The Drowning Tree

Rating:
Summary: an absorbing read
Review: "The Drowning Tree" may not be to the average mystery reader's taste because it is very introverted and a little slow-moving. However, it is a well written novel, and if you enjoy Ovid's "Metamorphoses," Pre-Raphaelite painting and a nice slowish-moving (but with lots of character development) mystery novel, you're bound to enjoy "The Drowning Tree."

While Juno McKay may still live and work in her small hometown, she's always tried to avoid attending any social functions at Penrose College, mostly because she failed to graduate (an unplanned pernancy) with her class, and because of the stunning and dramatic manner in which her young husband, Neil Buchwald, descended into madness two years into their marriage. But when her best friend, Christine Webb, uses their fifteenth class reunion as an opportunity to deliver a lecture on the Pre-Raphaelites and the Arts & Crafts movement and the impact that this movement had on the college's founders, Ambrose and Eugenie Penrose, Juno girds up her courage in order to attend. The lecture turns out to be both informative and controversial as Christine hints at the true nature of the relationship that Ambrose Penrose had with his sister-in-law, Claire (who later went mad and was confined at Briarwood, the very place that, almost 80 years later, Juno's husband, Neil, was institutionalized at), as well as delivering a different interpretation of the stained-glass window that Penrose had designed (now gracing the college's library), and which Juno's small glass company is about to repair and restore. But while the lecture may have gone down well, Juno senses that Christine is not all that happy. Something is disturbing Christine, but unfortunately the two friends don't have the time to have a real heart-to-heart before Christine has to leave to go back to the city. And a week later, Juno finds Christine's body in the sunken lake on the old, ruined Penrose estate. Because of her history with depression and substance abuse, everyone assumes that Christine has killed herself. But Juno is not so sure; and when, in the course of her research about the Penrose stained-glass window, she comes across Eugenie's diary, with entries that seem to suggest that the Penroses had one particularly big skeleton in their closet, a secret that someone may be willing to kill to protect, she begins to wonder about the connection between Christine and the Penroses...

Sedately paced and of a literary-bent (don't worry though, Carol Goodman is very good about not talking down to her audience), "The Drowning Tree" was a real treat to read. The novel is told almost exclusively from Juno's point-of-view, and in Juno, Carol Goodman has created a chief protagonist that almost anyone can relate to -- a very human woman with strengths as well as weaknesses. The authour fully immerses the reader into Juno's life and with her concerns, and this gave the novel a sense of immediacy which (fortunately) downplayed the moderate pacing quite a bit. I also enjoyed all the literary references to Ovid's "Metamorphoses" and the vivid descriptions of the art that portrayed in these myths. But what made this book truly amazing was the manner in which the subplots involving the Penroses in the past, Christine's murder and Briarwood Institution all get entwined into one lyrical whole, thus making "The Drowning Tree" both a very lyrical and memorable read indeed.

Rating:
Summary: No Surprises--Just Good Reading
Review: Having met Ms. Goodman some years ago when she published her first novel (I worked with her brother), I am always hoping she will really break out with a huge success. Though this novel continues her pattern of subtly eerie thrillers, I don't know if this novel stands out enough to do it for her in this world of Dan Brown-type success. It's unfortunate because she is a strong writer.

In this novel, Ms. Goodman's protagonist is Juno McKay, a college drop-out due to pregnancy who has spent the past 15 years bringing up her daughter alone after her husband goes mad, tries to kill them and ends up in an insane asylum. Following in her father's footsteps, she has become a restorer of stained glass. While restoring a window for her should-have-been alma mater, her best friend dies and she becomes swept up in the investigation of the death.

There are plenty of twist and turns in the story though the real joy of her stories are not surprises (they aren't really that surprising) but the prose. I may not really be able to believe that it takes Juno as long as it does to read the diary pages she finds (I mean, it's 10 minutes reading max and there's a mystery here, for crying out loud) and she's pretty dense about some things (like Neil, for instance) but, like the Hudson that flows through the center of this story (OK, I also enjoy
the fact that for the second time now, she has placed key action in the north tip of Manhattan--places I know because I live here), it flows easily towards its wild conclusion. It's a good read.

If Ms. Goodman is showing an overall weakness, it is borrowing from herself. She stays well within her safety net here: another northeast school campus intrigue with a well-educated but struggling woman protagonist. However, it's difficult to be critical since many authors tend to stay within a certain milleau and they're always told to "write what you know." Still, it might be nice for her to break some new ground in her next novel. Though I have to admit, I am interested in what obsesses her about water: The Lake of Dead Languages, The Seduction of Water and, now, The Drowning Tree. (Plus a lot of drowned characters in three novels.) Maybe we'll get some more clues in the next one.

Rating:
Summary: No spark, no fizzle
Review: I enjoyed Goodman's first two academic gothic mysteries quite a lot but this one never even achieves sufficient spark to fizzle out. The book just never clicks, there's nothing for the reader to go for. Well, there is one thing and I thought it finest kind -- the underwater sculpture garden. That could have been so cool ... but, in the end, wasn't.

Rating:
Summary: No spark, no sizzle.
Review: I enjoyed Goodman's first two academic gothic mysteries quite a lot but this one never even achieves sufficient spark to fizzle out. The book never clicks, there's nothing for the reader to go for. Well, there is one thing and I thought it finest kind -- the underwater sculpture garden. That could have been so cool ... but, in the end, wasn't enough.


Rating:
Summary: A book for mystery lovers or just lovers of beautiful prose
Review: I just finished reading The Drowning Tree. While I enjoyed the several unexpected twists in the story, what kept me entwined in its pages was Goodman's gorgeous writing style. The worlds Ms. Goodman create are complex, heady places that I can sink into comfortably. Often, I return to a sentence to savor its flavor once more. In an era of jerky TV advertisements that seem both to reflect and to further erode our attention spans, I find Goodman's books expect far more of her readers. Her stories recapture an innocent age of literature, one where readers are not condenscended to, but where we have to reach out a bit and to extend ourselves. I am looking forward with great anticipation to Goodman's next effort.

Rating:
Summary: You will lose yourself in this book.
Review: The Drowning Tree is a modern gothic. The setting pulls you in... academia, the glass factory, the ruins of Astolat, and most of all, the sunken gardens. The character of Neil is intriguing and Goodman really knows how to pull you along, only releasing information as you need to know it. I couldn't wait to read this book every night and was sad when it was over. My only complaint about Carol Goodman is that she only has three books. I wish she had twenty. She's fantastic.

Rating:
Summary: Good Mystery, But You Won't Drown in It
Review: This is a good example of a well-written book that just falls short of being outstanding. I'm not sure why--the characters are interesting, the plot is mostly intriguing, it's well-written, but it just didn't grab my attention to the point where I couldn't put it down. It was a good read, however. The storyline is about two friends from college many years after the fact. One friend has discovered some new, but disturbing information about the family that founded the college and the other has been hired by that family to restore a glass window memorializing the matriarch of the clan. First friend disappears, turns up murdered, and second friend uses some of the discoveries she makes while restoring the window to solve the mystery and catch the murderer. An interesting subplot also evolves around the relationship between the glass-artist and her ex-husband, who cracked up many years earlier and has been living in the mental asylum associated with the founding family. It makes for an interesting read and there was no hint at who the murderer was. Definitely worth your time!

Rating:
Summary: A book you can't put down!
Review: This is Carol Goodman's best book yet! I couldn't put this book down. Her ability to combine mystery/suspense with in-depth emotional writing amazes me. The Drowning Tree has similar Goth elements to The Lake of Dead Languages. Like "Lake" and The Seduction of Water, you have a heroine with a rich mysterious past. Juno was by far my favorite heroine yet, one of my favorite heroines ever. Elements of mythology, 19th-c art, and stain-glass artistry are beautifully woven in. If you like books like The Da Vinci Code or any other "art mystery" books, you'll love this. All I can say is I read this book in 24 hours and could not put it down.

Rating:
Summary: Moody and Evocative
Review: With prose as fluid as the watery scenes that populate the novel, Carol Goodman has written a mystery that brims with color both literally and figuratively.
Juno McKay is a stained glass restorer who goes to hear her best friend give a lecture at their alma mater: A lecture that manages to be controversial since it sheds some unflattering light on the two sisters who the college is named after. However, the story really begins when her friend never makes it back to her New York apartment, and what transpires brings Juno's own haunted past back to life; a past that includes a mentally ill husband who tried to murder she and her daughter fifteen years earlier. The book's beautiful prose adds layers to the Gothic and moody tone, and although I felt the resolution was a bit of a letdown it still was an engaging read.