Drowning Ruth, Christina Schwarz, Ballentine Books, 2000
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Jane Austen, Carol Shields, A Lipper/Viking Book, 2001

Today, the name Jane Austen is synonymous with classic literature and the grand movies Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice based on two of her eight novels. But during her lifetime (1775-1817) finding an appreciative audience outside her tight circle of family and friends was a struggle until the end.

Considered a writer of marriage novels, Austen did not marry; and the author of this small, compactly written biography takes a wide sweep across the territory of Austen's life to explore and ponder this fact. The tidbits of facts that Shields gleaned from many of the Austen biographies offers a quick, insider's glimpse: her unsettled domestic life, her heartbreak when a lover is sent away by family friends because he could do better.

Through careful selection of the details readers come away with a full view and enlarged feelings for this woman who, at age 13, designed to self-educate herself in a time when women weren't encouraged to do so. Her father, the village vicar, encouraged his daughter to read and he never supervised her selections. It's reported she read everything she could get her hands on.

For the most part Shields' own engaging writing style travels easily within a chronological approach to the subject and generously dips into future events to bring more meaning to circumstances. Slightly annoying is her need to remind us one too many times that Austen and her sister, Cassandra shared a bedroom their whole life, that neither married, that both often stayed with relatives for extended periods. We know this. The repeated reminder sometimes feels like filler, as if Shields had to register so many pages and didn't quite know how to do that. Recapitulation can be overdone.

Still, the lively writing gracefully winds through Austen's life and this, after all, is what the book is about. That 160 letters of hers survive, that family memoirs remain in archives allowed Shields to give a close-hand account of Austen. It's touching when a nephew recalls that "Aunt Jane quietly turned over her writing paper when someone walked in the room." Her work in progress wasn't open to scrutiny until it was finished. Then she was openly hungry for feedback.

Shields gave a good account of Austen's love of audience, even as a young girl. Growing up with seven siblings who loved theater, many dramatic family plays were performed in an outbuilding with elaborate homemade and painted sets. With the wit and quick thinking of characters in Austen's novels that have easily transferred to the screen, it's evident she picked up an ear for dialog from these amateur productions.

A member of the Jane Austen Society of North America, Shields is steeped in Austen lore and doesn't believe in mixing rumor with conjecture. If later in Austen's life a gentleman friend died, leaving her loveless again, it's not verifiable. By all accounts, the story may be confused with an actual event in Cassandra's life. It's this sort of scholarly hesitation that lends credibility throughout the book.

The genius of Austen is painted through a picture of a woman who struggled to find balance between intellect and marriage, which often in her time seemed at odds. Shields writes: "The doors of universities were closed to females, and girls' education…consisted of what might be called "accomplishments."

By accounts left by relatives, Austen produced fine embroidery and played the pianoforte effortlessly, two of many "accomplishments" of girls preparing for marriage. But Jane's heart was with the written word, as Shields so carefully outlines, and her scrutiny of the society in which she lived was sharp. Her two greatest novels were written before she was 25.

Family changes and coming financial strains took Austen from her beloved country village to Bath, a bustling cultural city. As Shields writes, "She was snatched from the good novel she had imagined herself in and placed into an alternative narrative of class bitterness."

This is a small book with a wide overview of an important writer and Shields' handling of the material brings an inspiration to read Austen's novels, not just watch the movies made from them.

Drowning Ruth, Christina Schwarz, Ballentine Books, 2000

This is one of those books you hope won't end. Then when it does, the story lingers and linger it's that engaging. Even before the story even gets underway, it's immediately apparent the book will be a joy. The writing is superb.

Author Christina Schwarz has a knack for taking our very human way of thinking half-thoughts, our tendency to narrow situations down to basic elements and then write from that perspective. Her clear, simple sentences are literary delights just in themselves. But suspicion soon begins seeping in; those elemental sentences slowly feel wrought with an unnamed tension. Something eerie is going on.

It's no accident this book hinges on undisclosed trepidation. In portraying Amanda Starkey, the main first person narrator, the author had to be subtle. Amanda is not one to be up front. Prim, set in her ways and always prepared to tell how things 'should' be, Amanda becomes an example of how even the most modest life can become a thick mass of intricacies.

Drowning Ruth is a story filled with shame, lies, loss and dark, dark secrets.
Set in 1919, the story takes place on the edge of a rural lake in Wisconsin. From the outside the Starkey family farm looks tranquil enough and life there easily carries on with the never-ceasing patterns of the seasons. The family also owns an island they don't discover is theirs until Amanda and her sister Mattie are young girls. Then their father has a summer home built on the island, and that summer home becomes pivotal throughout the book.

Family members are always rowing to the island for various reasons, and live on the island at various times. But why did the two sisters, along with Mattie's little girl Ruth, decide to live there one winter? Amanda, who'd left and received training as a nurse, returned home "for a spell." Mattie's husband was off to war. The hired hand, still working the farm long after the girls' parents had died, couldn't come to any logical reason for the girls moving to the island. And they always meet him down at the dock when he rowed their supplies over. They never invite him up to the house for a meal, like they used to. And one day he happens upon Amanda who turns and runs from him.

But none of the reasons for any of this odd behavior come out in a straightforward way. The book twists and turns through layers of flashbacks, the memories rich and solid as Amanda slowly begins her confession. But the story unfolds in fits and starts. It's as if Amanda only divulges parts at a time and only when she feels safe enough to do so. Piece by piece the reader is given the whole story of how Ruth drowned, of how Mattie drowned, and then of how Amanda continues to drown in her guilt. She sloshes against the truth of her life and finally it becomes necessary to tell Ruth at least some of her past.

Ruth remembers a baby crying. She remembers hiding under the bed. She has snippets of a childhood that at some point need to be pieced together. By the time she is out of high school, she is tired of being kept in the dark.

Schwarz is masterful at how the truth is revealed to the reader. For instance, when Mary Louise, a bait and tackle shop owner recalls the night Amanda brought her the newborn baby, she remembers there was blood still on Amanda's hand. Amanda told her the young housemaid had died during the delivery. She knew Mary Louise had lost all her children, and it only seemed right to give her this baby.
All through the book Amanda is forever touching a scar on her hand and only near the end is the reader allowed to put the blood, the baby, the scar, and that one winter night together.

The only problem with the book is the voice of the different sections. Amanda and a few of the other characters not only switch back and forth in time, but move between first and third person. There seems to be no obvious reason for this and it tends to interrupt the flow of the story. But other than this one flaw, the book is a stunning portrayal of humanity. It focuses on a single family, but the story easily becomes an avenue into the universal family. Betrayals, regrets, fears, secrets-what family doesn't have these? And to what extent do they propel a family? Finishing the book will leave you wondering and pondering about the Starkey family as well as your own.

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