Pye takes an interesting concept and spins out a fascinating novel. Drowning Room straddles the genres of historical fiction and modernist memory. It reminds me most of Jean Rhys' wonderful Good Morning Midnight, set in the early days of Dutch colonization of America.

The book is beautifully written, with its factual underpinnings almost invisibly slipped into Gretje's stark narration. The mystery of the corpse laid out in the cold, the lonely woman protecting the body, and the two strange children she has with her are lovingly crafted. And the reveals are both unexpected and satisfying.

Unfortunately, despite all of Pye's historical flourishes, this isn't a book for the historical book club set that has made bestsellers out of English monarchy. The narrative unfolds too haphazardly, skipping with the narrator (Gretje) through memory and story telling. There are questions of deceptive story telling, omission and self-deception that create an intricate web. ( )

Intensely descriptive, imaginative recreation of the experience of a woman growing up in 1600's Netherland and her later move to the Dutch colony near Manhattan. Gretje is an actual historic person, but Pye admits to taking liberties in filling in details around the meager facts known about her. Imagine a 12 yr old who has lived in a small village all her life, suddenly orphaned and on her own in Amsterdam, trying to make sense of all the people/buildings/noises/signs. It must be like a blind person suddenly getting sight; all the flood of sensations must be meaningful but there is no framework for comprehension. The rigidly moral society is not unsympathetic to the plight of the orphan, but the place for her would be a workhouse. Gretje finds a way to survive on the streets.
Her history is told in pieces, as an older Gretje tells her story as she grieves the death of her friend. And Gretje is wild with grief; we are given a new flood of images of the settlement where she now lives, mixed in with the bewilderment of a European confronted with the unfamiliar new world. Along the way we get glimpses of how the 40 yrs War in Germany affected Holland, the importance of windmills as water pumps in floodprone Holland (and the use of convicts to manually pump flooded basements--or drown if they fail. one way to control society), dual standards that consign women to bawds or meek wives, the East Indies Dutch Trading Co role in contracting new world settlers, & the hardships of life in a cold winter.
Warning: you will be sucked into this story. ( )

This is a fascinating book, in which Mr Pye has taken a real, historical figure who emigrated from disease-ridden Holland to the nascent colony of New Amsterdam, and has expertly amplified what is known about her with the help of history and his fertile imagination into a credible tale of heartbreak. Gretje Reyniers is known to have eked a living in the New World as a prostitute and money-lender, and Pye constructs for her the story of her earlier life in her home country before expanding on what is known of her in her struggles to stay alive in her harsh newly adopted environment. Threats from the indigenous peoples, and the competing English colony conspire with cruel weather to make a violently testing life, made complex by her fitful attempts at human relationships. The book is a little complex in its weaving of these strands, but it works as a fictional history as well as all-too-human tale of survival. ( )

Set in 18th century Amsterdam and New Amsterdam, The Drowning Room is the story of a woman who uses her wits, her wiles, and her body to survive. Gretje tells us early on that she killed her mother--but we never get any details of how or why, and we later learn the she left her mother under a bush, unsure if she was dead or alive. She finds a job as a maid, but an unfortunate mistake causes a disaster that leaves her on the run. We learn bits and pieces of what has happened to Gretje since as she tells her story to a strange boy who appears on her doorstep shortly after her husband's death. As much as the novel focuses on Gretje's past, it also focuses on the mystery of this angelic-looking boy from whom she can't shake free.

I can't exactly say that I was blown over by this novel, but Pye does a fine job of creating and sustaining an eerie mood that kept me reading on. ( )

A true feminist in 18th century Amsterdam and New Amsterdam (New York) Grita sells her body and then her money to make her way in the world. Raunchy and real: it's like a Bruegel painting come to life. ( )