Sweetwater

The Los Angeles Times

Reading Sweetwater, a novel by Roxana Robinson (This Is My Daughter), is a lot like watching an Olympic diver. We are vaguely aware of the structure and form that holds the diver's efforts together, and yet entranced with the beauty presented. We watch, our breath held, anticipating little errors because we've seen just how difficult such feats are to execute flawlessly. — Bernadette Murphy

The New York Times

Sweetwater poses complex questions; Robinson has expanded her range by asking them. — Alice Elliott Dark

The Washington Post

Roxana Robinson's third novel and sixth book is ambitious, intelligent and gracefully written, none of which will surprise admirers of her work. She is one of our best writers, albeit not one of the best known. — Jonathan Yardley

Publishers Weekly

In four previous works of fiction, Robinson established herself as an astute and sensitive chronicler of domestic tensions, particularly among affluent families in wealthy enclaves of Manhattan and exclusive summer abodes. Here she broadens her canvas to introduce larger social issues tied (sometimes a bit too blatantly) to the ways her characters behave. A widow for two years, 47-year-old Isabel Green marries her ardent suitor, Paul Simmons, hoping that her affection for him will turn into love. During a visit to Sweetwater Lodge, the Simmons family's lakeside compound in the Adirondacks, she meets Paul's cold, disapproving parents, Douglas and Charlotte ("handsome, implacable... like a pair of raptors"), and his bachelor brother, Whit, with whom Paul maintains a vicious sibling rivalry. Fundamental issues soon convince Isabel that her marriage is a dreadful mistake. A committed environmentalist, she becomes embroiled in an argument with Douglas, who scorns environmental programs as impediments to progress. To complicate matters, Isabel and Whit acknowledge the passion that attracts them to each other. Meanwhile, flashbacks reveal the events of Isabel's first marriage and the way her husband died, leaving her guilt-stricken. At this point, nature intervenes in the form of a forest fire that threatens the lodge and its inhabitants, and motivates a wrenching, potentially lethal family drama. Although Sweetwater Lodge succumbs to the winds of change, Isabel is granted a life-affirming insight. Readers may feel that Robinson wraps things up too neatly, but the novel succeeds as a moving study of a woman's emergence from a suffocating life. Agent, Janklow & Nesbit. Author tour. (May 20) Forecast: Robinson's two previous novels have been well reviewed, and her publisher's conviction that this one will be her commercial breakthrough could be fulfilled through a committed marketing campaign. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

In Robinson's sixth book-and her third novel, after This Is My Daughter-Isobel Green arrives at the summer home of her new husband's family. This visit represents her first attempt to become part of the family. Her husband, Paul, is not very good at explaining the complex family dynamic, and Isobel must feel her way cautiously. Unfortunately, she has not completely recovered from the death of her first husband several years earlier, and she does not love Paul-though she hopes that she will in time. Paul's parents are mismatched and argumentative, he a conservative Republican, she a liberal Democrat. Just as Isobel begins to feel the rhythm of the situation, Paul's brother Whit arrives. Tension mounts as sibling rivalries and disappointed hopes surface, and a life-and-death crisis for the group proves to be a turning point for Isobel. She emerges as if reborn and begins a new life. Robinson interweaves scenes of Isobel's present and previous marriages to create a rich and complex fabric of human relationships. Her characters are realistic, her story is compelling, and the resolution sudden and welcome. Recommended for all collections.-Joanna Burkhardt, Coll. of Continuing Education Lib., Univ. of Rhode Island, Providence Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

A Georgia O'Keeffe biographer, storywriter, and third-novelist (This is My Daughter, 1998, etc.) pursues in lusterless fashion a conflicted widow who marries the wrong brother. Water is the dominant metaphor in this emotionally bloodless work: late-40s protagonist Isabel Green 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 staggering betrayal coincides with the approach of a forest fire as the Simmons family tongue-barb each other mercilessly about their shortcomings. 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 attemptsto 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. Robinson takes no risks as a writer ("Isabel's imagination was water, and the more she learned about it, the more marvelous it seemed"), and as a result her writing seems as constipated as her characters. A chilly, desolate work, as painful to read as diving into a frigid lake.