Red Hook Road: A Novel [Hardcover]

Red Hook Road is a beautifully composed piece of domestic fiction, one without flowery prose but clear and precise language which speaks plainly but with great sensitivity and empathy towards perhaps the most tragic of human experiences ~ the death of a loved one.

Ayelet Waldman has masterfully given voice to grief and recovery by way of in-depth psychological study which really gets under the skin and deep below the surface to expose the raw nerve of human emotion. With her skillfully wrought, omniscient third-person narrative, the reader is taken straight to the hearts of the story's seven main characters, each deeply and painfully stricken by the accidental death of two dearly loved family members. The seven represent two different families in a small coastal community in Maine, one Jewish and of privilege, the other Protestant and hard-scrabble. The Copaken/Kimmelbrods and the Tetherlys are each dominated by two strong willed and very controlling women, Iris Copaken and Jane Tetherly, the mothers upon whom much of the novel pivots.

The relationships between these seven main characters create the plot issues and conflicts which make up the story line. Although much of the focus seems to fall on Iris and Jane, it is the elder of the story, the deeply-grounded and wise father of Iris, Emil Kimmelbrod, who really drives the plot to ultimate resolution. His presence is subtle but authoritative and provides the story with complexity and depth. Mr. Kimmelbrod is a world-renowned maestro of violin, a Jewish refugee from WWII Prague, a survivor of the Holocaust which decimated most of his family. He has seen much death in his life and experienced much loss. Mr. Kimmelbrod brings a philosophical counterpoint to the novel which is moving and rich. It is a philosophy not only built upon his many life experiences but upon music, wherein music becomes an expression of life and of death. The message is nuanced and sure and I was deeply moved by its beauty and relevance.

It is also music that seems to give unique structure to this wonderfully expressive novel. Like a great piece of music, Red Hook Road is solidly built between a powerful prologue and an equally powerful coda. Within its body lie the themes and variations, the rhythms and tones of familiar human experience. I was particularly reminded of Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross's five stages of death: denial and isolation, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance, as could be applied to the grief of the novel's main characters. The reader will no doubt feel great empathy toward them. Each is fully developed and highly identifiable.

The story itself is highly atmospheric and very engaging with a denouement which is commanding, even mythical. It is sure to produce a lasting effect for the reader. I have found many passages throughout Red Hook Road which are so beautifully stated and unforgettable; they speak to me of experience and emotion I myself have known and I have marked and reread them several times. I applaud Ayelet Waldman for capturing these universal experiences and emotions so precisely, so eloquently, so memorably.

Amazon's guide to reviews includes: "What would you have wanted to know before you purchased the product?" I would have wanted to know that, despite the cover and the description, this is more than just a chic book!

At the outset, a bride and groom die in an accident within an hour of their wedding. The remainder of the book is watching their two families deal, cope and try to adjust to the loss of the two young people who were the apples of their families' eyes.

About a quarter through, I thought "Is this all there is? Just mourning for a few hundered pages?" As difficult as that sounds, Ms Waldman really pulls it off. The account is captivating.

The family of the bride are New Yorkers, or as they are known in the tiny Maine village of Red Hook, "from aways". The mother's family ahs been summering so long there that she believes she and her family are an integral part of the fabric of the town. The groom's family are year 'rounders. His mother cleans the homes of the "from aways" (including the bride's) and maintains them during the winter months.

The book follows the summer immediately following the tragedy and the next few thereafter.

Iris, the bride's mother is the focal character, although her husband, father and other daughter also get plenty of focus. On the other side, Jane, the groom's mother and Matt, his brother, are also tracked. Each deals with the loss in his or her different way. Because Red Hook is so small and the families both integral to its character as natives or from aways, the families constantly interact. Their interactions weave through the individuals' stories. The interactions are not only between the individuals, but also between the two very different cultures from which they start. Jim and Becca, the couple were a bridge between the two, but are now gone.

This is a fine account of loss, mourning, coping and trying to heal by several different people who come from distinct cultures.

The writing is extremely good. The characters all have depth and, as one would expect, are seen at both their strongest and weakest. The emotions in this book are raw and always seemingly on the surface, yet the reader is also given hints of undercurrents beneath the outside and the spoken word. Every character copes in a different way with varying degrees of success.

This is highly recommended for its combing the depths of loss and emotion. It is not recommended for a light summer reading on the coast of Maine.

Open up the lawn chair and get a cold drink from the cooler. Your summer reading (good for the beach, too!) is waiting for you. Ayelet Waldman's "Red Hook Road" is well written chick lit of the first order, and what's more, it's Maine chick lit. Lobsters and melted butter, blueberry pie, sailing on the bay, fearsome mosquitoes, battered pickups, Hannaford grocery stores---it's almost all there. (Inexplicably, there is no reference to Moxie, the beloved medicine-like soft drink.) The novel is set in Red Hook, Maine, thinly disguised as the actual Downeast town of Blue Hill, with its internationally known summer music festival, Kneisel Hall (Usherman Hall in the book).

Since "Red Hook Road" is meant to be a page-turner, I won't give away a bit of the plot, except to say that it is about two intertwined families and their responses to a tragedy that affects them both. The Copakens are long-time summer visitors from Manhattan or, as Mainers say, "from away." while the Tetherlys are local people. Most of the narration is from the point of view of the indomitable Iris Copaken, a Columbia professor whose specialty is Holocaust Studies, but the omniscient narrator occasionally steps away from Iris to provide insight into other characters. The novel takes place over the course of four summers, with only hints as to what happens in the intervening nine months. You can bet it's cold and bleak up in Red Hook, though, with only the Tetherlys to keep an eye on the closed up summer cottages.

There is a recurring thread of "from away" versus local tension in this novel, although Waldman does not mine this hoary theme with particular success. So dominant is Iris's persona that her opposite number, the house cleaner Jane Tetherly, is reduced to a sullen woman of few words whose only pleasant quality seems to be her ability to make a banana pudding from Nilla wafers that the "from aways" pretend to like. Waldman probably knows that the characterization of Mainers is not her forte; in the opening pages of the book, Iris's daughter Ruthie remarks on how her mother takes infinite pains to chat up the local women but can never shed her outsider status.

"Red Hook Road" ends with a microburst--the weather kind--but the denouement is a kind of prose microburst, too. Everything gets wrapped up VERY rapidly. (Wow, I wish my lawnmower started like the outboard on that unused dinghy in the unused shed!) I'm only giving the novel three stars, as it's not exactly enduring literature. However, as an accompaniment to a sweating glass of iced tea, it's better than a plateful of cookies.
M. Feldman