Book Review - The Seduction of Water

Synopsis: 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 - & 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 autobiography & search for the missing manuscript - & there she unravels a haunting mystery, one that holds more secrets than she ever expected ...

First Line: "My favorite story when I was small, the one I begged for nigh

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t after night, was "The Selkie.""

Random Quote: "It starts like that; the drips of water guiding our hands & mouths to the rivulets they make on our skin."

Review: This was a fun, quick read - less of a thriller & more of a love story. Goodman is a great writer & the use of fairy tales in this novel was well-executed (& one of my favorite things in books). I liked the characters & the story & the settings.

I also enjoyed The Lake of Dead Languages, although it is more thriller & less gothic than this one.