Editorial Review:
At 50, Alix Shulman left a life dense with political activism, family and literary community and went to live alone on an island off the coast of Maine. Without plumbing, power, or a telephone, and foraging for wild greens and shellfish, she faced challenges that helped redefine her notions of independence and courage, confidence and creativity.
Cached date: AWS Called=true
You may also be interested in these products:
These categories may also be of interest to you:
Customer Reviews
Average Customer Rating: 
Has become my favorite book!  2008-09-15
This book has become one of my all time favorites-- I am sending it to all my 50+ year-old friends for them to enjoy! It was recommended to me from a woman 83 years old- she was right on! I encourage every woman to read this!
An Experiment in Solitude 2007-12-29
Drinking the Rain, as one might guess from its beautiful title, can be described as a novel-length prose poem. I think of it as an ode to nature and to a particular time in the life journey of its author. It is a time when Shulman's children are grown; her husband, Jerry, and she have become estranged; the feminist movement to which she had been devoted seems dormant and a thing of the past. In short, a time when the author loses the passions that had driven her and, sadly, loses sight of the significance of her life. Having recently turned fifty, she feels a new urgency. Then something happens to bring about her firm determination to "begin a new chapter."
While exercising one morning, Shulman is seized by an intense and frightening vertigo. Her vertigo continues in the days and weeks ahead, but the doctors can find no explanation. Certain that this is the beginning of the end of her life, she seizes the day and listens to her heart, which urges her to remove herself from obligations and pressures that have filled her life. She wants only solitude and silence.
In the past, she has been afraid to spend time alone at her family's isolated cabin on a promontory in Maine--not even with her children during summer vacations. The cabin has no plumbing, heat or electricity, no neighbors, no phone, not even a road should she need help for some reason. She wonders if she can get the fridge started and imagines disasters such as lightning striking the tinderbox cabin or a slasher steeling his way into her bedroom in the dead of night. But her need to slow her life down, to get away from her mailbox stuffed with announcements and invitations, and to escape the incessant ringing of the telephone takes her to this cabin. Her fears go with her.
Shulman learns to begin her days without an agenda. Her many fears loom large. I confess to identifying with all of them. Where we part company is in her ingenuity to find sustenance on this "nubble," as she calls the promontory. I would see the nubble as a beautiful place to visit for an afternoon before going in search of a cozy restaurant for a warm dinner. Not so for Shulman. She remains at the cabin for months on end, unearthing a daily fare for herself that is nothing less than delicious and healthy. She scours the shoreline and coves for mussels, clams, periwinkles, even the occasional scallop and lobster. She recognizes every herb, every edible berry, and knows just how to cook them.
Drinking the Rain is the author's honest account of surviving on this isolated stretch of beach and, in time, transforming herself. Eventually, her fears diminish. She begins to feel safe and even protected in the ever-changing vastness of her simple ocean dwelling.
But this is not an account of an easygoing change of lifestyle. The challenges are intimidating... such as a warning she hears on the radio about a red tide--a deadly organism that attacks the nervous system and paralyzes the vital organs. That bit of news certainly would send me scurrying back to my city habitat. Yet Shulman does not flee when unexpected difficulties overwhelm her. Among other things, she seeks out a native dweller to learn more.
When an old friend and free spirit, Margaret, comes to visit, they take long walks and enjoy meaningful conversations Shulman has been craving. They explore the beauty of nature and the complexities of their own inner natures. When it is time for Margaret to leave, the author is "... both relieved and sorry to see her go: relieved to resume my experiment in solitude, but sorry to lose the company of the one person I know whose sympathy for my chosen life is incontestable, though she'd never choose it for herself."
Soon after the departure of her friend, Shulman is served with divorce papers. The shock is great. It is one thing to choose a solitary life, another to have it thrust upon you. Her first fear is that she may lose the cabin which she has come to love as she never did in all her years of marriage. What happens now to our brave protagonist? A great deal. Her new life requires earning money, achieving an understanding with her embittered children, her continued determination to avoid the materialism that consumes those around her, and the challenge of a love affair.
Drinking the Rain is an illuminating memoir. It reminds me of the importance of taking risks, of trying new things, of following my heart. But most of all, it piques my curiosity about and sustains my interest in this fascinating author who is willing to share herself with such honesty in this eloquently crafted work. Shulman's book is an excellent choice for those women who wish explore their potential and travel new ground.
by Duffie Bart
for Story Circle Book Reviews
reviewing books by, for, and about women
Drinking In the Rain  2007-05-24
This book was a fair book. Not my favorite, but did make some very valid life conclusions that I needed to hear. Drinking in the Rain takes some patience to read due to the overwhelming about of discussion about herbs. But if you are into plants and solitude, this book is for you.
A passionate, intimate memoir 2004-05-23
Ten years ago Shulman went to her family's primitive cabin on Long Island, Maine, for a summer of solitude. A New Yorker through and through, she was apprehensive and fearful, but also excited and determined. Her life was vaguely dissatisfying and she was looking for a change.Reading her memoir is like having a personal conversation with the author. Her tone is personal and intimate. When she stands back for a moment, picturing herself through a passing stranger's averted eye - a middle-aged lady in floppy hat and mismatched tennis shoes, gathering weeds in a basket - we too are startled and amused, having been looking from the inside out. Shulman, recognized for her novels and feminism, reaches her cross-roads at age 50. Her children are grown, her relationship with her husband is a distant truce, the feminist movement has stalled, and her life is overfull of busyness. But the birth of a new passion in her life is serendipitous. Always an adventurous cook, she finds her lengthy trips to the uninspiring island grocery a jarring intrusion on her pleasing solitude and a chore contrary to her new motto, "Do only what you like, nothing you don't!" From years before she remembers mussel gathering, one of the few pleasures of the hurried vacations she had always hated. In those years, with small children and a domineering, orchestrating husband, the summer cabin, with no electicity or plumbing had meant a round of endless drudgery. Now that she has only to please herself, mussel hunting is merely the first of her pleasures. Around her a world unfolds. Armed with Euell Gibbons and determination, she reaps the bounty of wild things, spending her days in exploration and discovery. She finds in herself a new tranquility and simplicity which, as she feared, is invaded by New York's cosmopolitan pace and abundance. The reader is a bit ahead of her here, exhorting Shulman to enjoy what the city has to offer, just as she enjoys her island. And when the author does absorb our advice (given to her by an old childhood friend at a party), she embraces it fully, applying this tactic to her whole life. Thus, when she accepts a position at the University of Colorado, she plunges into an exploration of New Age mysticism, health foods, mountain hiking and Buddhism. You don't have to share her interests to find her open-minded approach admirable. There are upheavels too. Her children are less than thrilled in the back-to-nature changes in their New Yorker mother. Her husband shatters a summer's idyll at the island by sending divorce papers. And romantic love, with all its joy, threatens to disrupt her solitary self. As I said, you don't have to agree. But through it all, Shulman struggles to maintain her equilibrium, making deliberate choices, letting her thoughts range free. She is enchanted by the wholeness of things - how all of nature interrelates - and then dismayed as pollution from the cities and radiation from Chernobyll threatens her island haven. This is a memoir of continuous awakening and endless dialogue with the self and the world. There's helplessness, anger, hope and love and inspiration. It's a joy to read.
Stay with it 2002-04-14
I must confess I almost couldn't get through "Drinking the Rain". Kates Shulman's account of a citified feminist's return to nature seemed an unintential parody, not helped by the comically overstated title. But midway through Ms. Shulman's story I became hooked. What seemed at first a pretentious and self-important rant transformed into a thoughtful and evocotive musing on what it is to be an artist. Ironically, it's only after Shulman returned to the city (and later goes to teach in Colorado) that the book came alive for me. Her descriptions of dinner with an old feminist friend left me teary eyed at their simple eloquence, and the descriptions of a snowy Colorado reunion with her kids kept me reading. By the end, I adored this story.
|
|
