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aphelia88's review against another edition
3.0
"The air smelled of dust and old paper. Rows and rows of books lined the shelves and I let my eyes linger on the sturdy spines, thinking how human books were, so full of ideas and images, worlds imagined, worlds perceived; full of fingerprints and sudden laughter and the sighs of readers, too. It was humbling to consider all these authors, struggling with this word or that phrase, recording their thoughts for people they'd never meet." (266)
"It could break your heart to think of it too closely, to imagine all that might have happened, to know all that did." (346)
This is a strange book, that reads like a half-remembered dream. It's a generational saga of family mysteries, and it requires patience. This would have been a four-star read for me if I had been better able to connect with the characters, but part of the dream-like feel is that we don't get to really know any of them beyond the surface, like looking at reflections on a lake.
The main character is Lucy Jarrett, 29 and soon to be 30, who has been successful in her world-travelling career as a hydrologist, studying the ways water influences the world and the way we build. Living in Japan with her first serious boyfriend, Yoshi - a bridge engineer - she is surprised at her own unhappiness, and is filled with a sense of restless loneliness.
When her mother, in the quaintly named small town of Lake of Dreams, breaks her arm, Lucy comes home ostensibly to check on her but really hoping to recover her equilibrium. Instead, memories of the past throw her future into doubt. Her aimlessness stirs up long forgotten family secrets that will change everything.
When she discovers a hidden cache of letters, papers and pamphlets, she sets off to track down the writer, for a lack of anything better to do. When she shows them to her mother, her mother remembers finding a note with the same writing, along with a finely woven baby blanket clearly meant as a gift never given, in the lining of an old family truck. The unusual border motif of linked moons amid floral vines shows up again on an old stained glass panel that Lucy's high school boyfriend - now a gifted glassblower - is restoring, and this leads her to a full set of specially commissioned stained glass in a small chapel on land soon slated for development.
As Lucy finds more letters and unravels the life of the woman who wrote them and designed the windows - and the sacrifice she made long ago - the tragic story resonates on present events as well, including the future of the family home.
Like it's images and metaphors of water and the moon, the story is slow and meandering and recursive. My major quibble is that Lucy's journey was too easy. The letters she finds are more like full stories, supposedly written for someone who will never read them yet magically preserved without many gaps. Having done some genealogy research myself that kind of find - more akin to a very personal diary - is unlikely and like winning the lottery.
The suffrage movement is interwoven well. But it is very difficult to sympathize with Lucy's apathy and self-sabotaging tendencies (, which move rather abruptly into a spiritual awakening (women and the church, or their historical lack of presence in the church, is a major theme). This is a quiet story where all the little plot threads are tributaries that eventually run together, although not necessarily to a satisfying end. A good read, but not an especially memorable one.
"It could break your heart to think of it too closely, to imagine all that might have happened, to know all that did." (346)
This is a strange book, that reads like a half-remembered dream. It's a generational saga of family mysteries, and it requires patience. This would have been a four-star read for me if I had been better able to connect with the characters, but part of the dream-like feel is that we don't get to really know any of them beyond the surface, like looking at reflections on a lake.
The main character is Lucy Jarrett, 29 and soon to be 30, who has been successful in her world-travelling career as a hydrologist, studying the ways water influences the world and the way we build. Living in Japan with her first serious boyfriend, Yoshi - a bridge engineer - she is surprised at her own unhappiness, and is filled with a sense of restless loneliness.
When her mother, in the quaintly named small town of Lake of Dreams, breaks her arm, Lucy comes home ostensibly to check on her but really hoping to recover her equilibrium. Instead, memories of the past throw her future into doubt. Her aimlessness stirs up long forgotten family secrets that will change everything.
When she discovers a hidden cache of letters, papers and pamphlets, she sets off to track down the writer, for a lack of anything better to do. When she shows them to her mother, her mother remembers finding a note with the same writing, along with a finely woven baby blanket clearly meant as a gift never given, in the lining of an old family truck. The unusual border motif of linked moons amid floral vines shows up again on an old stained glass panel that Lucy's high school boyfriend - now a gifted glassblower - is restoring, and this leads her to a full set of specially commissioned stained glass in a small chapel on land soon slated for development.
As Lucy finds more letters and unravels the life of the woman who wrote them and designed the windows - and the sacrifice she made long ago - the tragic story resonates on present events as well, including the future of the family home.
Like it's images and metaphors of water and the moon, the story is slow and meandering and recursive. My major quibble is that Lucy's journey was too easy. The letters she finds are more like full stories, supposedly written for someone who will never read them yet magically preserved without many gaps. Having done some genealogy research myself that kind of find - more akin to a very personal diary - is unlikely and like winning the lottery.
The suffrage movement is interwoven well. But it is very difficult to sympathize with Lucy's apathy and self-sabotaging tendencies (
Spoiler
especially in regards to dallying with the former high school sweetheart although it's obvious her heart isn't in it - but her reunion with Yoshi, and his ridiculously unbelievable acceptance of her confessed unfaithfulness - doesn't seem full-hearted either, which was another major quibble of mine!madamwobbles's review against another edition
1.0
I loved The Memory Keeper's Daughter; it is one of my favorite novels so this was a big, fat disappointment. The writing just seems cheesy. Edwards seems to be trying so hard to make this a flowery, beautifully written mystery and all I got from it was this: the narrator, Lucy, is a dick to everyone because her dad died and she feels guilty, the letters were way more interesting than her story and the "mystery" of her dad's death was so predictable I sighed when the big reveal came up. Hopefully her next novel is better.
jhadler's review against another edition
3.0
Although the pace was a bit slow for my preference, everything was drawn together in a conclusion which not only made sense, but served to echo the author's themes. She makes extensive use of metaphor, which at times seems labored, yet at other times is exquisite.
bookishrabbit's review against another edition
3.0
I love poetry. I love prose. I love beautiful language. But dear god, Kim Edwards, give it a rest. I don't need to know that your lemonade is the yellow of a dandelion on a sunny day. So much unneeded description in this book; it would be half the size if she had left it out. The main characters is also kind of self-absorbed and you want to shake her and tell her to make up her mind. But underneath everything is an interesting concept, and I enjoyed the historical aspect of the story, even though it was a huge stretch how everything fit together.
kdferrin's review against another edition
2.0
The author crammed a lot of issues into one book (feminism, environmentalism, racism, etc.) and the main story line was just not interesting enough to support it all. I think I could have been more interested in learning about the ancestor whose letters the main character discovers but those letters were too sketchy and just never really connected with me.
anderson65's review against another edition
3.0
This is one of those I-finished-it-because-I-started-it books. It was interesting enough, yet I tired of the repeated and quite elaborate descriptions of places, things,and people. It was very appealling initially, but the volume of unecessary words grew and billowed and became completely out of proportion for this reader. The story lines are clever and appealing, so if you don't mind repetition and like a decent story, this may be the book for you.
muddypuddle's review against another edition
4.0
The Lake of Dreams is the name of the (fake) town in upstate New York where this book takes place, somewhere in the area that contains Rochester and Seneca Falls. I've been up there a number of times, it's beautiful country (in the summer) and I could picture this all in my mind, as the setting is a huge part of the story. Family history, family mysteries, unwinding stories, long-lost love and the growing-up-together kind of love, reminiscing about the past and making life-changing discoveries and decisions -- all are a part of this very interesting story.
jlwolinski's review against another edition
5.0
This is one of my favorite books, I read it every few years. Probably helps that much of it takes place in my absolute dream house, a cottage on a lake. And the rest speaks to women in spirituality, my other passion. Ms. Edwards descriptive and lyrical way of writing puts me right there...I can feel the water, hear the reeds rustling in the wind.
cadepraterburgess's review against another edition
4.0
Very unexpected pleasure. Some of the prose tripped over itself and the plot can feel melodramatic, but I was constantly engaged.
elygreen's review against another edition
2.0
Slowest. Damn. Read. Ever.
Okay, so I admit I made a mistake; I judged the book by its pretty cover and the fame of the author and the 'oooohh mystery, family intrigue, secrets' description. My bad.
I was sweating blood to get through it-I persevered and succeeded, only to be able to say I didn't waste my money on that book.
This author apparently thinks it's cool to write these LOOOOOOOOOOONG, WIIIIIINDING, MEANDERING descriptions of EVERY SINGLE BLOODY THING THAT THE MAIN CHARACTER [who was boring and flat with the common sense of a grasshopper, mind you] DOES FROM HOW SHE GETS OUT OF BED TO HOW SHE SITS DOWN ON THE COUCH.
Seriously, she puts Dickens to shame.
And I was so near to giving up-at the end of every page basically. Because-nothing-was-happening.
Basically, this chick decides to go back to her home town [called the Lake of Dreams. Seriously, if a place exists that is called something similar-The Meadow of Sunshine or something, I'll eat my shoe], and embarks on a super slow, pointless discovery of some ancient relative. The author tries really hard to make these family secrets seem all mega interesting and awesome, throwing in some awkward and underdeveloped romance plots or whatever. BUT FAIL. FAIL. FAIL.
The last 2 chapters were the only fast read of the entire book. Not that it helped much, but at least it earned it its two stars.
I can't imagine any person in the world who would see the world from the point of view of the main character-hell, I can't even remember her name. She makes out with her perfect ex boyfriend while her current Japanese boyfriend is planning to come over, almost gets his son killed, spills the secret that her sister in law is pregnant, wrecks her family's office, and all the while feels the need to continue searching for some wild fantasy ancestor who shock and horror only lived in the 1900's, so it's not even anything that old or mysterious. Turns out this woman was a suffragette-so cue all the descriptions of the wonderful things that these women did, because according to Edwards, what the world needs is more feminism.
And the ending. Gah. I refuse to comment.
Over and out. Off to find a decent read.
Okay, so I admit I made a mistake; I judged the book by its pretty cover and the fame of the author and the 'oooohh mystery, family intrigue, secrets' description. My bad.
I was sweating blood to get through it-I persevered and succeeded, only to be able to say I didn't waste my money on that book.
This author apparently thinks it's cool to write these LOOOOOOOOOOONG, WIIIIIINDING, MEANDERING descriptions of EVERY SINGLE BLOODY THING THAT THE MAIN CHARACTER [who was boring and flat with the common sense of a grasshopper, mind you] DOES FROM HOW SHE GETS OUT OF BED TO HOW SHE SITS DOWN ON THE COUCH.
Seriously, she puts Dickens to shame.
And I was so near to giving up-at the end of every page basically. Because-nothing-was-happening.
Basically, this chick decides to go back to her home town [called the Lake of Dreams. Seriously, if a place exists that is called something similar-The Meadow of Sunshine or something, I'll eat my shoe], and embarks on a super slow, pointless discovery of some ancient relative. The author tries really hard to make these family secrets seem all mega interesting and awesome, throwing in some awkward and underdeveloped romance plots or whatever. BUT FAIL. FAIL. FAIL.
The last 2 chapters were the only fast read of the entire book. Not that it helped much, but at least it earned it its two stars.
I can't imagine any person in the world who would see the world from the point of view of the main character-hell, I can't even remember her name. She makes out with her perfect ex boyfriend while her current Japanese boyfriend is planning to come over, almost gets his son killed, spills the secret that her sister in law is pregnant, wrecks her family's office, and all the while feels the need to continue searching for some wild fantasy ancestor who shock and horror only lived in the 1900's, so it's not even anything that old or mysterious. Turns out this woman was a suffragette-so cue all the descriptions of the wonderful things that these women did, because according to Edwards, what the world needs is more feminism.
And the ending. Gah. I refuse to comment.
Over and out. Off to find a decent read.