The Sabbathday River

Incorporating shades of THE SCARLET LETTER, THE SABBATHDAY RIVER clearly aims higher than your standard courtroom drama.

Heather Pratt has a scandalous affair with a married man in the small town of Goddard, New Hampshire, and bears his child. Naomi Roth is a transplanted New Yorker who owns a crafts collective in the town. When Naomi finds the body of a baby floating in the Sabbathday River, the police investigation turns to Heather, who is hiding another pregnancy and confesses to the crime. With its multi-layered themes of friendship and loyalty, religion and morality, and its surprising twists and turns, THE SABBATHDAY RIVER explores how well we understand the people around us instead of accepting their projection of themselves.

This show more book got under my skin. I found myself putting it down and walking away from it because I was so irritated by a character's behaviour. That's how I knew that the author had written some realistic and three-dimensional characters - one does not inwardly argue with a character that one does not find believable. However, other characters, like the super-evil prosecuting attorney, come across as barely credible stereotypes.

At best, it achieves a greater depth and more daring in the issues it tackles – and the book's best writing occurs in the courtroom scenes.. More often though, it simply blunders into pretension and irrelevance.

Still, I’d be willing to read other works by this author. She can certainly write well, but needs to lighten up a bit and get more experience writing prose rather than poetry. show less

Naomi Roth is jogging beside the Sabbathday River and finds a dead baby face down in the water. She pulls it out, wraps it in a handmade sampler and carries it to the police station. Thus begins a mystery that shows up the worst of a small town full of prejudices and exclusion.

I do not generally read modern mysteries. For the most part they leave me cold or I find them predictable. This book, however, was more about the psychology of the characters to me, with the mystery hanging out there like an extra bonus wanting to be solved as well. At times it felt excessively bleak and the townspeople a little over-the-top in their lack of compassion or understanding, but this did serve to move the characters forward and explain some of their show more actions.

Korelitz held my interest and while I did suspect her final twist before it arrived, I did not feel that it distracted from my overall enjoyment of the book. Perhaps I will read one of her later books, since it is always nice to break from the routine and just get swept up into a "story" now and then. show less

I wish there was a way to rate this 2.5 stars. I didn't always like it. There was a decent mystery, and it was literary in the sense that characters were dealing with their issues, the philosophies, their religion in addition to dealing with the plot. The writing was good. However, there were some aspects of the story that I found unbelievable to the point of almost ruining it for me. In particular I found the resolution of the mystery frustrating. Also, one of the main characters is supposed to be this incredibly intelligent, feminist woman and there are several things that I couldn't believe she wouldn't have caught well before the ending when things finally become clear.

An interesting exploration of small town mentality bound with a grisly mystery this book explores a lot of issues. It makes for intriguing reading but sometimes there is almost too much and it slows the momentum of the book, dragging a little in a places. Its a little reminiscent of the Scarlet Letter with a more modern setting.I found it compelling though, I cared about what would happen. The ending was a little bit of a cop out in terms of Judith's confession I think I would rather that that particular mystery remained unsolved.The language is descriptive, the characters are well thought out and explored and its worth the read.

re-read for me. I think I read this in 2001.
Naomi finds the body of a baby in the Sabbathday River and a young unwed mother finds herself arrested. When the mother insists that Naomi take her toddler, after she's arrested. She also convinces Naomi to look "by the pond" in the back corner of the farmhouse, where Naomi finds yet another baby.
The mother is then charged with both murders, Naomi's friend Judith is the defense lawyer on the case & some interesting moments in the trial. Surprise revealed during the trial - the Sabbathday River baby was killed by a morphine injection into the heart - and the ending also a surprise. Judith & her husband Joel mercy killed the baby who had Canavan disease, a neurodegenerative disease that is show more always fatal, rather than watch the baby eventually die. show less

I like this book enough to have read it several times, but I think it has a few problems. Some of the side plots that impact the main storyline seem a little farfetched, and I really didn't like really like the outcome as far as the trial went and the punishments for the murderers. It also made me aware of and pique my interest in Jewish genetics & some of the disorders they are at a higher risk of.