Warren Rochelle's Blog - Posts Tagged "sarah-addison-allen"

Lost Lake by Sarah Addison Allen

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Sarah Addison Allen fans won’t be disappointed in her latest novel, Lost Lake, a gentle fantasy of the magical and the mundane, of love and romance, and secrets and families and the sacrifices love sometimes demands we make.

The story begins in the past, in Paris, in 1962. Eby Pim and her husband, George, are lingering, stretching out their vacation as long as they can, because “the longer they spent away, the longer they wanted to stay away” (12). One night they are out walking and meet a young girl, Lisette, who, to their horror, jumps into the river. They save her and she follows them, all the way back to America and eventually to Lost Lake, a magical place hidden in the Georgia countryside.

Then, a gentle shift and we are in present-day Atlanta. Addison fans won’t feel dislocated; they know the connections will be made. It’s been a year since the death of Kate Pheris’s husband. Today is moving day for Kate and her daughter, a move orchestrated by her super-capable mother-in-law, Cricket, who micromanages everything. “Cricket doesn’t weather anything. She controlled storms.” She rescued Kate and Devin after her son’s death and Kate’s collapses into a dark, dark lost year of deep grief. Cricket, who is a real estate agent par excellence, doesn’t waste anything; this move is to be filmed for a commercial: “We know a thing about moving on” (22).

The connection to Eby? Her sister, Quinn, was Kate’s grandmother. Kate has had no contact with her great-aunt for years, but she has never forgotten the summer when she was 12 that she spent at Lost Lake. For Eby, now 76, some of Lost Lake’s magic seems to be gone. The cabin resort has been slowly going downhill for years. It looks like she will be forced to sell. This may be the last summer for the quirky folks who have taken a cabin every year, such as Selma, who has been married seven times, and her friend, Bulahdeen, whose husband is in memory care for Alzheimer’s.

Kate, with Devin, bolts from her mother-in-law’s relentless caring and self-serving control. A 15-year-old post card from Lost Lake turns up as they finish packing up their house, the memories rush back and now that Kate has awakened from her grief, she is faced with what it will mean to live completely under Cricket’s control.

They run away and escape to Lost Lake. They almost can’t find it. They drive through a “kaleidoscope of landscapes … farmland, sandy pine barrens, cypress ponds … but mile after mile there was no Lost Lake” (46-47). Until a large alligator “suddenly appeared on the gritty ribbon of highway in front of them’ (47). Avoiding the alligator almost causes them to hit another car and when they catch their breath, there is no alligator, but Devin sees the road sign pointing to Lost Lake.

Was the alligator there or not? Serendipity or gentle magic? Time will tell. Directly ahead for Devin and Kate is reunion with Eby, and what soon turns out to revelations of more possible magic as Kate and Devin learn when they meet Bulahdeen. She tells them that Selma has “eight charms. Eight surefire opportunities to marry the man she wants.” Seven charms have been used. But is this just Selma’s desire, her overwhelming belief in herself? And Lisette, is she just imagining that Luc’s ghost, still 16, is sitting quietly in her kitchen every morning—just as he was when she saw him last before he killed himself after she had turned him down as her lover?

What will happen when a farewell party for Lost Lake is planned, a farewell before it is sold?
And when the last of the players enter the stage, Wes Patterson, the childhood friend of Kate, and his unscrupulous Uncle Lazlo? The latter is a familiar evil: he wants to buy Lost Lake and develop the property. Not to mention the alligator…

Things are now in motion, both in memory and in the present. Allen fans know that things will eventually turn out, more or less okay. Lovers will be reunited and wrongs addressed. There will be complications, crises, and confrontations. There will be magic—and magic will come with a price. The alligator has work to do.

This time, things seem darker. Some of the prices paid to stop the bad guy, end the evil and right—at least some of them—of the wrongs—seemed, to me, to be high and they were paid at great cost and with pain. Allen’s gaze has sharpened, and her understanding of the human condition has deepened, and the novel is the richer for it.

On a different note, when I read the Acknowledgments I learned that in 2011 Allen had been diagnosed with advanced-stage breast cancer. She is okay; the Acknowledgment ends with this sentence: “I just celebrated my second year in remission.” Hallelujah!

Allen fans, you’ll love this one, too.

PS: I am still hoping for some gay characters.




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