The Seduction of Water
Carol Goodman, 2003
Random House
400 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780345450913
Summary
Iris Greenfeder, ABD (All But Dissertation), has just turned forty, lives in Manhattan, and works three teaching jobs to support herself. Recently she's felt that the "buts" are taking over her life: all but published, all but a professor, all but married (to Jack, her boyfriend of ten years). Yet the sudden impulse to write a story about her mother leads to a shot at literary success.
The piece recounts an eerie Irish fairy tale her mother used to tell her at bedtime—and nestled inside it is the sad story of her mother's death..." "More than fifty years ago, Iris's mother, Katherine Morrissey, arrived at the Catskills's grand Hotel Equinox penniless, with almost no belongings. Kay was hired as a maid but refused to speak of her past or her family. One year later, she married Ben Greenfeder, the hotel's manager. During the hotel's off-season, Kay wrote the first two fantasy novels of a planned trilogy.
There never was a third book. When Iris was nine, her mother left one day for a writer's conference—and never came back. Kay died that very night in a hotel fire on Coney Island, registered as another man's wife." "Now Hedda Wolfe, Kay's former literary agent, has a proposal: If Iris will return to the Hotel Equinox where she grew up, research her mother's life, and find the third and final manuscript that Hedda is convinced exists, then she can guarantee Iris a huge advance to write her mother's biography."
Transfixed by the notion of a third book, Iris believes that it will hold clues to the mysteries of Kay's life—and death. But as she begins to peer into the thicket of her mother's hidden world, stinging revelations leave Iris with new questions. When a deadly "accident" befalls the one man who could shed some light on Kay, it becomes clear that Iris is not alone in her deep interest in her mother's past—or in her search for a lost manuscript that might hold more secrets than she ever expected. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1960
• Education—B.A. Vassar College
• Currently—lives on Long Island, NY USA
Carol Goodman is the author of The Lake of Dead Languages. Her work has appeared in such journals as The Greensboro Review, Literal Latté, The Midwest Quarterly, and Other Voices. After graduation from Vassar College, where she majored in Latin, she taught Latin for several years in Austin, Texas. She then received an M.F.A. in fiction from the New School University. Goodman currently teaches writing and works as a writer-in-residence for Teachers & Writers. She lives on Long Island. (From BookReporter.com)
Book Reviews
An aspiring writer delves into the long-buried mystery of her novelist mother's death in this silky-smooth novel by the author of The Lake of Dead Languages. Water, from Iris Greenfeder's perspective, is the Hudson River. She has a view of it from her five-story walkup in New York City's westernmost Greenwich Village, and it shimmers in the distance from the Equinox, the Catskills hotel where Iris grew up. Her father, Ben, was the manager at the Equinox; her mother, Kay, a former maid, wrote two fantastical novels there. Driving the plot is the not-so-simple question: did Kay write a third novel, and is it hidden at the Equinox? Back at the hotel for the summer, Iris plans to write the story of her mother's life and search for the missing manuscript. As she attempts to solve the mystery, she is abetted and thwarted by a large cast of characters, including her mother's famous literary agent, the mega-millionaire owner of a hotel chain, the daughter of a famous suicidal poet, an all-knowing gardener and the delicious Aidan Barry, whom Iris meets while he's still in prison. The novel's first-person, present-tense narrative fosters intimacy, though it somewhat undercuts suspense. More effective is the use Goodman makes of the Irish myth of the selkie-half-seal, half-woman-as told by Iris's mother. Mystery, folklore, a thoroughly modern romance, a strong sense of place and a winning combination of erudition and accessibility make this second novel a treat.
Publisher's Weekly
The Seduction of Water is the story of Iris Greenfeder, a teacher who would rather be a writer, and the secrets her mother kept and her search for the truth about her mother's death. Iris grew up at the Hotel Equinox in the Catskills, where her father, Ben, was manager for 50 years, and her mother, Katherine, was the chambermaid. While at the hotel, Katherine wrote two fantasy novels of a planned trilogy, and it was rumored that there was a manuscript for the third. When Iris was ten, her mother went to attend a conference in a hotel in Manhattan and never returned; she was found dead the following day. As Iris attempts to solve these mysteries, she is assisted and disillusioned by many multidimensional characters who weave in and out of the story. The novel's first-person, present-tense vehicle builds intimacy that grabs the listener immediately. The program is packed with tension, lively in atmosphere, and rich in plot. Read by Christine Marshall, it is a good romantic suspense-not highly literary but captivating and pleasing. Recommended for public libraries. —Glen Cove Lib., NY
Carol Stern - Library Journal
There's enough plot for two or three Robert Ludlum potboilers in this agreeably overstuffed second from Goodman (The Lake of Dead Languages, 2002). Add to that a heroine who's both a savvy writer and teacher and the gothic-thriller type who keeps walking into situations guaranteed to compromise or endanger her. Actually, it's understandable that Iris Greenfeder heads for the moribund Hotel Equinox in the Catskills—where her late mother (pseudonymous fantasy author K.R. La Fleur) had worked—since the familiar Irish folktale, about a "seal woman" tricked into ill-fated marriage with a mortal, that Iris's mother had loved and written about seems to hold clues to why the reclusive author died in a fire at another hotel, accompanied by the man for whom she had left her husband. Sound complicated? That's only the beginning of the intrigue, which also involves Iris's adult ex-convict student (and eventual lover) Aidan Barry; powerful hotelier Harry Kron, whose reasons for resurrecting the Equinox may be even more sinister then they seem; a jewel theft many years ago, which echoes the fate of the "net of tears" woven by the aforementioned seal woman; and an elderly gardener, a secretive literary agent, a vengeful female editor, among other primary and secondary suspects. It's fun in the early going, as Goodman makes suggestive connections between the matter of classic fairy tales and her mother's story. Then the tale flattens out midway, as hitherto-concealed motives and interrelationships need clarifying. Goodman wins us back, though, with a Chinese-box climax and denouement in which Iris risks her life, learns how her mother's novels had fictionalized her own family history and unshared secrets—and also how she herself isn't the woman she thinks she is. Much too long, and tending to cliché, but a pretty good romantic suspenser nonetheless.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Discuss your favorite fairy tale from your childhood. How did you learn the story and what did you learn from it? What does it mean to you now?
2. The fairy tale assignment galvanized Iris's students and helped them to find their own voices. Why do you think this assignment successful on so many levels?
3. Did you ever have a school assignment that affected you in such a manner? Discuss why it reached you and what it taught you.
4. Both Iris and Phoebe are haunted by the early loss of their mothers. Discuss how these characters have been shaped by and have adapted to their losses and more generally how the death of a parent or a parental figure affects us all.
5. A schism exists in Iris's life: before and after her mother's death. Do you have such a defining event in your life? Discuss the various life-changing events—births, deaths, and other rites of passage—that can result in such a before-and-after outlook.
6. Her mother's death is the defining event of Iris's life when this novel begins. Do you think it will remain the defining event by the close of the novel?
7. Iris confesses that she is "still not comfortable being the giver of grades, the passer of judgment." Can you identify with her struggle? Or do you judge her to be immature?
8. When Iris begins to investigate her mother's past, she comes to understand that her mother felt like an imposter in her new life at the Hotel Equinox. Why is this so? Discuss the many reasons why people might feel like an imposter in their own lives.
9. Iris wonders whether Danny the baker she meets in Brooklyn or his brother Vincent the painter "is really the artist in the family." What do you think? How do you define an artist?
10. The financial and personal toll exacted in securing the time and space to create art is central to this novel. Discuss the hurdles that artists face. Do you think female artists still confront more obstacles than their male counterparts?
11. Have you ever suffered from writer's block or a comparable affliction in your own life? Did you resolve it? If so, how? If not, why not?
12. Thinking about her relationship with Jack, Iris speculated, "Lover and beloved. Didn't there always have to be one of each?" Do you agree?
13. Aidan believes that "there's more sorrow in not following your heart." What do you think?
14. The seven-year age difference between Aidan and Iris troubles Iris greatly. Do you think the pairing of older women and younger men—as opposed to the reverse—still carries a social stigma? Is this changing?
15. Aidan is not a career criminal, but worries that will be his fate once he is released from jail. Discuss the plight of the ex-convict in our society.
16. Iris's mother spent much of her life observing and recording the carelessness of the wealthy and how the rich could ignore and mistreat those who served their needs. Discuss the class tensions in this novel, from the plight of Iris's mother to Harry Kron's attitude toward his staff to Aidan's fears that he is not "good enough" for Iris.
17. Iris's unfinished dissertation is an analysis of her mother's very personal fiction, an analysis hobbled by the daughter's ignorance of the mother's past. Discuss the complex blend of mythical, religious, and personal influences in K.R. LaFleur's fantasy novels.
18. Do you think learning the full truth about her mother will set Iris free to live her own life on her own terms?
19. "She wouldn't want me to spend my life telling her story, she would want me to tell my own," Iris concludes at the close of the novel. Do you think Iris will write again? If so, what do you think she will write?
20. What do you think would have happened to Kay and her family if she had told her husband the whole truth about her past? Could the tragedies that followed have been averted?
21. Which characters are your favorites and why? Did you wish to hear more (or less) from certain characters in this novel?
22. Discuss the structure of this novel. Did you find the story-within-the-story format compelling?
23. Do you agree that The Seduction of Water defies categorization in a single genre? How would you describe this novel to prospective readers?
24. Is your group interested in reading this author's first novel The Lake of Dead Languages?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
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