Goodman, Carol

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Goodman, Carol

PERSONAL:

Education: Vassar College, B.A.; New School University, M.F.A.

ADDRESSES:

Home—New York, NY.

CAREER:

Writer, educator. Former teacher of Latin in Austin, TX; teacher and writer in New York, NY.

WRITINGS:

NOVELS

The Lake of Dead Languages, Ballantine Books (New York, NY), 2002.

The Seduction of Water, Ballantine Books (New York, NY), 2003.

The Drowning Tree, Ballantine Books (New York, NY), 2004.

The Ghost Orchid, Ballantine Books (New York, NY), 2006.

The Sonnet Lover, Ballantine Books (New York, NY), 2007.

Contributor to periodicals, including the Greensboro Review, Literal Latté, Midwest Quarterly, and Other Voices.

ADAPTATIONS:

The Lake of Dead Languages, read by Vivienne Benesch, and The Seduction of Water, read by Christine Marshall, were adapted as audiobooks for Sound Library, BBC Audiobooks America.

SIDELIGHTS:

Carol Goodman's first mystery novel, The Lake of Dead Languages, begins with the deaths of three sisters who, during the flu epidemic of 1918, drowned in the waters of Heart Lake as they attempted to relieve their fever. The curse of those deaths, marked by three rocks that protrude from the lake, continues to the present day. Jane Hudson attended the Heart Lake College for Girls and has returned to teach Latin in the Adirondack Mountains of New York. When she was a student, she was best friends with Lucy, Deirdre, and Lucy's brother, Matt. The girls studied Latin with Helen Chambers, who was fired for being a negative influence after their group was visited by suicide and scandal. At that time Jane suspected the reasons for the suicides, and she recorded her thoughts in a journal. Although believed lost, the pages of this journal now show up to resurrect old assumptions and affirm links to new deaths occurring among Jane's own students. A Publishers Weekly contributor wrote that "sexual rites, pagan rituals, and forbidden love all come together in this deft exploration of youthful innocence and guilt."

The water of Goodman's gothic thriller The Seduction of Water is the Hudson River, which Iris Greenfeder can see from her New York apartment. Iris, at age forty, is in a relationship that seems to be going nowhere, teaches as an adjunct professor, including at a prison, and is still shy a dissertation. Her mother, Katherine Morrissey, was a fantasy fiction writer who died in a hotel fire under an assumed name when Iris was a girl. At the time, Katherine had published the first two volumes of a trilogy, but the manuscript for the third volume disappeared.

Iris writes an essay based upon a Celtic tale her mother told her as a child, about the selkie, a seal-like creature that sheds her skin once a year to become a beautiful woman. If a man finds the skin, the selkie remains in human form and becomes his. The article is published in a literary journal and is seen by Harry Kron, owner of the Hotel Equinox, upriver in the Catskills. Iris's father once managed the hotel, and it was at the hotel that he and her mother met. Harry wants Iris to perform the job her father once did, and her mother's former literary agent, Hedda Wolf, suggests that she might uncover Katherine's missing manuscript. Iris decides to write her dissertation about her mother; she travels upstate and uncovers a series of mysteries, including why her mother was at the hotel that burned. Romance also enters her life in the form of Aidan, a former inmate from her prison class.

Michael Porter wrote in a New York Times Book Review appraisal of The Seduction of Water that Goodman's story "occasionally drags and strays into melodrama, but the resolution of the quest at its center rewards the patient reader." A Kirkus Reviews contributor noted that "there's enough plot for two or three Robert Ludlum potboilers in this agreeably overstuffed" novel. A Publishers Weekly reviewer felt that "mystery, folklore, a thoroughly modern romance, a strong sense of place, and a winning combination of erudition and accessibility make this second novel a treat."

In reviewing The Drowning Tree, Booklist reviewer Kristine Huntley called Goodman "spot-on at developing a creepy, gothic atmosphere and delivering a compelling, tightly plotted mystery." Juno McKay is a glass artist who attends a lecture given by her friend, Christine, at their alma mater, Penrose. The subject of the lecture is a stained-glass window Juno will be restoring. Christine reveals to a startled audience that the woman in the window is not founder Augustus Penrose's wife, Eugenie, but Eugenie's sister, Clare. When Juno and her teen daughter, Bea, subsequently find Christine's body, suicide is assumed, but in trying to discover what caused her friend to kill herself, the trail leads to unexpected places, including the mental-health facility where Juno's former husband, Neil, has been a resident for fourteen years. A Publishers Weekly critic called The Drowning Tree "an artful thriller, with rich, vivid descriptions of works of art, Hudson River Valley scenery, and the knotty inner terrain of its characters' hearts."

Goodman offers a further foray into mysteries with a literary and, in this case, supernatural angle with her 2006 The Ghost Orchid, which Colleen Mondor, writing on the Bookslut Web site, described as "all about how the sins of the past never really go away, and ghosts tormented a hundred years before will not rest even after everyone who knew them is long dead and gone." First-time novelist Ellis Brooks is a resident writer at the prestigious Bosco writing colony in the Adirondacks. She is writing a novel about a century-old tragedy concerning the owners of the Bosco estate, the Lathams, and a medium, Corinth Blackwell, who was involved somehow in the family tragedy. However, soon this hundred-year-old mystery begins to effect the lives of the contemporary guests at Bosco in this "deliciously menacing and harrowing tale of greed and avarice," as Carol Haggas noted in Booklist. Haggas further praised the author's "mastery of eerily atmospheric and richly intricate plots." Similarly, Mondor observed: "This is the perfect book to bring along on vacation; it will amuse and intrigue and keep the reader guessing right up to the very satisfactory ending." A Publishers Weekly critic had a more qualified assessment: "Enjoy the atmosphere. And enjoy the ride; its twists and turns mesmerize, even if they don't surprise."

Goodman's 2007 work, The Sonnet Lover, pursues similar literary and gothic themes. A literature professor at Hudson College, Rose Asher goes back to the Italian academic estate where she studied two decades earlier. That memory is a high point in her life as was the affair that she had with a married Italian professor. Now the professor is still there, but Rose is busy uncovering the mystery surrounding a possible lost Shakespearean sonnet involving the "Dark Lady," and trying to get to the bottom of the death of one of her students, whose film involved the sonnet. Discussing her inspiration for writing The Sonnet Lover with a contributor for the Book reporter.com Web site, Goodman commented: "It was really a coming together of two things that I love: Shakespeare and Italy. I spent my junior year abroad in Rome and have always loved the country. I was thinking about setting a book there when I also happened to come across a theory that Shakespeare's Dark Lady (to whom many of his sonnets are addressed) was Italian." Reviewing the novel for the Compulsive Reader Web site, Liz Hall-Downs found it "tightly plotted and skilfully executed," as well as a book that "would appeal particularly to lovers of literary sleuthing and academic intrigue, courtly poetry, Shakespeare's sonnets, Venice and Florence, and readers familiar with the political wranglings that go on behind closed doors in universities." Similarly, Library Journal reviewer Bette-Lee Fox felt that "the scholarly investigation here is fascinating." Fox went on to conclude: "Goodman's fans will want to read this work, and mystery lovers should pay close attention, too."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Book, January-February, 2003, Beth Kephart, review of The Seduction of Water, p. 81.

Booklist, November 15, 2001, Brad Hooper, review of The Lake of Dead Languages, p. 551; January 1, 2003, Kristine Huntley, review of The Seduction of Water, p. 847; June 1, 2004, Kristine Huntley, review of The Drowning Tree, p. 1700; December 1, 2005, Carol Haggas, review of The Ghost Orchid, p. 26.

Books, April 8, 2007, review of The Ghost Orchid, p. 9; June 2, 2007, Kristin Kloberdanz, review of The Sonnet Lover, p. 8.

Denver Post, December 29, 2002, Robin Vidimos, review of The Seduction of Water.

Kirkus Reviews, November 1, 2001, review of The Lake of Dead Languages, p. 1505; November 15, 2002, review of The Seduction of Water, p. 1643; May 15, 2004, review of The Drowning Tree, p. 459; November 1, 2005, review of The Ghost Orchid, p. 1158.

Kliatt, September, 2006, Carol Kellerman, review of The Ghost Orchid, p. 50.

Library Journal, January, 2002, Karen Traynor, review of The Lake of Dead Languages, p. 152; December, 2002, Karen Traynor, review of The Seduction of Water, p. 178; July, 2004, Karen Traynor, review of The Drowning Tree, p. 70; December 1, 2005, Karen Fauls-Traynor, review of The Ghost Orchid, p. 112; March 1, 2007, Bette-Lee Fox, review of The Sonnet Lover, p. 73.

Mystery News, December-January, 2003, Lynn Kaczmarek, "Carol Goodman: Creating Magical Places," interview with author.

New York Times Book Review, January 12, 2003, Michael Porter, review of The Seduction of Water, p. 19.

People, January 14, 2002, review of The Lake of Dead Languages, p. 39; March 10, 2003, Bella Stander, review of The Seduction of Water, p. 45.

Publishers Weekly, November 12, 2001, review of The Lake of Dead Languages, p. 34; November 11, 2002, review of The Seduction of Water, p. 40; June 28, 2004, review of The Drowning Tree, p. 31; October 10, 2005, review of The Ghost Orchid, p. 32; February 12, 2007, review of The Sonnet Lover, p. 59.