The Lake of Dreams

As a fan of Kim Edwards’ debut novel, The Memory Keeper’s Daughter, I was looking forward to reading her recent work, The Lake of Dreams.  Unfortunately for me, it was not worth the five year wait.

After her father dies in a lake accident, Lucy Jarrett spends the following years keeping as much distance as possible between her and the town where she grew up.  She is living in Japan with her boyfriend, Yoshi, when she learns that her mother has been in a car accident and so decides to return home for a visit.  She finds her hometown not quite how she left it.  The depot which once employed most of the town is closed and there’s a big debate whether the marshes should be protected wetland or under development. There are changes happening at home, too, where she finds that not only is her brother, Blake, working for her hated uncle, Art, in the family’s business, but her mother is considering selling the ancestral home thus helping Art with his development plans.  Jetlagged and unable to sleep, she stumbles upon a collection of suffrage pamphlets hidden away in a window seat in the cupola.  Slipped in between the pamphlets is a letter from someone named Rose to Iris.  Soon, Lucy is consumed with finding out who Rose was and what connection she had to the Jarrett family.

Although, as I mentioned, I was disappointed with the book, there were a couple of things I liked about it.  First, it is beautifully written.  For example, after opening her father’s tackle box, Lucy finds a set of lures:

“Iridescent, made of greens and blues and deep oranges that seemed to have been drawn from the depth of a prism, richly hued, yet also somehow luminous.  They were like gemstones, smooth and spherical and trailing feathers, streamers, bits of lace.  Some were tiny perfect images of the earth, blue-green and wondrous, each turning slowly in a mist of white.”

I could see their beauty clearly and wanted to touch them.

Second, the history Lucy unveils regarding the women’s suffrage movement and Rose’s role in it was fascinating to read.  Sprinkling historical figures, such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton, in Rose’s writings lent her story authenticity.

That being said, neither the wonderful writing nor the descriptive history could overcome my intense dislike of Lucy.  Lucy is selfish and destructive.  And in trying to uncover the secrets of the past she never thinks about how the answers might affect anyone but herself.  In addition, her “romance” with Keegan, her ex-boyfriend, seemed forced and untrue.  For me, there was no tension between them, romantic or otherwise.  It was an unnecessary plotline to a novel chock-full of plotlines.

~ Linette