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