Product Description

Iris Greenfeder, ABD (All But Dissertation), feels the “buts” are taking over her life: all but published, all but a professor, all but married. Yet the sudden impulse to write a story about her mother, Katherine Morrissey, 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 death. It captures the attention of her mother’s former literary agent, who is convinced that Katherine wrote one final manuscript before her strange, untimely end in a fire thirty years ago. So Iris goes back to the remote Hotel Equinox in the Catskills, the place where she grew up, to write her mother’s biography and search for the missing manuscript—and there she unravels a haunting mystery, one that holds more secrets than she ever expected. . . .

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #53963 in Books
• Published on: 2003-12-30
• Released on: 2003-12-30
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 400 pages

Amazon.com Review
Carol Goodman's admirable second novel, The Seduction of Water, has much in common with her bestselling debut, The Lake of Dead Languages. Both feature heroines who are at crossroads in their lives and who choose to move backward and inward. In the first novel, the main character returns to teach at the woodsy private school where she had been a scholarship student, triggering the horrible repetition of the violence that had marred her senior year. In The Seduction of Water, the heroine returns to the woodsy hotel in the Catskills where her parents had worked, in the hope of uncovering her dead mother's secrets. Somehow, the book doesn't feel like a reiteration of the earlier novel, perhaps because the tone throughout is lighter and more sure.

Iris Greenfeder is a 36-year-old barely published New York writer and teacher whose long-term boyfriend, an artist, sees her schedule as strict and therefore will not spend the night, because he likes to get up and paint first thing every morning. When one of Iris's stories about her mother is picked up by a small literary journal with a well-connected editor, things start to happen for her. She becomes convinced that a summer out of the city, working as manager of the old hotel, will give her the perfect setting in which to pen a memoir of her writer mother, as well as an opportunity to look for the rumored manuscript of her mother's final book. But there are those who are just as determined to keep the dead woman's secrets in the grave. Only mildly suspenseful, and relying too much on coincidence, The Seduction of Water isn't the page-turner that Goodman's debut was, but patient readers may find it a richer and more satisfying novel overall. --Regina Marler

From Publishers Weekly
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.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Iris Greenfelder lives in New York City, but her roots are in a resort hotel in the Catskills, where she grew up as the only child of the hotel's managers. A struggling writer, Iris finally finds some success in re-telling the stories once told by her late author mother, the victim of a fire 30 years ago. Consequently, she decides to write a biography of her mother and returns to the hotel to work for a new management team while doing research and looking for a manuscript that her mother may have written before her death. The information that she uncovers is far from what she expected, however, and her digging upsets key people in her mother's past. With this exciting second book, coming close on the heels of The Lake of Dead Languages, Goodman establishes herself as a writer to watch in the field of literary thrillers. Sure to be in demand in most public libraries.
--Karen Traynor, Sullivan Free Lib., Chittenango, NY
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Customer Reviews

The Lake of Dead Languages Vs. The Seduction of Water
Admittedly, this is a good, engrossing book. I am not going to recount the story because it's already recounted in many other reviews but I'm writing about what I think of the book since it may help other avid readers decide whether to give this book a try. First of all, if you'd read and like the Lake of Dead Languages by the same author then I urge you to try reading this. However, if you are still skeptical, then I will give you the following comparison pointers:
First of all, the Lake of Dead Languages is a thriller all the way. The story keeps you reading from the beginning to the end and there's no question at all that it's a page-turner. On the other hand, The Seduction of Water is a little more 'classic', the story somehow not moving as fast. This is because it is also a love story. Her descriptions are still chilling and morbid, but the reader is not as tempted to turn the page as much as the last book. When I read the book I feel that only half of the book is an element of 'mystery'.
If you are looking for a very fast page-turner , then this is not the book for you. In that case, read The Lake of Dead Languages.
Don't get me wrong. This is still a great book with a great storyline, it just goes slower, weaved with a love story that gives it a more 'classic' than a 'mystery' feel. However, the ending is suspenseful and I still highly recommend the book!

A book to savor
Once again, Carol Goodman has woven a world filled with complex, multi-dimensional characters, an absorbing plot, and a masterful use of language that made my time reading this book magical and something apart from my daily life. I often have four or five books going at once, but from the moment I picked up Seduction of Water, I was unable to leave the Hotel Equinox until reluctantly turning the last page.

A lyrical telling of one woman's search for truth
Several years ago, I read Goodman's wonderful novel The Lake of the Dead Languages and it was one of those books that just stuck with me. I gave it to my husband to read and, shortly thereafter, stumbled upon this book and wondered why I hadn't yet read anything more by Goodman. While I found this book to be another lovely and lyrical tale, I don't think I liked it as much as The Lake of the Dead Languages, though that's not meant to be a criticism.

As with her previous novel, Goodman works several themes into the novel. The main character of this novel is similar to the main character in that previous work in that they are both women who appear to be in a sort of stasis. Iris Greenfeder, the protagonist of this novel, is somewhat aware that she is a soul in flux but she doesn't quite seem to know how to shake herself out of her torpor. Iris herself puts it best when she notes that her life is a series of "all buts": all but thesis, all but married, all but a writer. Her character exemplifies the trap that we all fall into in which we yearn for the things we really want in life but stay where we are because we know it, which therefor makes it safe. Unfulfilled in her career and her relationship, she is, however, reluctant to be proactive and seek what it is she desires.

A lot of her uncertainty is tied to the mysterious death of her mother, who was registered as another man's wife when she died in a hotel fire when Iris was young. Before her death, Iris's mother had written two of the planned three novels of trilogy and Iris returns to the hotel where she grew up, ostensibly to work on a memoir for her mother while seeking the manuscript for her mother's third novel. Iris, however, does precious little of either and, instead, spends the summer at the hotel engaged in an affair with an ex-convict who is her former student.

Though Iris's search for the truth about her mother is a central theme of the novel, her search for the truth in her own life is just as prominent. As her relationship with Aidan progresses and she begins to think about leaving her old and rather stultifying life behind her, she must face the truth about what she's made of her own life. Has she been so obsessed with what happened to her mother and why that she has forgotten how to live herself?

Like the main character in The Lake of the Dead Languages, Iris's quest is more internal and while it is tied to a mystery, the mystery is really secondary. Goodman writes eloquently about women who think they know what they want out of life but who don't quite have the courage to pursue it. It's a compelling theme and one with which I imagine many women can identify.