Sweetwater

by Roxana Robinson

In this brilliant, luminous novel, one of our finest realist writers gives us a story of surpassing depth and emotional power. Acclaimed for her lucid and compassionate exploration of the American family, Roxana Robinson sets her new work on familiar terrain—New York City and the Adirondacks—but with Sweetwater she transcends the particulars of the domestic sphere with a broader, more encompassing vision. In this poignant account of a young widow and her second marriage, Robinson expands her scope to include the larger natural world as well as the smaller, more intimate one of the home.

Isabel Green’s marriage to Paul Simmons, after the death of her first husband, marks her reconnection to life—a venture she’s determined will succeed. But this proves to be harder than she’d anticipated, and the challenges of starting afresh seem more complicated in adulthood. Staying at the Simmons lodge for their annual summer visit, Isabel finds herself entering into a set of familial complexities. She struggles to understand her new husband, his elderly, difficult parents and his brother, whose relationship with Paul seems oddly fraught. Furthermore, her second marriage begins to cast into sharp relief the troubling echoes of her first. Isabel’s professional life plays a part as well: a passionate environmental advocate, she is aware of the tensions within the mountain landscape itself during a summer of spectacular beauty and ominous drought.

In her cool, elegant prose, Robinson gracefully delivers a plot that is complex, surprising and ultimately wrenching in its impact. As the strands of family are woven tightly and inevitably together, and as the past painfully informs the present, the vivid backdrop of the physical world provides its own eloquent dynamic. Sweetwater is a stunning achievement by a writer at the peak of her craft.

Genres: Fiction, Literary Fiction, Novels, Contemporary, New York, Family, Adult Fiction

352 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2003

About the author

Roxana Robinson is the author of eight works of fiction, including the novels Cost and Sparta. She is also the author of Georgia O’Keeffe: A Life. A former Guggenheim Fellow, she edited The New York Stories of Edith Wharton and wrote the introduction to Elizabeth Taylor’s A View of the Harbour, both published by NYRB Classics. Robinson is currently the president of the Authors Guild.

Reviews

[Renee · Rating 5 out of 5]

(From Booklist Review "Critically acclaimed but not well known, Robinson will reach a broader audience with this hold-your-breath novel of loss and love".)
Sweetwater runs like a low tide; quiet, and very powerful. This is a story of loss and remarriage, and of the harm done to, and by, vulnerable men and women. This is the second book I have read by this author. She has an astounding talent for interlacing a story. I finished this book last night around 1:00 am; this was hard to put down. Robinson delves into the fine points of the human character with a keen sense of humor and compassion, but probes deeply into the many complexes that make up human relationships.

[Kate · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not great. Good, well, sort of good, in a predictable kind of way.
What I did like: I love the Adironacks, so I liked the scenes on the lake. And I liked the dysfunctional people: the alcoholic mother-in-law and the bipolar first husband. She was obnoxious, he was unpredictable, but both pushed people into action. Unfortunately these characters were at peripheral.
What I didn't like:
1.) I didn't much like Isabel and I don't know why three fairly interesting men, (OK, two interesting and one dolt) kept falling for her.
2.) It was preachy too, especially when Isabel lists, for several paragraphs, all the reasons she loves water. (Well, don't we all?)
3.)Is it really possible that seemly friendly brothers became so estranged over an incident that was, well, kind of trivial?
4.)In spite of the author's attempt to wrap certain information in mystery (like the death of husband #1), it was predictable.In the movies, when a character coughs, however weakly, you can pretty much count on them dying before the credits roll. In a book where the characters are stuck with each other in a wilderness cabin for two weeks and on the first night at dinner the talk is that the summer has been too dry and there are fires just to the north, you can pretty much count on the book ending in an inferno. Nuf said.

[Karen · Rating 3 out of 5]

This story revolves around a recently widowed woman who decides she will be content if she is married to a man who cares about her. The problem? She does not love him. He takes her to his childhood vacation home in the Adirondacks where she meets his family and learns about his strained family dynamic, especially after her husband Paul's estranged brother, Whit, arrives on scene.

Ultimately, the marriage is tested and strained to the point she realizes it was a mistake.

Pros: Robinson's love of nature resonates throughout and creates brilliant passages of forests, great metaphors about life and natures.

Cons: Dialogue is flat and often repetitive...as in, the character just said that same sentence on the last page. Some of the plot turns made me re-read the page to see if I had missed something as they were so sudden and abrupt. This left me questioning the believability of the story.

Overall, a pleasant depiction of a woman's life choices and consequences, but it needed less in some places, more in others.

[eb · Rating 3 out of 5]

Unsatisfying. Robinson keeps the reader interested, but only by setting up false mysteries (how did Michael die?) and telling the story out of chronological order. I never believed that the Isabel of the later time period was the same Isabel of the earlier one. I found the lectures on the environment stultifying. I felt yanked around from section to section. I was sulky and resistant during the final conflagration, which came too quickly and tidily. And I never believed for a moment that some dumb misunderstanding about a girl neither of them really knew or cared about would damage Whit and Paul's brotherly relationship for all eternity.

[Kathleen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Isabel entered a new marriage on the rebound, trying to move on from the dramatic death of her former husband, Michael. Part of the books details her first marriage, her son, her measures to have another child, and the other part is in the present, married to Paul, and spending some time with his parents at their family home in the Adirondacks on a lake.
Enter Whit, Paul's brother and rival, and everything changes.
Emotions in this book run high and Robinson draws out minute details in the plot...the reader is riveted to the spot, not turning until she turns to something else. She enhances all the five senses in the telling of this story. One of her best!

[Sheri · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the first novel by this author that I have read and, true to my character, when I really like an author, I devour everything she's written. Good story about the struggle of a second marriage. Lots of stuff about the environment, sound stuff, credible and interesting. I read it in a day and then I read "Cost" the next day!

[Carmen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good book! Her descriptions made me feel like I was right there in the scene! I like what the story seems to be saying about mental illness (sometimes no matter how much you love a person, you can't save them) and also about marrying too soon after a previous marriage. In the end, I found myself reading faster and faster and even breathing faster, she was that good at describing danger!

[Fredsky · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is narrated by a woman named Isabel telling about her second marriage. Both of her husbands considered her fabulous, but I couldn't see exactly why. Her first husband, a bi-polar journalist, subjected her to emotional abuse. And her second husband was a peculiar choice. She admits that she agreed to marry him sort of to shut him up. Her terrible choices ripen and she suffers.

I give this book about a 3.25. There are some good characters and some good scenes, and I would have liked it much more had Isabel shown any real spunk with the two men she married. Or, at least, some self-awareness about how she victimized herself.

[Lauren Albert · Rating 3 out of 5]

Anyone who follows my reviews knows that I read a fair number of (what would be considered) depressing books. When I finished Sweetwater, I began to think about what redeemed those books that failed to redeem this one. Because I found Sweetwater depressing in a way that I didn't find many of those other books. I realized that a book is most depressing when you walk away from it with nothing but the despair of the story. When you can walk away from it with a memory of the beauty of the language or with a new understanding of human beings and the world, it can be sad but not bleak. I found Sweetwater bleak because I didn't walk away with any of those things.

[Nancy Phillips · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best books Ive ever read. Robinson gets into the souls, hearts and minds of her characters and magically brings them alive. Her descriptions are beautiful. She writes with grace and emotion. The plots carry you along swiftly to the point where it is nearly impossible to stop reading. I finished it in two evenings and wanted to go on.

[Erica · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderful, powerful, devastating

Roxana Robinson is my new favorite contemporary author. Her portrayal of love and relationships in all of their complexities — brilliant.

[Bonny · Rating 3 out of 5]

As soon as I finished Leaving I looked for more of Roxana Robinson's writing. She wrote Sweetwater 21 years ago and I think her writing was much less developed than it was in Leaving. This is the story of Isabel, her life with her husband Michael and his mental health, their struggles with fertility, Michael's death, and her subsequent unsatisfactory life with her second husband Paul. It's told in non-chronologic order which caused me some confusion, but it's also a very bleak story. There was an event that happened so quickly without explanation that I had to go back and re-read to make sure I hadn't missed something. Much of the novel takes place in the Adirondacks and these sections helped me to round this 2.5-star book up to 3 stars. This book felt shallow yet filled with despair, and I would recommend Robinson's more mature writing in Leaving over this earlier novel.

[Kathleen Hulser · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautifully rendered story of fraught intimacy. Robinson leads us gently to the insights characters struggle so bravely to achieve. Small moments count, glances, silences, the pillow re-arranged have the subtlety of a Ozu film. As always current affairs twines through family conversations, excavating rifts and suggesting how family politics and social policy catalyze relationships. Sweetwater moves the plot forward swiftly, using small doses of incident to stand for larger swathes of meaning. The Adirondack setting in a Gilded Age lodge reminds us of how conservation in the US had deep roots in certain wealthy, landed families who not only liked trees, they owned them (cf Teddy Roosevelt). The vocabulary of nature, scents, sounds, weather, fauna give the prose the quality of a tapestry. Robinson is tender and just with her flawed cast of well-meaning grown-ups, tangled in emotions that take a lifetime to sort.

[Tifnie · Rating 3 out of 5]

My mother in law gave me this book to read and now that I'm finished with the book, I'm a bit confused about why she thought I would enjoy it. We are having coffee today so I will have to ask her about it.

Sweetwater is about Isobel who after recovering from the death of her first husband marries a man who ends up with the very similar characters as her first husband. The book weaves a story between the first husband and the second, often reflecting on those qualities and how Isobel had to tread lightly around subjects, whits, and temperament.

The calming voice in the book happens to be the backdrop of the Adirondacks and a lakehouse, Sweetwater Lodge, that has been in the family for over 70 years.

[Danielle · Rating 3 out of 5]

Started slowly, but as I stuck with it, Sweetwater got intriguing. I really did not like Paul, though. What the heck was his problem? I would have given this book 4 stars except for the terrible ending. After all the drawn-out descriptions and plot events of the rest of the book, I didn't buy the random 1-page closing to this novel. It was like a random page from another book was mistakenly tacked on to the book.

[Susan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting, good but disappointing. Isabel and her second husband visit his family in the Adirondacks (a place where I have spent a lot of wonderful time) - and "shit happens." Although the books explores themes of interest to me - including depression and mental illness and its impact on families - these story lines didn't add up. Why does the very nice guy suddenly become a decidedly not nice guy? So, not inclined to look for other books by this author.

[Lisa (NY) · Rating 4 out of 5]

I relished the world of Sweetwater - both the rich interior life of Isabel Green and the vivid Adirondack setting. Robinson steadily brings to light revelations about Green's prior marriage while we watch her current marriage deteriorate. I love the experience of having my perceptions grow and change as I read. At times I wished for more editing - Robinson can be very wordy - but by the end I was on the edge of my seat. I can't wait to read her newest novel, Leaving.

[Kaelin]

Beautiful and introspective, but so sad. A story about about so many things; namely, mental illness and it’s reaches on a partner, womanhood, grief, and climate change. I loved the long passages about the underground water system and mountains and forest fires. The dialogue felt bare at times, but the characters were so strong I could fill in the blanks. A good read for fellow melancholics.

[Jean Becker · Rating 3 out of 5]

An appropriate read for Earth Day as the environment plays a major role in this novel. I had problems with Isabel from the start. I never read a character so out of touch with her own feelings or experiences. She should have come with a warning label.
So she wasn’t much fun to read about. However, the writing is dreamy, intelligent and beautiful.
This book has half of what I like in a book.

[Sara · Rating 2 out of 5]

I didn’t like the main character. I guess her personality was revealed well, I just didn’t like her. At the end, there is a huge forest fire. That part was well written and scary. I smelled the smoke and felt the fear.

[Dean · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another very fine book by Roxana Robinson, "Sweetwater" concerns itself with love and marriage, but it tells a bleak tale. Below is most of the Kirkus review (slightly edited). My chief objection to this book is that it telegraphs the climactic event well before it happens, unlike the revelations we find in her earlier books.

Kirkus: Water is the dominant metaphor in this emotionally bloodless work: Isabel Green, a woman in her late 40s, is an expert in effluent contamination at NYC’s Environmental Protection Resources, and her brand-new self-important second husband, Paul Simmons, has brought her for the first time to visit his family’s lakefront summer home, Sweetwater, in the Adirondacks.

Isabel is still recovering from the depression-induced suicide of her first husband and has married Paul out of sympathetic pity and hope for comfort in old age—a decision soon revealed as cruel and shortsighted. Paul and his aged, unloving parents are severely stiffened WASPs with crosses to bear: Paul’s own lifetime grudge concerns a jealous rivalry with his younger brother, Whitney, a never-married Wyoming conservation-biologist whom Paul suspects of stealing his girlfriends. In fact, Whit does attract Isabel, with his stories of observing and protecting western lions, and her betrayal of Paul coincides with the approach of a forest fire.

The story is a strange amalgamation: a treatise on environmental stewardship; an elegiac memoir about the desertion experienced after the suicide of a spouse; and an awkward growing-to-maturity feminine manifesto. Although Isabel is reading Proust (mentioned offhandedly), her utter lack of self-knowledge is preposterous after Robinson’s meticulous chronicling of her early courtship with and marriage to Michael; motherhood and later attempts to conceive a second child; career development and fear and denial of Michael’s growing depression—as preposterous as Isabel’s marriage to a man merely to be nice.

A chilly, desolate work, but for me it was a page turner.

[Terrill · Rating 3 out of 5]

Book about a woman who remarries after the death of her first husband; she's navigating the new marriage while dealing with the fallout of her first one. Largely set at her new family's summer home in the Adirondacks.

[Rachel · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read Leaving by Roxana Robinson and really liked it. I then read Sweetwater and felt that the angst was repetitive. Too dark, too sad, too unbelievable. Not one ray of sunshine in this entire book.

[Drew · Rating 5 out of 5]

Roxana Robinson is so good!

She conveys complex internal landscapes with a light but sweeping touch. Her characters are real with relationships that are subtle, nuanced, and deftly drawn.

This novel is wrenching, wrecking, wonderful.

[Carrie Cantalupo-Sharp · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another stunningly real book. The depressed Michael was so eerily real. While I mostly liked Isabel at times she made me very angry. I didn’t always totally understand her. I wasn’t sure why all three men loved her. She seemed off and on very very selfish.

[Nancy · Rating 5 out of 5]

As advertised, a luminous novel about love and loss. The writing is wonderful. I was captivated.

[Emma · Rating 4 out of 5]

Exquisitely written. Appreciated how the landscape became a character in the book akongside the humans. Some of the scenes were so gripping they continue to stay with me days later.

[Margaret · Rating 4 out of 5]

Intense!

[Marti · Rating 4 out of 5]

The story of a widow and her 2nd marriage becomes so much more: a dissection of true love, loyalty and reflections on what it means to be truly alive.

[Lucretia · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is some luscious prose with quite a twisting plot and deep analysis of life.