some thoughts on the lake of dead languages
fiction, dark academia
pulled another dark academia off this list from Le Salon Literary Discussion’s blog to dive into. marisa recommended it to me because the protagonist is an adult-adult. much academia is focused on teens or young adults. It’s nice to have some variety. Jane has come back to Heart Lake School for Girls that she attended as a youth to teach. she brings with her a young daughter.
when jane was a student, there were three sudden deaths, two of whom were her roommates, one the brother of one of the roommates. it’s odd that jane wants to come back at all, but she needs a home; to feel at home.
It’s all I’ve ever wanted. To feel a part of something. I wonder if this was how Helen Chambers felt, when she came back to teach at Heart Lake. I know that to me she always seemed the defining spirit of the place. p.35
lake of dead languages is a fantastic title and i enjoyed my read. i appreciated that much of what is in the book is believable. i love the idea of a body of water with a dark history and the way rumours can become lore.
The nose rings and skull jewelry and purple hair may be new, but this preoccupation with suicide is not. Like many girls’ schools, Heart Lake has its own suicide legend…From the school’s first year, however, there have been mysterious suicides at Heart Lake. They say that the sound of the lake lapping against the three rocks…beckons girls to take their lives by throwing themselves into the lake. They say that when the lake freezes over the faces of the girls can be seen peering out from beneath the ice. p.16
i like an unreliable narrator as a plot and craft tool, i mean, aren’t we all slightly unreliable in telling our stories? is jane telling us the truth about what happened when she was a student at the school? is she telling us the whole story of why she’s back there as a teacher now? also, does jane even believe all the things she is telling us?
if you’ve read The Secret History, by Donna Tartt, you will notice a couple of things that are very similar between the two, including teacher idolizing and another thing i can’t mention for spoiler reasons. there are also a few things that seem tacked on, oddly, that the book could have done without, including jane’s daughter, Roy, and the ice sculptures, but again, this is not The Secret History, it’s a thriller/mystery.
some people might find the book a bit long, as she does take her time to build the atmosphere. i don’t mind that level of detail, but i know that not everyone wants or enjoys this level of detail.
But I can’t drown out the sound of the wind. And under the high-pitched keening of the wind I hear a lower sound, a deep basso profundo mean that makes my hair stand on end. p.335
to sum this up, particularly for those who do read a lot of dark academia, this book is geared towards a more commercial audience than Secret History and it shows. it’s more overdramatic. there are eye roll moments. but as a thriller and a mystery that i had no preconceived ideas about, i enjoyed the read.
n xx