Review #1

When a writer's debut novel is a smashing success, he or she is
subject to second story scrutiny. Such is the case with Carol
Goodman whose first book, LAKE OF DEAD LANGUAGES, is an atmospheric
page-turner set at a girls' school in upstate New York. Her new
novel, THE SEDUCTION OF WATER, inhabits the same spot on the same
geographic location, but traverses the terrain from a completely
different point of view. This time readers will find themselves at
the Equinox Hotel, which is, according to the author, modeled after
The Mohonk Mountain House, a historic landmark hotel in the
Catskill Mountains.

As the novel opens, Iris Greenfeder is living her ABD (All But
Dissertation) life as a part-time writing instructor. She teaches a
group of émigrés in an ESL class, a different set of
students in an art school and a number of inmates at the Van Winkle
Prison. Here she meets Aiden Barry, a very intelligent and charming
felon who turns up on her doorstep one rainy night after he's
paroled. Of course "lightening strikes" these unlikely lovers, but
that comes later.

Iris grew up in The Equinox where her father was the manager for
fifty years and her mother, a former maid, wrote two bestselling
fantasy novels. One night, when Iris was ten, her mother took off
to attend a conference at The Algonquin Hotel in the city. She
never got there. And, the following day, she was found dead in the
ashes of a motel fire in Brooklyn -- a tragic accident or a vicious
murder? What was Kay Greenfeder doing in that motel? Why was she
registered as Mrs. John McGlynn? Whom was she meeting, if anyone?
Was the third book in the trilogy in the works? Did she have a
draft of it with her? If she did, was it stolen or did it burn up
in the fire along with her body?

Iris is haunted by these questions even after thirty years. Mystery
and speculation continue to surround the tragedy that took her
mother's life and, despite her best efforts, she cannot tame the
gremlins that invade her sleep and force themselves into every
memory of her mother. Thus, when a series of coincidences (?)
result in an offer for her to write a definitive biography of Kay
Greenfeder, Iris is determined to unearth the truth behind the
events of her death in order to discover who her mother really was
and why she died the way she did.

Where to start? Iris decides to analyze the world created in her
mother's fiction. Slowly she begins to realize that the stories
might be a map to the hidden landscape of Kay's reality; the
triptych that can expose why her fantasy fiction was so complicated
and so personal an escape device. Surely the stories must hold
clues to the "real" woman beneath the facade of seemingly devoted
wife, doting mother, hotel hostess extraordinaire and successful
novelist.

The tales are based on an Irish legend about the Selkie Girl: a
seal-woman who pays a dear price when she morphs from one "skin" to
the other and, as events unfold, she must abandon her daughter in
order to save her own life. Iris is convinced that, when she
unravels the metaphors, the symbols and the allusions that comprise
the rich text of her mother's novels, she will find parallels to
the family's life that will bring her to the heart of things.

Once this decision is made, she returns to The Equinox to search
for the third manuscript her mother was allegedly writing; to
question the people still at the hotel who remember Kay; and to put
the demons of the past behind her while taking control of her life
in the present.

The Equinox is a failing enterprise when the book opens. A hotelier
of international fame and fortune buys the dying hotel and makes it
the latest "jewel in his crown" of his upscale convention resorts.
As it happens, he knows this particular hotel and its history from
his sojourns here in the halcyon days of the past. He is a suave,
smooth and savvy businessman who dazzles Iris and the staff. But
who is he really? And why would he buy an old facility that is off
the beaten path with little to offer besides some hiking trails and
a spectacular view?

THE SEDUCTION OF WATER is a bildungsroman --- the script of an
odyssey imbued with a phantasmagoric setting, full of dead-end
leads, nasty people, lies, deception, betrayals and a murder or
two. Carol Goodman takes readers on a journey as rich in questions
as it is in answers. Her writing is dramatic and accessible. She
has a facility for moving back and forth from the past to the
present, then from fairytales to Iris's real life that serves the
reader well. Fans waiting for her second novel will not be
disappointed. Those who don't yet know Goodman's work will delight
in finding a new voice with a resounding talent as a
storyteller.

Review #2

When the opening chapter of Carol Goodman's THE SEDUCTION OF WATER
kicks off with a mother recounting to her daughter the legendary
Irish tale of the Selkie --- a sort of a "woman in seal's clothing"
type creature who abandons her human children and husband to return
to a life in the sea --- you just know that inevitably the daughter
listening to the story is going to lose her own mother at some
point in the future. And lose her she does.

The daughter in question is Iris Greenfeder and her mother is
quasi-famous fantasy novelist, K.R. LaFleur (a.k.a. Kay
Greenfeder), who dies under mysterious circumstances before the
third installment in her Tirra Glynn fantasy trilogy can be
written. The Greenfeder family lives and works at The Equinox, an
upscale Catskills hotel where Iris's father is manager and Kay is a
maid who writes her novels in the off-season. When Iris is
nine-years-old, Kay unexpectedly decides to depart a day early for
a NYU writer's conference she is to attend but never checks into
her hotel. That same night, the Dreamland Motel in Coney Island
burns to the ground and weeks pass before Kay's body is identified
among the motel's guests. The reason --- she was registered there
as another man's wife.

Decades pass and Iris is now a struggling writer in Greenwich
Village and instructor at New York's Grace College, where she
teaches creative writing to recent immigrants and work-release
program prisoners. Iris is ABD --- all but dissertation --- and
finding that "all but" is becoming the story of her life --- "all
but published, all but a teacher, all but married..." Still haunted
by the circumstances of Kay's death and eager for a change of pace,
Iris accepts a proposal from Kay's former literary agent, Hedda
Wolfe, to return to The Equinox to search for the third Tirra Glynn
novel that Hedda believes to be hidden somewhere in the hotel. In
return for finding the novel, Hedda promises Iris a hefty advance
for a K.R. LaFleur biography. Though skeptical of the novel's
existence, Iris returns to the Catskills in hopes that her search
will begin to unravel some of the mystery surrounding her mother's
secret "other life" and of her death. When the answers she uncovers
lead to more troubling questions, Iris will risk her life to get to
the truth.

THE SEDUCTION OF WATER is a dazzling mix of intrigue and lore,
romance and suspense complete with an eccentric cast of "suspects"
and a beautifully flawed leading man. Carol Goodman's second novel
is a more than worthy follow-up to her popular debut THE LAKE OF
DEAD LANGUAGES and should earn her many more fans.