Drinking the Rain: A Memoir

by Alix Kates Shulman

Book Overview

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.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0140255842
• ISBN13: 9780140255843
• Release Date: June 1996
• Publisher: Penguin Group
• Length: 241 Pages
• Weight: 0.38 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.1" x 7.7"

Customer Reviews

An Experiment in Solitude

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 cert

A passionate, intimate memoir

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 co

A must read book

I found this book to be one of the best books I've read. She really hits home.The way Alix Kates Shulman writes about her kinship with her inner self just makes me want to know more. This is a book all women should read to gain self confidence and independence.This book shows the simplicity that all women should have at some point in their lives.Truely an inspiring book. A must read.

A powerful memoir that never lets up.

This is a human book, not just a "woman's book." Take it from a middle-aged guy who was transfixed by this masterpiece. I've always loved Maine and I have spent much time on the Casco Bay near Alix' retreat. And I've always loved honest and powerful writing. Alix Schulman delivered both. She even responded to my letter of appreciation. And all my friends who read the book at my urging expressed appreciation to me. The world needs more Alix Schulman's.

inspirational, thought- provoking, concise

I found this book thought-provoking and moving. One beautiful afternoon, while reading it on my porch, I literally could not put it down. It could be a life changing book. I will be recommending this to my book club.