I have not read The Memory Keeper’s Daughter nor have I seen the movie, so I went into Kim Edwards’ latest novel The Lake of Dreams with absolutely no preconceptions.
The Lake of Dreams is a story about a contemporary woman, pushing thirty, who is emotionally lost. After receiving a message from her mother, Lucy returns to her childhood home in upstate New York from her new home in Japan, mostly because she is unemployed and needs a change of scenery. When Lucy arrives in the small village-y town, she finds that her mother, who suffered a minor injury, doesn’t need her assistance and there is no reason for her to be there other than to mull over her father’s tragic drowning ten years ago and perhaps flirt with her ex-boyfriend while she is waiting for her current boyfriend to show up from Japan.
Ambivalence, as a character flaw, is tricky, because it mutes the conflict. Lucy is not propelled through life. She is aimlessly mulling through… for about a hundred pages… until she finds some old family artifacts involving a very removed relative who was part of the suffrage movement. Why does Lucy care? She’s got two weeks to kill. And the plot begins. (In other words, if they make a movie of this book, 95% of everything before this would be cut.)
Meanwhile, there is conflict all around her. The town is divided over a plan to turn their historical neighborhood into a development, and her mother is contemplating selling their house and property to Lucy’s possibly shady uncle. Plus there is a suffragette Rose, whose story is told through letters who is also dealing with some major opposition.
But Lucy, on the other hand, is wishy-washy about pretty much everything in her life, including whose family history she is interested in uncovering (hers? her father’s? Rose’s?) so it’s hard to stay invested in her point of view when she’s not invested herself. Kim Edwards is a good, crisp writer with a passion for feminist issues but perhaps she chose the wrong point of view to tell this story.
Nonetheless, if you have passion for feminism and an interest in the suffrage movement, check out The Lake of Dreams for a slow-raveling look at a woman who is trying to regain her passion.
This was a paid review for BlogHer Book Club but the opinions expressed are my own. To join the discussion, visit HERE.
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