The Lake Of Dreams by Kim Edwards, Viking, $29.95
Kim Edwards’ debut novel The Memory Keeper’s Daughter became a runaway bestseller when it was released in 2006 — and was published in 38 countries, selling millions of copies around the world.
Four years later her much anticipated second novel has a lot to live up to and while it may lack the heightened drama of the first work, a study of the redemptive power of love, The Lake of Dreams quivers – sometimes literally – with a quiet intensity which is most compelling when developing the strained relationships between the characters.
The novel is set largely in the atmospheric Finger Lakes region of upstate New York, an area Kim knows intimately and her descriptions of this beautiful part of the country give the work an almost filmic authenticity, the action swathed in the mists of the lakes. Indeed, you can almost feel the clear fresh bone-tingling water that protagonist Lucy so regularly plunges into.
The Lake Of Dreams opens with an earthquake in Japan where Lucy Jarrett, our confused heroine is living with her boyfriend Yoshi. The quake upsets Lucy and this sense of shaky foundations echoes throughout the novel as Lucy returns to her childhood home on the premise of a mercy mission to help her mother, but really to face the questions surrounding her father’s life and death a decade before. Back in the bosom of her family, Lucy still seems lost and a reconnection with her ex-boyfriend, a very charismatic glass blower and single dad, only confuses her further.
Add to this a new mystery surrounding the discovery of some papers and pieces of tapestry in a secret compartment in a window seat in her family home which reveal secrets about her great-grandfather’s suffragette sister and an illegitimate child, and you have a tale filled with hidden intrigue.
But it is the gentle, beautifully drawn characterisation, rather than the at times predictable plot, that draws you in to The Lake Of Dreams and keeps you reading to the end.
About the Author
Former teacher Kim Edwards, 52, was born in Texas, but at two months old, her parents moved the family back to the Finger Lakes region of upstate New York, her inspiration for The Lake Of Dreams.
“I grew up in a beautiful place, full of lakes and rolling hills, and spent my childhood swimming all summer, picking apples and berries in the fall and spring, and wading through snow drifts in the winters,” says Kim, who always wanted to be a writer “even before I could read”.
Nevertheless she found it “very hard” to get published – “being a writer takes a great deal of persistence, especially in the early years” she recalls.
Having worked in Asia, Kim currently lives in Kentucky with her husband and children where she is hatching an idea for a third novel but hasn’t yet started writing.
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