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.