The Drowning Season
by Alice Hoffman
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The spellbinding story of two women named Esther who discover the power of the past over the present Esther the Black is eighteen years old and ready to leave the Compound, the collection of cottages on the North Shore of Long Island where she has lived all her life. But as July turns to August and her family braces for the height of Drowning Season, she realizes that she may not be able to escape her family's legacy. Her father will find a way through the locked sea-wall gate and try to show more drown himself in the harbor, her mother will be too hung over to leave her cottage for days at a time, and her grandmother will refuse to say a single kind word. Esther the White left home when she was just a girl, fleeing her abusive parents across a frozen Russian river with a pocketful of stolen jewels. Life has taught her to be cold and unyielding, but in the heat of another fraught summer at the Compound, she feels her resolve melting away. Cohen, the landscaper and chauffeur responsible for keeping her son out of the water, looks at her with a desire she finds harder and harder to resist. Her granddaughter's name may be an insult to tradition, but does that mean the poor girl should never feel her grandmother's love or know her story? Graceful, haunting, and wise. show lessTags
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Member Reviews
Esther the Black was born to hate her grandmother. Her father named her as an insult to his mother, Esther the White. Everyone knows you don't name a child after the living, only the dead. Because Esther the White rules the family with harsh words and a hating heart, even insisting that the family live in seclusion, Esther the Black has had a compromised upbringing. She longs for the day when she can escape not only Long Island, but her grandmother as well. But, then there is the grandmother's view of the world. She bears resentment for having to raise her son's child while he fantasizes about suicide every summer and his wife tilts the gin bottle back a little too often. Each generation, grandmother and granddaughter, has her own show more demons to battle. The Drowning Season is the story of how they go to battle against each other and eventually, when love conquers all, for each other. show less
Seems as if there were many unresolved issues left hanging at the end of this book. The story was rather flat and predictable. Didn't care much for this one - and I had high hopes coming from this author.
weird characters of unloved people. Esther has a son Phillip who always wants to drown himself( perhaps not) Phillip has a daughter Esther the black who is also unloved and can't wait to leave the family compound. Uncle Max sold to a circus as a dwarf when he was 10 so his sister and 'not'brother could escape and eventually marry. Esther the white has a beaut. gemstone as a safety net of riches if she should need them. Not my favorite Hoffman book but definitely a good one.
The 1st book I read in 2009 and it was a disappointment...
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Author Information
74+ Works 61,059 Members
Alice Hoffman, an American novelist and screenwriter, was born in New York City on March 16, 1952. She earned a B.A. from Adelphi University in 1973 and an M.A. in creative writing from Stanford University in 1975 before publishing her first novel, Property Of, in 1977. Known for blending realism and fantasy in her fiction, she often creates show more richly detailed characters who live on society's margins and places them in extraordinary situations as she did with At Risk, her 1988 novel about the AIDS crisis. Her other works include The Drowning Season, Seventh Heaven, The River King, Blue Diary, The Probable Future, The Ice Queen, and The Dovekeepers. Her book, The Third Angel, won the 2008 New England Booksellers' Award for fiction. Two of her novels, Practical Magic and Aquamarine, were made into films. She has also written numerous screenplays, including adaptations of her own novels and the original screenplay, Independence Day. Her title's The Museum of Exteaordinary Things, The Marriage of Opposites, Seventh Heaven, and The Rules of Magic made The New York Times Best Seller List. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
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Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- The Drowning Season
- Original publication date
- 1979-06
- People/Characters
- Esther the Black; Esther the White
- Important places
- Long Island, New York, USA; New York, USA; USA
- Dedication
- For Lillie
- First words
- Once, when Esther the Black was eighteen, she sat on the porch of her grandmother's house and dragged her feet in the dust until her toes were coated and dark.
- Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)From a distance, it would have been nearly impossible, in the shadows, in the pale morning fog, to tell the two women apart.
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Statistics
- Members
- 419
- Popularity
- 73,286
- Reviews
- 5
- Rating
- (3.49)
- Languages
- Dutch, English, French, German
- Media
- Paper, Audiobook, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 21
- ASINs
- 7
