2 posts tagged “lake of dead languages”

If you could write like one fiction author, who would it be?
Submitted by Marilyn.

Carol Goodman. Her first book, Lake of Dead Languages, really inspired me and got me reading again after a hump. Plus, whenever I read her books I learn something new - I'm encouraged to learn and research everything that I'm curious about when it comes to her books. The only thing I don't like about her books - is that the plots change - but the characters stay the same. It always is near the Hudson river, it's usually always about women revisiting their teen or college experience, and history is a big factor. But then I keep reading them - so they can't be bothering me that much :)

I feel strange today. I really couldn’t explain it…just strange. I feel like my mind is running over every thought at least a hundred times when one is certainly enough. Today is defiantly not a day for concentrating on a computer, trying to code out problems. Today is a day for lounging on one’s bed and sleeping until one can’t sleep anymore.

I think is has a lot to do with a book I’m reading called “The Lake of Dead Languages”. It’s about a woman who attends a private high school and after tragic events, graduates and then returns nearly twenty years later to be a teacher. At first it was very intriguing, the author has an interesting sense of description and yet at points her descriptions are consuming and make the reader feel like their drowning in the sense of being told but not seeing.

It was intriguing until she began to talk about what happened while she went to the private school twenty years back, and she began to explain about her two room mates. It became extremely unintriguing, almost frustrating to me because I felt like I had lived through an experience similar to the main character’s before. She speaks of having two room mates, and being close friends with one of them long before the third joined the team. Then she begins to tell this story of lies and betrayal and deceit and how her once close friend was now trading her company for both the other room mate and a boy. Despite the fact that it’s a pretty common scenario I still had problems reading it because I knew what it felt like to be the odd one out, to one day see something between your two friends that proved they were in fact leaving you out of much more than a homework study.

Perhaps the reason I feel so strange is because I simply feel sad. This book has dredged up many high school memories I had gladly stuffed away and soaked with gas with the intention of burning them to the ground, if only I could.

It’s also made me realize the kind of person I am.
>I don’t like being left out of the loop.
>I don’t like being lied to.
>I don’t like people who assume they know how I’d react and so therefore keep secrets from me.
>I don’t like hypocrites, people who say one thing and then do another.

I can’t imagine too many people who can refrain from doing all these things, and so I suppose I should just count my blessings with the couple of close friends I have and leave it at that. I mean I’m not perfect. I don’t think I leave my friends out of the loop, but then again the only friend I talk to on a pretty regular basis is Jane – and she usually starts the loop with me. I usually don’t lie – I like to see people’s reaction to the truth – plus if I lie once I’ll have to lie twice. I don’t assume anything, and I think that’s what kept me from committing most of the acts on my list. I mean a good example is that if I kept Jane out of the loop, I’d then have to lie about the loop, and then keep the loop a secret and then I’d be a hypocrite.

I should just go home and finish the book tonight – then I’d be rid of it and all the memories it resurfaced.