Eilene's review

The Lake of Dead Languages
by Carol Goodman (Goodreads author!)

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<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/528608.The_Lake_of_Dead_Languages?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=blog_review" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img alt="The Lake of Dead Languages" border="0" src="http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1175554954m/528608.jpg" /></a> <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/528608.The_Lake_of_Dead_Languages?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">The Lake of Dead Languages</a> by <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/18130.Carol_Goodman">Carol Goodman</a><br/><br/>
  <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3533700?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review"><h3>My review</h3></a>
  rating: 5 of 5 stars<br/>This is a great book.  A complex story with a decent amount of plot development.  Not a situation where there is too much plot, but enough and the questions are answered in an appropriate way.  
<br/>Fabulous setting, which I think is one of the most important elements of a great story.  But this is a setting that is both beautiful and haunting, the type of place I would love to spend a winter, reading inside by the fire wrapped in an afghan listening to the wind whistling outside--its Heart Lake in upstate New York, with the three sisters in the lake, home to a boarding school beleagured by the legend of the three Crevecoeur sisters who died, drowning in the lake.  Of course the female students at the school follow in their footsteps.  The story follows Jane, recently seperated from her husband and returned to the school, where she was part of a group of students, two of which killed themselves.  Her students begin to demonstrate alarming suicidal tendencies and when her old journal surfaces mysteries are revealed about what happened then, and what is happening now.
<br/>My only complaint is the first person narrative can get grating, which is the only thing that makes me put this book down.  Adding to this complaint is the relative innanity of the characters--they are all on the surface, no dimension, no depth.  They play their parts and go through the motions, but I am not convinced they are real.  And when this book is read in conjunction with The Seduction of Water and The Drowning Tree, they all begin to seem similiar, the same, and that is a shame, because read a certain distance apart they are quite enjoyable.  
  <br/><br/><a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/list/152948?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">View all my reviews.</a>

Eilene's review
rating:

bookshelves: notbadnotbadatall
recommended for: people who like Latin
status: Read in November, 2005

This is a great book. A complex story with a decent amount of plot development. Not a situation where there is too much plot, but enough and the questions are answered in an appropriate way.
Fabulous setting, which I think is one of the most important elements of a great story. But this is a setting that is both beautiful and haunting, the type of place I would love to spend a winter, reading inside by the fire wrapped in an afghan listening to the wind whistling outside--its Heart Lake in upstate New York, with the three sisters in the lake, home to a boarding school beleagured by the legend of the three Crevecoeur sisters who died, drowning in the lake. Of course the female students at the school follow in their footsteps. The story follows Jane, recently seperated from her husband and returned to the school, where she was part of a group of students, two of which killed themselves. Her students begin to demonstrate alarming suicidal tendencies and when her old journal surfa...more

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