeper than that - she was inside me like a bone or an organ. She'd seeped into my blood with the air I sucked into my lungs."
Love, loss, guilt, lies - these are the narrative strands that run throughout this deftly woven tale of three women and a shocking turn of events that changes their lives forever. Hauntingly narrated and grippingly paced, Drowning Ruth is a remarkably accomplished and mesmerizing debut. Author Christina Schwarz possesses a unique understanding of the American landscape and the people who live it, and in Drowning Ruth, she has created an unforgettable tale of the people who live on it, and in Drowning Ruth she has created an unforgettable tale of the people we call home.
My Thoughts: I wasn't as impressed with this book as I thought I was going to be. Something I always tell other people: don't go into a book with expectations. I should have listened to my own advice, then maybe I would have enjoyed the book a little bit more. But this being Schwarz's first novel, I'm not going to complain too much, because it was still pretty good.
It was a little too jumpy, just all around, writing, plot line, characters. While they weren't all over the map, they didn't stay on the same line. I also think Schwarz put herself in a hard place with some of the characters because a few of them served a purpose while at the same time seemed pointless. You know those types of characters I'm talking about? Those are almost as annoying as the ones who have no point at all. But I think she put herself in a hard place because they couldn't have been written out.
Also, it seemed that Schwarz had some difficulty catching Ruth's age when she was younger. I couldn't figure out what age she was supposed to be because she was never acting her age. Unless it was said what age she was supposed to be at certain times, I wouldn't have had a clue.
You can easily get past all those for a very interesting story. It's slow going at the beginning, but give it a chance because once you get into it you'll love it. It's sort of like a mystery with an unexpected twist. You think you know the whole story halfway through, but you really don't. There's a lot more than meets the eye.
Next Book: The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini • review
Back to the Book List.