Multi-generational family tales laced with twists and turns, secrets and revelations, separations and reunions have long found a resonance with readers, holding out the promise of a riveting plot. For authors, this theme provides potent ground for spinning fascinating tales involving multiple interpersonal relationships.
Author Kim Edwards would agree. Her debut novel, The Memory Keeper’s Daughter, as well as her latest offering, The Lake of Dreams, revolves around similar themes. The former, inspired by a true story, was the tale of a family as it unfolds after the protagonist decides to give away his daughter at birth, hiding even her existence from the rest of his family. The latter is a story of genealogical exploration.
Ms Edward’s latest protagonist is Lucy Jarret, a hydrologist, who, after many years in foreign lands following her professional pursuits, decides to visit her family living in a fictitious small town in the US called the Lake of Dreams. The decision springs from her boyfriend’s spontaneous comment one day that she’d begun to resemble a “very sad and lonely person”, coupled with a desire to get away from the tremors routinely felt in her house in Japan, exaggerating the feeling of instability in her life.
But visiting home hasn’t been an easy decision for Lucy since her father’s death years before. So, when she finds lives and equations altered a great deal from the way she remembers them, she struggles to accept all the changes. She interprets her mother’s budding romance and her brother’s decision to work with their estranged uncle not as moving on but as a betrayal of her father’s memories.
And even as she contends with these, she stumbles upon an odd collection of items – a handwoven blanket, letters and pamphlets – hidden in a window seat in her house. Whether these belonged to an ancestor whose existence was as yet unknown to the family or some other woman who possibly lived in the house as a tenant is unclear at this point. But, the promise of the former possibility lures Lucy to uncover a hidden past.
When Ms Edwards writes, “Some dreams matter, illuminate a crucial choice or reveal some intuition that’s trying to push its way to the surface,” she sums up her protagonist’s instinctive urge to view her life and the course it’s taken through the lens aimed at this unknown ancestor’s life and her obsessive pursuit of uncovering her past after discovering these items.
The setting of the book and the multiple characters with their multiple storylines presents the reader with the promise of an engaging, high-strung family drama. Only to be let down severely. Each backstory presented from the perspective of the protagonist provides one with bare minimum details. For example, the strained relations between Lucy’s father and uncle are continuously mentioned but why there was tension between the two is hardly explained.
And where memories are recalled, their descriptions get quite repetitive. For instance, every time Ms Edwards writes about Lucy reminiscing about her teenage years spent with her boyfriend, Keegan Falls, in her hometown, she unfailingly mentions how the two of them would often “fly wildly” down the forest roads on Keegan’s bike.
The highlight of the book – and you wish there was more of it – are the letters Lucy finally finds written by the subject of her search, whose story unfolds within their pages, even though the lead up to the discovery of letters can best be described as convenient. Her search progresses unobtrusively, with every piece of the puzzle falling in place effortlessly and every individual encountered all too eager to assist her. In a nutshell, in the context of this book, the journey is certainly not more important than the destination, in this case the letters. The disjointed story emerging from the letters, skipping large tracts of time or oscillating between events and years, reveals just enough for the reader to get the drift but also leaves her with numerous questions. It is not only moving in its recollection of the past but also the way it re-defines a history that shaped the identity of generations.
Another plus for the book is the way civil movements and allied history have been interwoven into the story, giving it an authentic feel despite the fictitious setting. References to the Iroquois population (the indigenous population of the North America) in Lucy’s hometown and their fight for the land usurped from them years before or the women’s suffrage movement of the early 1900s are continual and some acquaintance with these may help one understand the character’s emotional responses better.
All in all, Ms Edwards’ latest offering is a mixed bag. With its proverbial happy ending, this easy-going, straightforward book, without any dark twists and turns, can be described as a universal read. And yet the subtle undertones of repression and injustice uplift the tale on an emotional plane, even if just in parts.
THE LAKE OF DREAMS
Kim Edwards
Viking Penguin, 2011
377 pages; Rs 399
