The Sabbathday River
   Jean Hanff Korelitz
  1999 Farrar, Straus & Giroux, NY USA
   ISBN: 0374253234


Jogging outside Goddard, New Hampshire, Naomi Roth finds a dead baby floating in the river. The news spreads quickly & Naomi, a former VISTA volunteer & founder of the local women's quilting co-op, is shocked when the community fingers as the prime suspect, a young single mother notorious for her affair with a married man.

Jean Hanff Korelitz's The Sabbathday River came as a surprise to me & while I occasionally clicked my tongue at the wide-eyed naivete of her protagonist, I also nodded my head knowingly at the fine & fearsome details of a community beset with unfulfilled women, posturing do-gooders & morally impoverished husbands. Talk about double standards!

I found Jean Hanff Korelitz's world richly displayed with satisfying local color & history of small New England towns seen with the not-so blase eyes of New Yorkers. Funny how idealists are so blind, so shocked when confronted with rabid morality.

I rarely get all lathered-up about a situation in a whodunit, however, The Sabbathday River crowd got to me. I mean I wanted to wade right in & start changing things; retorting to the local wicked witches' foul minds; exposing the handsome handyman's sexual habits; getting in the face of the coercive constabulary.

Then Naomi, believing Heather Pratt's wretched confession, unearths another baby & life gets that much more complicated.

I wanted to shake some sense into Heather until I remembered Flutey (see my review) & realized how damaged & desperate was this teenager; how stacked were the cards against her & how everyone was greedily feeding off of her.

Naomi Roth used to think she was the only Jew in town until she meets Judith & her husband Joel & life seems to have some meaning again. Judith is a lawyer & takes Heather's case, presenting a superb defense at the trial.

It isn't until the very end that all the pieces fall into place, all the ethical decisions come to light & all the morality is judged. What a lot to think about! How complicated are our choices & is modern science such a boon after all?

Very well done! About as fascinating & horrible a read as Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter - it must be a New England thing! An hypnotic, enormously resonant novel.

More from Jean Hanff Korelitz: A Jury of Her Peers; The Properties of Breath.
(12/12/99)

Rebecca