Reviews for The Drowning Season

The average rating for The Drowning Season based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2017-09-06 00:00:00 Eilish Fox It is a busy time of year for me, between holidays and baseball entering the playoffs, so it is amazing that I have been able to finish books over the last week at all. And that also means an attempt at shorter reviews as this might be one of the few days in the next two weeks that I have time to devote to goodreads. This is a perfect time of year for me to read a lot of shorter novels, so I decided to get a head start on a birth year reading challenge that I am doing next year by selecting The Drowning Season by Alice Hoffman. One of Hoffman's earlier works, The Drowning Season features three generations of a dysfunctional family living on an insular compound on Long Island, New York. Matriarch Esther the White has a cold heart with no room for love. Adopted at an early age in a village in Poland where every family took in abandoned girls, Esther grew up with her 'brothers' Mischa and Max. When Esther found out that she was adopted, she devised a plan to escape and brought her brothers with her. Yet, Esther was ruthless and had no need for Max, a dwarf, and eventually sold him to a traveling circus troupe. Smitten with circus co-owner Solo, Esther became his lover and desired to run away with the tattooed man who she found charming, until she discovered that he left for Spain first, leaving Esther behind. Reluctantly, she plots to move to America, yet with no money, she follows a distraught Mischa to London and lives there for twenty years. Once in London, Esther discovers to her chagrin that she is pregnant and does not know for sure if the father is Solo or Mischa. As a result, she decides that she will not love her child under any circumstances and has no desire to bring any more children into the world. Twenty years later Esther the White sees her dream come true but at many emotional expenses. The family does live on compound in New York but not in the Manhattan of her fantasies. Land is cheap and worth nothing and the only people interested in potentially buying it from her should the need arise are a group of fishermen. Esther's son Phillip is now a middle aged man and addicted to staging a drowning attempt each summer. Esther locks him in a cottage with his alcoholic wife Rose all summer to prevent from committing suicide. Even though Esther the White claims that she does not love, she loves her son enough to prevent him from killing himself, despite the fact that he has desired this since he reached adolescence. With a mother who only cares about herself and a father who is devoid from his life, outsiders believe that Esther should let Phillip be. Hoffman counters Esther the White with her granddaughter Esther the Black. Phillip specifically went against Ashkenazic Jewish tradition of naming a child after a living relative to get back at his mother who never loved him. While Esther the White lives in her own world, Esther the Black would like to leave the compound when she comes of age yet she lacks the courage to leave the only world that she has known her entire life. Because this novel was only two hundred pages in length I read through to the end mainly to see if Esther the Black would leave, but I disliked all the protagonists as they were not likeable people. With all the feuding going on between family members including hired help Cohen, Esther the White created a upsetting place to live. The fact that Rose and Esther the Black are reluctant to leave the compound speak to the strength of Esther the White's character even if this character is cold and unlikeable to most readers. I enjoy magical realism and have enjoyed Hoffman's later novels. Her earlier work shows that she still had much to develop as a writer and left me with much to be desired, especially after digesting a protagonist as unlikeable as Esther the White. At least I know that after The Drowning Season, there are many more quality books of Hoffman's to look forward to, including her current novel which is full of the magical realism that I savor. 3 stars

Review # 2 was written on 2018-01-21 00:00:00 Michael Nesbit EXCERPT: Once, when Esther the Black was eighteen, she sat on the porch of her grandmother's house and dragged her feet in the dust until her toes were coated and dark. She had lived within the walls of the Compound of houses owned by her grandparents all of her life, but she promised herself that this year would be different. Esther struck the head of a blue-tipped kitchen match along the railing; she lit a cigarette and tilted her denim cap back on her dark hair. Although she was the same age her grandmother was when she gave birth to her first and only child, Phillip, Esther the Black looked young, she looked like any orphan scowling in the sun. The cap protected Esther's eyes, but the light was still white hot across her skin; it was the time of year they called Drowning Season, and the day would soon be too hot to sit outdoors; already the heat rose from the grass and the dust in maniac waves. THE BLURB: The matriarch of a Long Island clan with a stubbornly suicidal son and a defiant, restless granddaughter, Esther has hired a Russian landscaper to watch over the family as well as the grounds of their secluded waterfront estate. But he has been watching Esther, too. And his love for her is growing wild enough to uproot them all. MY THOUGHTS: While this is not my favorite book by Alice Hoffman, you can't dispute Hoffman’s talent for making her characters come alive. Hoffman has written a tragic story of a truly dysfunctional family. It is a tale of selfishness, greed, and guilt. It is also the coming of age story of a young woman who has basically raised herself, with the aid of the gardener, and her need to escape; just as her grandmother had done many years earlier. In no way could this book be considered 'enjoyable'. But at the same time, there was no way I could have abandoned The Drowning Season. The characters pulled at my heartstrings, and I could not help but think how different their lives could have been if only they had communicated honestly with one another. 3.5 stars. I listened to the audiobook of The Drowning Season by Alice Hoffman, narrated by Bernadette Dunne and published by Blackstone Audio, via OverDrive. All opinions expressed in this review are entirely my own personal opinions. Please refer to my Goodreads.com profile page or the 'about' page on sandysbookaday.wordpress.com for an explanation of my rating system. This review and others are also published on my blog sandysbookaday.wordpress.com