NONFICTION - April 30, 1995

DRINKING THE RAIN by Alix Kates Shulman (Farrar, Straus & Giroux: $20; 241 pp.) For Alix Kates Shulman, author of two books on Emma Goldman, “Memoirs of an Ex-Prom Queen,” and several other books with their iambic feet planted firmly in women’s issues, 50 becomes the age of shedding skin. “What a relief,” she writes of her flight to an island in Maine, “to have that weight of womanhood rise like a gull and fly away. To be where nothing I did had a scripted meaning . . . after the freedom that comes from strengthening ego came the freedom that comes from dropping it.” Burdens included life in the big city, pioneering marriage arrangements and the agitations of a body that wants to taste its food, feel the wind, head for the soil (figuratively and, at 50, literally). Already at age 30, she writes, “I was slipping into the pit of dependence with an infant on each hand.”

The hills Shulman heads for are the family’s summer house on a “windswept” point; no water, electricity or heat. Very quiet. Mackerel running. Thought-provoking. Delightfully out of nowhere, Shulman becomes a wild-food freak, bringing all the adjectives and sensibilities of a big-city feeder to the forage for food on an island. Mussels, fish, chanterelles, lamb’s quarters, yellow dock, sorrel and seaweed. Her new appetite is contagious. A stag roast, shared with a visiting friend, turns “a lush dark burgundy with henna highlights . . . a dark brown velvety gravy, rich with bouquet.” By the end of this memoir, Shulman is 60, has survived a fractious divorce, is in love, spending half her time in Maine and half in New York. Maybe she was disappointed by the women’s movement. Maybe she’ll never shed her ego. But her food tastes good to her, and her body and mind are grateful.