Book Review: Lake Life

Lake Life by David James Poissant (now out in paperback) is the kind of novel I’m always hoping to find. It can afford to be heartwarming. Such a feat seems like it should be impossible in a novel that feels so contemporary.

A thoughtful, serious hilarious tragic literary contemporary Southern novel, it is full of sympathy.

As most reviews seem to note, a family’s tangential participation in a tragedy precipitates the revelation of long held secrets and shames. When the secrets are finally escaping in a series of semi-intentional leaks, one character asks: “Did you know” and another responds, “know what…?” It’s not a play for time; it’s a completely legitimate question for character and reader alike.

When I started reading this book, I could tell things would get worse and worse, and I didn’t know if they’d get better, too. In a year of tragedy and isolation, this was a challenging read, but the incisive observations of people struggling through and doing their best kept me coming back. Are they failures, as some of them declare themselves to be? Are they unlucky? What does it mean to be a “successful” human? One answer I think Lake Life gives is that it means that you keep going and you try for a moment of unstated forgiveness, amends, attempts. If failed connection and veiled honesty means hope and love. Try to make that enough.

This is a novel of death, of strained relationships, and of a place. I can see the sunset over the lake, the once-NYC-art-world-darling’s Audubon-esque copies made for tourists, the completely tangential character’s cell-phone glowing eerily from underwater.

This is a novel with a lot of detail, and the range of the kinds of details distinguish it for me. Lake Life includes themes and a focus on characterization that often means a book will ignore the mundane and the visceral. But in Lake Life, you get information about finances:

“Not that they can afford a second opinion, what with a mortgage they can hardly handle on a house that’s worth half what they paid in 2007, four maxed-out credit cards, plus Diane’s student loans, which , no matter how hard she ignores them, aren’t exactly going anywhere.”

And you get:

“Michael’s face is sweaty, lips twisted in an unrelenting sneer. His bandage comes loose, flashing the family with the puffy, ointment-smeared stitches, before Michael fumbles with the cotton and, wincing, thumbs the bandage into place.”

Injuries, deaths, betrayals, violence, substance abuse, abuse, suicide attempts, and paintings of “gutted goats,” not to mention the careless clear-out of an adult child’s beloved comic collection, could mean tragedy. The fact that in the present of the novel, the family has gathered for what can only be a torturous and drawn-out goodbye to their beloved family lake house just heightens the sentimental potential. I’m not going to say why selling the lake house is imperative though second-guessed, except to note that the logic rings true, though it might seem far-fetched to some. I have thought of exactly the same explanation for a very similar “sell the vacation home” scenario that I have observed in real life. I won’t deny that I may tend to think of far-fetched explanations. The idiosyncrasies, the illogical logic, the interest rates and the fact that “The walls are marked by holes and hooks where paintings used to hang” keep things from being overwrought.

People go to get an ice cream in this book. They put gas in their boats. A hot shower produces steam. In that context, the restrained hope seems appropriate.

I read a lot of depressing material, so don’t trust me on this, but I found Lake Life to be a remarkably uplifting novel. Enjoy if you can, and if not, it’s still a great read.

Unfinished summer reading and the advantages of a hard copy

I once picked up a bright orange copy of Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mr. Ripley while on vacation, having enjoyed the first couple of pages in an air conditioned bookstore. I brought it to the beach and read, drunk on heat and bightness, my head swimming. My eyes were half dazzled by the reflection from the water, even as I shaded the just-off-white pages in order to read in the glare.

As Mr. Ripley considers whether to kiss or murder Dickie Greenleaf, on a boat, the scene I imagined was permeated by the same heat and sun and rhythm in which I read, though my water was colder. I can feel the bone chill of the water in my ankles, from my eventual run into the waves.

That is one kind of quintessential summer reading experience, though I did finish this thriller immediately.

Another is my reading of a John le Carre spy nove,l the title of which I cannot remember, beside the pool. I spent a few summers at a few different pools reading the book, its cover curled and its pages bearing evidence of the splashes and the sun. In between, the book spent at least one winter in the trunk of my car, baking and freezing. My Kindle app on my phone is probably where I put in the most fiction reading time, my Kindle is sturdy, but not that sturdy. The printed book has some unbeatable features.

I have not yet finished this novel and I’m not sure who is spying on whom, though I do remember enough that I want to get back to this story, even, hopefully, this particular copy. I think it’s still in a bag with some goggles, organized not by author or genre but by the context of reading.

Many of my most memorable summer reads have never been finished, and they’re not all thrillers and spy novels. Anna Karenina and The Brother’s Karamazov both qualify as summer reading in my personal system. Who has time to read massive books like that, unassigned, while studying English and therefore having stacks of assigned texts? I started Anna Karenina one summer in high school and read over half before school started back up in the fall. I always meant to return to it, though extensive Russian novels are are rarely my top reading pursuit. Tellingly, when I decided for reasons unknown to read another one during down time at an art gallery job during grad school, I started The Brother’s Karamazov. I was almost relieved when the semester started and I could freely abandon the extensive philosophical discussions that dominate my memory of the book.

Summer reading is determined by the context of the reading experience, by the way the book promises to fill unstructured months, by how well the dazed feeling of being overheated accompanies the plot, and by whether the book can be catalogued with swim gear.

19th c Canadian Chick Lit

Lucy Maud Montgomery is (long)* 19th Century Canadian juvenile chick lit, and I love her.

One of the best trips of my life was a family vacation that included Prince Edward Island and its delightful Green Gables, and Lover’s Lane, and the house with the dress that Montgomery once wore, as an adult with a waist smaller than I had as a skinny high schooler. The lupines were everywhere and they were in bloom, and the potatoes were fantastic.

Like many other girls, I read Anne of Green Gables, and going to the place is a highlight of literary travel I recommend to anyone who cares for Anne with an e.

I recently read Montgomery’s Christmas Stories. I used the app Serial and read one story of baked goods and snow and boarding houses and, of course, Christmas generosity each day.

The generosity in these stories typifies the genre, and it must be unexpected. People turn out to be better than you think, at least for a day. That is a key ingredient in a nineteenth century heartwarmer, along with, I now realize, a Christmas plum cake.

*Edited to add: one day I’ll have to write about the long 19th century concept. Suffice it to say that Anne of Green Gables was published in 1908.

Current Reading at the end of 2020, a partial list

As the year comes to an end, and everyone else is posting what they have completed in 2020, I’ll share a dozen (OK, a baker’s dozen) of my current books with a few selected quotes that help explain why I read so many books at once.

1. Christmas Stories by Lucy Maud Montgomery

   Characteristic quote:

   It was the dusk of Christmas Eve and they were all in Jean Lawrence's room at No. 16 Chestnut Terrace. No. 16 was a boarding-house, and boarding-houses are not proverbially cheerful places in which to spend Christmas, but Jean's room, at least, was a pleasant spot, and all the girls had brought their Christmas presents in to show each other.
   *Note: This collection is on the app Serial and the Kindle edition on Amazon is at least similar.

2. Last Seen Wearing an Inspector Morse mystery by Colin Dexter

3. The Wild Robot by Peter Brown

4. My Side of the Mountain by Jean Craighead George

   Characteristic quote:

   A dark enormous form ran onto the meadow. No one was in sight…I had the impression that it was a deer…I ran into the grass. There lay a dead deer.…Someone was poaching.

5. New and Selected Poems by Mary Oliver

   Characteristic quote:

   Sometimes the great bones of my life feel so heavy… “Azure”

6. The House Behind the Cedars by Charles W. Chesnutt

7. Saga, volume 2, by Brian K. Vaughn and Fiona Staples

8. The Border of Paradise by Esme Weijun Wang

9. Murder on Youngers Creek Road by Gary P. West

10. Elsie Dinsmore by Martha Finley

    Characteristic quote:

    "Dear papa, I am so sorry I have been so naughty," she murmured, leaning her head against the arm of his chair, while the tears rolled fast down her cheeks; "won't you please forgive me, papa? it seems to me I can't go to sleep to-night if you are angry with me."

11. The Wangs vs the World by Jade Chang

    Characteristic quote:

    Saina sat behind the wheel of the parked car, a hand-me-down Saab that the house’s previous owner —a widowed theater director who couldn’t take the upstate winters anymore—had left behind along with an attic full of furniture and a shed piled with buckets of unapplied weather sealant.

12. Productions of Mrs. Maria Stewart: Presented to the First African Church and Society of the City of Boston by Maria Stewart

13. Dracula by Bram Stoker

    Characteristic quote:

    Strange and terrible as it is, it is true!

I read a lot of books at once in part because I read for lots of different reasons. I might be working on a project that asks me to review a strangely popular nineteenth century children’s book (#10 above), or I might want to spend half an hour thinking about train tables and an alibi I already know to be faked (#2). I might be reading something with my kids (#3, #4).

But what if I want something else? Well, there’s a poetry collection (#5). There’s a comedic romp that is also a social commentary (#11). And so on.

Some are re-reads, and some I might not finish. I might set one aside and return to it after months or years. I haven’t read So Much Blue by Percival Everett in a sustained way in a long time, and it isn’t on the list above in part because of that, but 2021 could be the year I return to it.

Family Book Review: The Water Dragon

Sometimes it’s the story that makes a book special, and sometimes it’s the story of how we come to a book. Last summer on a family road trip vacation, we went to the beach, visited family, and checked out city sites. This should be the perfect vacation, right? Something for everyone!

The kids loved this trip. Especially the public library where we stopped to break up the drive home, which is where we stumbled upon Ji Lian’s The Water Dragon: A Chinese Legend.

This is truly an any age tale, timeless, and crafted to not include any “ripping kids from their parents” elements. We like the illustrations too.

This is a great read for those with an interest in Chinese dragons, and a good intro to them for those already interested in the dragons of Western stories.

Listen to Antonia Bembo

I enjoy listening to J. S. Bach, especially when my soul needs to be organized. But until recently, I’d never heard of Antonia Bembo. If you just want to listen to Antonia Bembo, consider yourself invited to listen to Lamento della Vergine.

Pondering whether to listen to Julian Bream on lute or whether to explore one of the many violin concerto albums available, I realized that what I really needed to do was find out something—anything—about women composers of the Baroque era. As is obvious, I’m not a music expert, but fortunately, expanding your personal canon is easy, unless you get derailed by the endless choices available: Top hits the year I was born vs Chinese opera, anyone? For some of us, this is the kind of problem that could send us straight back to Bach.

Even the comparatively limited vast array of Baroque women composers that are ridiculously less famous than Bach could overwhelm you.

Warning: it totally might.

So Google around, or listen to one musician I found: Bembo.

She is featured on the album Donne Barocche: Woman Composers from the Baroque Period, of which Rick Anderson wrote for the Music Library Association (volume 59, issue 2, page 412): “When the point of a recording is to showcase compositions by women, critical evaluation can be something of a political minefield. … In this case, it may be sufficient to say that the works on offer are every bit as expertly written as one might expect from these musicians' more commonly recorded male contemporaries.”

Enjoy.

What do we mean when we say “The Classics”?

Confession time: I’ve never read The Catcher in the Rye. I figure it’s been read so many times by so many people, that it doesn’t really need to be read by me. It’s nothing personal, Holden. I’m sure it would be a pleasure to finally meet you in person, so to speak, after hearing so much about you over the years. One day, I might pick up Catcher and read it. I read Slaughterhouse Five on a whim a few months ago, so there is always hope.

I probably escaped Catcher, or it eluded me, because I was homeschooled, and my parents and their educational philosophy never happened to lead to it. I read some weird stuff in the coming-of-age stage when other people read Catcher, everything from a random Civil War diary I found on my history-loving grandfather’s shelf to all of Dorothy Sayers’s mysteries.

I definitely read some of “The Classics,” too, whatever that means. It’s a bit like the famous Supreme Court case and the pornography: you know it when you see it. And see it again and again, on bookshelves and on lists of what everyone should read or does read or has read. If you get a point for it because you’ve read it on an list on the Internet, it just might be a classic. Or not. It might be a new popular book, like The Hunger Games (which I haven’t read) or Beloved (which I have). It might be a more obscure book, quite possibly one included on the list to add “diversity.”

So let’s end with this: here are three must-read, readily available 19th century American books. Two that aren’t “classics,” or maybe they are, depending on how you look at it, and one that is definitely “a classic,” but somehow instead of reading it, everyone was reading Catcher in the Rye:

1. Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom: Or, the Escape of William and Ellen Craft from Slavery

2. Religious Experience and Journal of Mrs. Jarena Lee, Giving an Account if Her Call to Preach the Gospel

3. Uncle Tom’s Cabin

Looped freewriting to generate creativity

Sometimes I forget that everyone is not an English teacher. Some people actually don’t spend most of their time trying to squeeze words and ideas from others! And that means there are probably some creative adults, maybe people who want to write, who may not have tried looped freewriting, or at least not lately.

Google “looped freewriting” and possibly the name of its developer writing scholar Peter Elbow, and you’ll find countless descriptions of the process, but basically, here is how it goes:

1. Write about your topic for 5-15 minutes without editing.

2. Read what you wrote, underlining key ideas or phrases or even words.

3. Write about one of your underlined selections for 5-15 minutes.

4. Repeat as needed or desired.
   

You can type or write with a pen or pencil, or a stylus. I recommend using a method that is comfortable for you, and experimenting with different tools. My go-to for this technique is a nice pen and unlined paper.

If I really want to change this up, for whatever reason—for me, when my hands are tired or I’m doing something else at the time, or I want to jolt my relationship with language—I record myself and use a speech to text program or something like YouTube, which may create a decent transcript (depending on how well it understands your speech AND details about your language such as technical terms, the prevalence of names and numbers, and so forth). For me, often just trying to talk it through with the idea of recording and doing a looped freewrite gives me a path forward.

How a Story Ends

A story’s end can change all that came before. That’s a lot of power.

This is obvious when the story has a moral. How does “The Little Red Hen” end? You can listen / read / watch these versions of “The Little Red Hen” to see some options.  

In Version 1: “The Little Red Hen” ( from short kids stories.com), the ending comes down on the side of justice over mercy: the other animals don’t help the little red hen so they don’t eat. . 

In Version 2: “The Little Red Hen” (from Scholastic Read Along on YouTube), the hen ends up with helpers for the future in this version. The focus is on teaching them to be helpful. It’s a hard lesson but the redemption softens it a bit.

Version 3: “The Little Red Hen” (from SuperSimple TV on YouTube) makes the moral even more explicit than the other versions, as if it weren’t obvious enough (!). The hen feeds her chicks in this one.

The basic story is the same here, but the conclusion varies. Sometimes the Little Red Hen eats everything herself. Sometimes she shares with her children. Sometimes the other animals are punished, potentially with the idea that they learn something and do better next time. It makes the lesson more gentle when the other animals have a chance to redeem themselves. It makes the hen less open to charges of selfishness when she shares with her children at the end.

What of a more complex story? I recently read Haruki Murikami’s Kafka on the Shore, and as I was reading, I was wondering what kind of ending he would go for. It clearly mattered, but because of the range of genres in play in the book (myth, Bildungsroman, fantasy, sci fi, literary character-based fiction), I figured Murakami had options. As I made my way through the book (with a couple of enforced breaks when I had to let the other reader of the library’s digital copy have it for a couple of weeks), I began to see how the story had to end. At some point, most of the major components of the forthcoming conclusion were inevitable, but that didn’t diminish my interest. And because it wasn’t clear quite what sort of book I was reading, even as I was quite close to the end, I wondered about a couple of key elements. Waiting for the end wasn’t what kept me going, though, and the way the end shaped the preceding story isn’t as obvious as it is in The Little Red Hen. Its impact may be more profound, though: a surprisingly uplifting conclusion isn’t what I expected when I first started Kafka on the Shore, and I like the arc it brings to the complete story.