The Swift Seasons eBook Mollee Kruger
Download As PDF : The Swift Seasons eBook Mollee Kruger 
Delightfully quirky and willing to go where few other novels dare, The Swift Seasons takes readers deep into the lives of octogenarians in a retirement community as they learn to live with themselves and each other.
At the heart of the story is Willa Warsaw, a childless and recent widow in her eighties who spends her days poring over the writing of Oliver Wendell Holmes and daydreaming. Naturally shy and a bit reclusive, Willa finds herself unaccountably drawn to the newest member of the community—former opera singer Eric Ravelle.
Eric and Willa connect over their shared voice disorders, finding comfort in each other. But as their relationship deepens over the passing days, so do their health issues, bringing up very real concerns about their future together.
Full of memorable characters, sharp insights into aging, and the wisdom of Oliver Wendell Holmes, The Swift Seasons is a treasured gift, a celebration of living long enough to grow old, and a meditation on things that endure or change as we age.
The Swift Seasons eBook Mollee Kruger
It was not until I began to read The Swift Seasons that I realized, with a start, how little is written about the lives (and inner lives, and passions, preferences and perspectives) of people in their seventies and eighties and beyond. The book is set in a retirement community. The decades have left some of the residents eccentric (although one suspects they had their quirks when they were in the vigor of their prime), and Kruger presents them with good hearted humor. One of the surprises of the book is how funny it is. Consider this, for instance: "People say Jake led a dog's life. I hate animals in general." Something made me laugh on every page. At the same, the book moved me as few novels had. I felt that it through back a curtain and allowed me to understand the deeply human experience of creating new bonds at a time in one's life when so many important old bonds have been severed by geography or infirmity or death. The combination of all this produced a strange magic: the lightness of this book and its weight are somehow so inseparable that they seem like one. I got from this it that the comedy of being older (and, really, of being human at any age), and the pathos, are inseparable from all that is beautiful and dignified about it. I am still trying to dope all this out (clearly), but I understand enough of it to say that this is a wonderful and profound bookProduct details
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The Swift Seasons eBook Mollee Kruger Reviews
"The Swift Seasons" glows with insight and wry observation about a stage of life into which many of us have little visibility. It makes the world of the elderly and independent living facilities extremely recognizable and familiar yet at the same quite particular and foreign.
Mollee Kruger uses her wonderful gifts to paint a very funny and poignant picture of aging, communal living, loss, and love. I am so glad I read
it and expect many of its characters and moments to stay with me. I intend to recommend this book far and wide!
Mollee Kruger’s “Swift Seasons” is a profoundly moving and entertaining novel. Most of us are far too busy in our harrying routines to have a time-horizon that considers our lives beyond a few days. But demographic trends suggest that the majority of people who make it to middle age will spend a significant chunk of our lives as old people living in a variety of retirement homes and assisted living facilities. What will life be like then?
When we visit these dwellings, they typically are not places where one spends enough time to get to know the locals meaningfully their lives, dreams, humor, loves and sorrow. Ms. Kruger opens a window into one such world and reminds us on every page just how full of ideas, emotions, drama and intelligence people are at this advanced stage of life, even as their physical capacity is diminished and their bodies begin to betray them.
The book’s protagonist, Willa Warsaw is a quiet person with a vocal infirmity. That makes this a “quiet book” in the best of ways. First of all, because she listens rather intently to the people around her and then shares many conversations, frequently very funny ones, so that readers get the benefit of her keen powers of perception. Secondly, Willa’s external life appears quiet – but her inner life is tumultuous, teaming with angst, hopes and excitement. Readers of the “Swift Seasons” are privy to the many thoughts that go racing through a mind that is still hyperactive and highly intellectual, even as an octogenarian. Unlike some annoying “stream of conscience” literature which is impossible to follow and ultimately quite boring, there is coherence in the chaos of Willa’s mind which completely holds one’s interest. That’s because well into her eighties, she remains a very interesting person.
Kruger reminds readers that even though their physical abilities may not be improving much, elderly people’s consciousness can continue to grow and their lives can become enriched. We follow Willa as she comes to fully appreciate the solace and inspiration of classical music. If readers pay attention they can watch as she gradually comes to internalize a new, independent, feminist identity as she grows used to life alone as a widow. And most of all, we learn how a new love can still make someone giddy, even if they have seen a lot of life over eight decades.
There is a very colorful cast of characters that accompany Willa in her Jewish old age home, and usually we meet them sitting around the breakfast table in the communal dining room. These supporting actors and actresses are at once totally whacky, totally believable – and yet unremarkable at the same time. The point is that the social world of the elderly while undoubtedly different, is every bit as challenging as a college students’, filled with scoundrels, saints and jesters. I especially took a liking to the rambunctious “Jake” a ninety year old, very Jewish, former newspaper man, who at once never fails to annoy the protagonist, but ultimately emerges as her best friend. Like all good, multi-dimensional characters conjured up in a good novel, one wishes that it might be possible to have a beer with this guy. So new players constantly enter Willa’s stage, and dining room – just as with little warning, readers will find out that one of their favorite new friends has suddenly passed away. This too, it seems, is part of being old.
Most of all, there is much wisdom in Kruger’s wonderful book – and not just about how to live with dignity and what we might expect after we celebrate our eightieth birthday. For instance I just loved the protagonist’s insights into the perils of our modern, overly wired live styles
“Jake was wright when he warns us against allowing electronic doodads to invade the minds and bodies. I should have seen it coming years ago at the advertising agency when we treated these two holy entities, time and space, as marketable trinkets. And now we sacrifice not only our identity, but also the quiet core that makes us human.”
For those unfamiliar with the writing of Oliver Wendell Holmes, this book is also a wonderful introduction to a literary figure who Willa (and clearly Kruger as well) holds in high regard. But it is really Mollee Kruger herself who writes the elegant prose, with a uniquely rich grasp of the English language -- which seems to grow impoverished over the years in the popular world of fiction.
In short, there’s a lot in this fine book that I inhaled with great pleasure and I recommend it without reservations to anyone who plans on growing old. I certainly do – so I can’t wait for the sequel!
Professor Alon Tal
Mollee Kruger's The Swift Seasons looks at life, literature and interpersonal relationships from the unique perspective of a retirement community. Mrs. Kruger's daring in writing a partially autobiographical novel is only eclipsed by the chutzpah of beginning her novel-writing career in her 80's.
But it worked. This sweet, clever, insightful book snaps with a youthful candor and a self-effacing humor that eludes novelists a quarter of her age. On the other hand, her vantage point as a card-carrying member of the "Greatest Generation" gives her the license to laugh at (and with) the foibles and quirks of the elderly and peer into their hearts in a way that younger novelists could never attempt and would be rightfully pilloried if they tried.
Kruger salts, peppers and sweetens her novel with poetry, a form in which she has had a long career, and her poems, both the light verse and the somber notes, are worth a read in and of themselves. The book is also a paean to her hero Oliver Wendell Holmes (not the judge, the 19th century doctor and author) who hovers in and out of the heroine's world like a wise old uncle.
My father (93 and always reading himself) has an extremely worn but treasured copy of Holmes' The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, and I had never even given it a second glance. Now, thanks to The Swift Seasons, I am curious to see what the doctor has to tell me. Clearly, Mollee Kruger is proof that it's never too late to try something new. Enjoy this fresh young novelist's opening salvo.
This book is such a delight ... Funny, touching, smart, well paced, interesting--not a cutesy passage to be found. I was rooting for the quiet, self-effacing Willa, an octogenarian who manages to keep her heart and mind open. "We can learn that in painful moments a new identity always beckons to us. 'This is the ship of pearl,' the poet declares, and whenever a durable old mollusk washes ashore, the ocean wave roars in our ears; 'Grow or diminish. You mustn't--can't--return to the past or remain unchanged.'" I'm going to try to remember that.
It was not until I began to read The Swift Seasons that I realized, with a start, how little is written about the lives (and inner lives, and passions, preferences and perspectives) of people in their seventies and eighties and beyond. The book is set in a retirement community. The decades have left some of the residents eccentric (although one suspects they had their quirks when they were in the vigor of their prime), and Kruger presents them with good hearted humor. One of the surprises of the book is how funny it is. Consider this, for instance "People say Jake led a dog's life. I hate animals in general." Something made me laugh on every page. At the same, the book moved me as few novels had. I felt that it through back a curtain and allowed me to understand the deeply human experience of creating new bonds at a time in one's life when so many important old bonds have been severed by geography or infirmity or death. The combination of all this produced a strange magic the lightness of this book and its weight are somehow so inseparable that they seem like one. I got from this it that the comedy of being older (and, really, of being human at any age), and the pathos, are inseparable from all that is beautiful and dignified about it. I am still trying to dope all this out (clearly), but I understand enough of it to say that this is a wonderful and profound book
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