The Lake Of Dead Languages (2005) - Plot & Excerpts
A book that starts off really good, and ends up...just bad. Voice and OverallI really liked the hook of the Latin classes, and I thought the beginning was good also. But after the introduction of all the characters, there was a big, and I mean big, downturn in the quality of the book.At some point I felt like I was reading a chick-flick; with all that nonsense about hiding her diary and being worried about what Myra Todd (I think that's what her name was) would say. Another big thing I didn't like was that she was divorced and had a child, but the divorcee or the child didn't really come into the book that much, they seemed like an afterthought or filler. Why put something there that you're not going to use? CharactersThe characters were cliche and boring, and not one of them had any depth. The main character sounded like she was still a teenager; in the middle of the book she seemed that she had forgotten she had a daughter. The repetition of the lake and it's frozen-ness was boring after the first few times, and the authors pathetic attempts to make her sound like 'one of the wild kids' by adding her drug use was random. She's reminiscing about her childhood and then talks about her friends' 'exquisitely rolled joints'. If you don't intend for the material to relate to the story, don't put it in there. Her longtime obsession with that woman was...weird...The girls of the school sounded very stereotypical goth, depressed type. It's hard for me to believe that all the girls were that way. The main character talked about their eye makeup more than anything else, and that was very annoying. The 'cheap teenage symbolism' was just that, and that weird thing about one of the girls sneaking bits of the main characters diary into her homework didn't make sense, although I suppose it shouldn't have. I hated how she called them by their Latin names (even though it sort of related to that ritual thing), but it got confusing when the counselor called them by their real names... The 'rituals' and the 'three sisters legend' were intriguing, but it felt immature.The teachers that were described were one dimensional, and the fact that they were described made the book even more chick-flick-y. The best character was the counselor, she made sense. SettingThe name of the school 'Heart Lake Academy' sounded like something out of a badly-written teenage romance novel. The three sisters legend was interesting, but overworked. The lake was a nice touch, but it wasn't as deeply metaphorically used as it could be. I felt, as a reader, that the metaphor of the lake was explained to me, when I could have actually figured it out myself; that's the whole point of a good writer, to leave the reader wondering but content. I didn't finish the whole book, but I didn't really like how everything was explained.DialogueThe dialogue sounded so cliche and stinted. It felt like the author just picked phrases from soap-operas and put them in there. Flow, Tone, and VoiceThe only thing I really enjoyed about the book was how well it read. It was, for the most part, paced very well and written with nice flow (although some parts seemed boring and to drag on, but not a lot). The tone seemed to change from 'badly written teenage novel' to 'chick-lit' to 'mystery'. The voice at times could seem very mature and then also very immature.OverallI give this one start because of the nice flow and beginning. Everything else was just badly written. It had nice potential, but it was squandered. I didn't finish it because, honestly, I didn't find it worth my time.
Hmm. One of those books you want to be done with but have to finish to see how it ends. Kind of a thriller, kind of a mystery. The narrator is a former student of all-girls' school Heart Lake who comes back to teach Latin as an adult. In her time there as a student, both of her roommates committed suicide, and now someone seems to be recreating this past aggressively and accusatorily (I may have made this word up; if not, I spelled it wrong). This novel was like an overstuffed sandwich with too many unnecessary details, yet somehow lacking some essential flavor. The protagonist is either really dumb or really in denial about some of the elements of her history, even though she knows more about the actual cases than anyone else. Often the emotions just did not ring true. Plus, how many times does the protagonist almost fall through the ice? It seems to happen on every other page. The author is not very clear about certain details and it becomes hard to visualize; this includes the recurring symbol created out of hairpins that the girls use to leave each other messages. I just could not picture it despite the description. Other times description was flat-out missing and I had no idea what she was talking about. It is incredibly obvious who the person in the present messing with the protagonist is. Then the whole preposterous story wraps up neatly with -- spoiler alert -- yet ANOTHER kid turning out to have been the illegitimate child of the secretly adoptive mother's friend. God. What a mess. Bonus ick: rapey sex with masked stranger.Pros: I learned enough about Latin to want to go buy Wheelock's Latin and learn more. I also learned about how bodies of water freeze. However, these things did not make the book worth recommending.
What do You think about The Lake Of Dead Languages (2005)?
I read this over my spring break senior year of Kenyon, so perhaps I have fond memories of that time, all alone on campus except for a few other people who couldn't pull their comps together. When I'd made especially good progress researching and writing, I'd go to the bookstore (alas--best bookstore in the world done to death by new corportate college president who removed the kiddie tower, the used books, and the fairy tale character banners!) and read The Lake of Dead Languages. Basically, I signed up for latter day gothic novel at an all girls' boarding school, and that's exactly what I got. Latin was a bonus, and I really enjoy all the Classical references in these books, as they smarten up the characters a good deal. Cinderella's a good story; Cinderella as a Latin scholar is even better. Goodman loves writing about 1) Idyllic locations, especially for young women; and 2) Past scandal, usually the killing kind. I think the Lake of Dead Languages did a really good job of mixing its references (Stories from the Ballet; Latin poets; archetypal friendship roles; fertility rites) so I was always on the edge of accusing the right person, but didn't manage it until the end. In reading other Goodman books, I always feel likes she's telling the same story, only with slightly different protagonists. Usually they're single mothers, all with a job in scholarship or the arts, all haunted by a certain place. The formula works, because it's a formula I find comforting, like macaroni and cheese, or catnip, but after Lake I found it predictable. Likewise the hero, or heroes, the location (she loves upstate New York).Nevertheless, I read Carol Goodman for the details--some beautiful descriptions, big surprises almost of a scholarly sort--you can feel a story underneath the story, and know, with some careful thinking and reasoning, the heroine will dig it out.
—Cate
This is one of those books I wanted to be done with, but I also wanted to find out the truth behind the events. It's an eerie and cold mystery novel that deals with memories, death, loss and guilt. Not a book I would have chosen for myself to read, but I always like a challenge.I want to thank my Goodreads friend Jen for trying to broaden my horizons by giving me this book and sharing a book with me that she obviously enjoyed reading. During our senior year Lucy Toller was sent to the infirmary with two slit wrists. A few weeks later our roommate Deirdre Hall was found in the lake, her neck broken. It was determined at the inquest that she jumped from the Point, landed on the ice, and then slipped into the water. A month after that I watched as Lucy, followed by her brother, Matt, walked out onto the thawing lake and vanished beneath the ice. Could it be that there is something about this place that makes these events recur? Or is somebody recreating the events?It all sounds very promising, but I am so disappointed. My problem is mainly with the pacing that is terribly slow, especially in the beginning, it took me like forever to get into the story that unfortunately never managed to captivate me. It annoys me that the author describes the same things over and over again; like the sound of the ice, how the lake freezes and faces paling or blushing. Also I couldn't connect with any of the characters that are mainly secretive and/or manipulative. Jane, the main character, is unbelievably oblivious, naive and 'blind'. I just had to know if she would ever figure out what I as a reader already knew.I really wanted to like this book and it could have been good, but for me it lacked in the execution and it lost my interest along the (reading)way.
—Eileen
Really, this book deserves 3.5 stars, and if I weren't such a hardcore mystery aficionado, it would have earned 4. Carol Goodman writes with elegance, working in her plot twists with exquisite timing, lacing her narrative with just enough misdirection to make you second-guess your assumptions. Her plotting is Gothic and literate, and were I newer to mysteries or crime, I am sure I would have loved this book as opposed to merely liking it. Alas, and as is always detrimental to my appreciation of any mystery novel, I was completely unsurprised by any of the plot twists. In the last quarter of the book, the author presents us with the rather meta proposition: "[She] once said that the question the reader should ask the narrator of any book is, "Why are you telling me this now?"" In Ms Goodman's own case, I presume her pacing/telegraphing is due to a sense of wanting to play fair with the armchair detectives reading along, giving us enough clues to figure things out on our own, in the best tradition of detective novels. Pity that I figured it all out well into the first half of the book, and though it made the roller-coaster lunge of her mystery that much tamer, it didn't diminish my enjoyment of her fine writing at all.
—Doreen
