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Title: Black Lake
Author: Johanna Lane
Narrator: John Lee
Format: Unabridged
Length: 5 hrs and 46 mins
Language: English
Release date: 05-12-14
Publisher: Headline Digital
Genres: Fiction, Literary
Publisher's Summary:
Ireland. A home. A childhood. When a country estate becomes all consuming, survival is more important than inheritance.
Dunlough: a rambling, idyllic estate in the Irish countryside, one that has cast a potent spell on its inhabitants for generations. But with the cost of upkeep mounting and money running thin, family patriarch John Campbell makes a bold decision: to avoid selling, he will open Dunlough's doors to tourists, and move his wife, and their son and daughter, to a dank, small cottage behind the main house.
The upheaval strains the already tenuous threads that bind the insular family. Then a tragic accident befalls them, and long-simmering resentments and unanswered yearnings come dangerously to the surface.
Black Lake is a modern, nuanced, gem of a debut novel which evokes the deep connection and nostalgia we feel for the places we love.
Critic Reviews:
"[J]eweled with shrewd insights into childhood and the way people relate to habitation and place... A book to admire and immerse yourself in" (Amit Chaudhuri, author of The Immortals)
Members Reviews:
Moody, atmospheric, with wonderfully rich characters.
Black Lake, Johanna Lane's debut novel, is a fantastic read. Set at Dunlough, a provincial Irish estate, the elegiac mood and atmosphere simply ooze off the page. Lane's troubled characters are at once complex and rich with emotional weight, the bleakness manifested in their hearts portrayed with verisimilitude. At just over 200 pages, this is not a long read, but one that carries a punch and is well worth adding to your fall reading list.
Subtle brilliance
In this quiet, measured tale of how a possession -- in this case the inherited manor house Dulough -- can possess its inhabitants, Ms. Lane conveys this story of loss with remarkable restraint. Highly recommended!
a deep and very dark novel
The novel begins in fact with the end: the peak of events is right here, in the initial chapter, and everything that happens on the following pages is the background, the characters study, attempt to understand the causes of the incident.
Dulough, estate with house-castle, located in the north of Ireland, near the ocean, was inherited by John Campbell, one of the main characters of the book, the father of the family which is at the center of the novel. Besides John here live his wife Marianne and their two children - the eldest daughter Kate and son Philip. Due to excessive cost of maintaining of the estate, John is forced to pass the estate over to the government. The family for the season has to move to a small cottage where their servants lived. Philip will drown in the sea, Kate will be sent to the boarding school (previously she studied at home), and Marianne will be stressed, she will become strange, without her husband's consent will pick her daughter up from school and will close herself with Kate in a large ballroom on the third floor of the castle and will refuse to leave. John and Mrs. Connelly, the servant, will bring the food to mother and daughter every day, John will allow to his family stay in self-imposed captivity. Only a few weeks later, John will call the police and his wife's parents, to move Marianne from the room with force. Police breaks down the door, and John will give his wife to her parents.
After this disarming beginning the novel brings us back to the time when John still only signs documents with the municipal authorities. The middle part of the novel is written from the perspective of John and Philip.
