The Drowning Tree by Carol Goodman: A Review

The Drowning Tree by Carol Goodman
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Juno McKay's best friend, Christine Webb, is found dead in an upturned kayak on the private property of her alma mater, a women's college in upstate New York.  Before she died, Christine asked Juno if she thought that a person could love someone so much that the beloved would have no choice but to love them back. Fourteen years earlier, Juno's husband, Neil, took her and their infant daughter out on the Hudson River, and in a fit of madness, attempted to drown them all. The events of that day, Neil's subsequent institutionalization, and their divorce have haunted Juno ever since. In the investigation into Christine's death, questions about inevitable love, mental illness, and family ties rise to the surface like long-forgotten pieces of a tragic shipwreck.

Carol Goodman is a talented writer. This is the second book of hers that I have read, the first being The Lake of Dead Languages. If the two are representative of her work as a whole, Goodman likes gothic tales with a long-lost princess twist set against the background of liberal arts women's colleges. Other common themes include water, troubled marriages, and the ties between women. Her water images (Heart Lake in The Lake, and the Hudson River in The Drowning Tree) are often beautiful and very evocative. And I like her exploration of women's relationships a great deal.

However, while all of these elements combined to a pleasurable effect in The Lake, I'm flat out irritated with The Drowning Tree. To be fair, I have not finished it. I've skimmed and skipped and come to the conclusion that it is not something I'm interested in finishing. Why? I'm happy to tell you, dear Reader.

I don't believe in inevitable love, the way Goodman (actually, I suppose it was Dante) presents it. I think it's an absurd concept, and ridiculously romantic. The scenes in which Juno and her ex-husband finally meet again are too silly for me to swallow. Perhaps I find it too much of a stretch to think that after such a traumatic split (he tried to kill his wife and child), and fourteen years of absence that there might be any love left. That's my cynic showing.

SPOILER ALERT

Also, it turns out that Christine was the victim of not one, but two TOTALLY unrelated murder attempts that converged at the same time. Implausible much?

Finally, the characters had potential, but ultimately were not convincing. Perhaps, I am a little tired of the whole women's college scene as well. Who knew it was such a world unto itself? Not I. This one will be going back to the library early.

Happy Reading,
The Professor's Wife


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