The Lake [Paperback]

Daniel Villasenor (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 5, 2001

In the tradition of the finest American writers of the South and southwest, award-winning poet Daniel Villasenor stakes out new terrain in this exquisite debut novel.

Written with bold thematic artistry in muscular prose and an economy of style that is entirely his own, Daniel Villasenor has crafted a passionate story about identity and meaning. It is the tale of Zachary Brannagan, a brilliant young philosopher undone by years of grappling with intellectual abstractions. After he sets out to reconnect with the world he has studiously avoided, he finds himself at one evanescent place: the lake. Here he meets a woman whose work and being draw him from a life of the mind to a life of concrete, physical experience. Her breathtaking competence awakens Zach to the powerful bonds created through skilled physical labor, the beauty of working with the body. Together they come through tragedy to the lasting succor of love.

Both rhapsodic and precise, Villasenor's singular narrative style evokes character and consciousness with knife-edge precision and a distinct vision of the American landscape. The Lake is a haunting, sublime American story that marks the arrival of a masterful new voice in fiction.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

A disenchanted philosophy student seeks his roots and finds an unstable Louisiana family in poet Villasenor's debut novel, whose lush prose and evocative landscapes owe more than a little to Faulkner and Cormac McCarthy. Found lying down in a highway near Charlottesville, Va., Zach Brannagan wakes up in a mental hospital. Unorthodox psychiatrist Michael Lazar diagnoses Zach's problem as lack of reality, and prescribes a trip home. Spiritual home for Zach, however, is not with his uncaring parents, a businessman father and New Age mother. And no wonder: Lazar pries through legal documents, and reveals to Zach that he was adopted at age four. Vowing to find his half-Navajo birth mother, Zach boards a bus for Arizona. After he is robbed in New Orleans and is forced to stay in a horrendous homeless shelter, he makes his way to Marjolaine, La. There he encounters the free-spirited Anna Beauchamp, who runs a home for unwanted and hurt children on her 40-acre homestead, called The Lake. One of Anna's young charges, red-haired, mute Sam, takes a special liking to Zach. By the novel's midpoint, Zach has cast off his metaphysical shackles, finding a home and a romance of sorts with Anna. But he feels he must complete his quest, and he and Sam leave Marjolaine on Anna's bicycle. This time the journey ends in disaster. Villasenor's baroque sentences, mimicking the tangle of Southern backwoods flora, ring fluent changes on Biblical figures of speech and follow the spirals of Zach's abstract meditations. Some readers will find that the strength of the prose more than compensates for the rather cumbersome plot. Others may have trouble staying with Zach on his heavily symbolic quest. Rights sold in Germany, the U.K., Italy, France and the Netherlands.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

A philosophy student's life is turned upside down in this poetic first novel. Zach Brannigan is a graduate student who has spent his life wrapped up in intellectual abstraction. After a nervous breakdown, he encounters a friendly psychiatrist who encourages him to rebuild his life through contact with the physical worldDand to discover his Native American heritage. While traveling to Arizona to try and locate his parents, he is assaulted and robbed in New Orleans. He ultimately finds his way to the Lake, the isolated home of the earthy Anna Beauchamp, a young woman who cares for orphaned and developmentally disabled children. There, Zach begins to heal psychologically by working around the property. He also encounters Samuel, a mysterious, epileptic boy who will figure prominently in his future. Strongly lyrical, though occasionally overwritten, this is a haunting, highly memorable debut.DLawrence Rungren, Merrimack Valley Lib. Consortium, Andover, MA
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics) (June 5, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0141001852
• ISBN-13: 978-0141001852
• Product Dimensions: 7.5 x 5.1 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,825,141 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars I really wanted to like this but..., July 18, 2000

By 

"sonicstan" - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Lake (Hardcover)

I almost feel guilty about giving this book a less than favorable review after the fulsome praise that Kirkus and Rick Bass lavished on it but I really don't see what they saw, or feel what they so obviously felt concerning this novel. The plot is actually one that I would normally find interesting, but I was nonetheless very disappointed with the results. I thought the book was extremely pretentious and ponderous. When it should soar, it drags. When it needs to move, it seems content to merely reflect the writer's own sensibilities, with scant regard for where it is (or not) taking the reader. Also, the style is quite uneven and inconsistent. At times, the sentences run on for nearly the entire page, the words circling themselves and robbing the passages of impact and power, while at other times they are merely variations on 2, 3, or 4 words repeated again and again. Also, Mr. Villasenor's habit of combining many words to make one (forhesaw, andheknew, andthismuch, etc.) is atriteliterarydevice. The author is obviously a man of ideas, with a certain command of language, but I feel that in his case, perhaps his time spent as a poet has not served him well in this first attempt at writing a novel. I probably would not be so negative (it really was tough for me not to give this 1 star) if it wasn't for the puzzling critical fawning. It almost seems that Mr. Bass' review is a sycophantic attempt to ape Mr. Villasenor's rather overheated writing style. I can't remember a time when I was this let down by a book that received such laudatory critical praise. Sorry.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Underneath the stars, June 27, 2002

By 

Mary Lautner (Palo Alto, CA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Lake (Paperback)

I have gratitude for this book. Daniel Villasenor
brings the reader deeper into the internal world
of understanding and feelings. He expresses the
strong desire to nuture and love. He reminds me
of a modern James Joyce: these are so-called
broken people who demonstrate a worldly capacity
to know, to love, to care for. The book is free
of devices to engage the reader into an emotional state.
It is real. It is honest.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Good story; memorable images, March 16, 2001

By 

Timothy Friend (Bedford, TX USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Lake (Hardcover)

This story has a marvelous set-up and a brilliant ending. I recommend it, and look forward to Villasenor's next effort.

Four minor quibbles: 1. Because Villasenor is more a stylist than a storyteller, problems arise when he strays from the latter altogether. So when the story slows in the middle, the reader is left with the arid space of style for style's sake. 2. The author is overfond of the word "splayed." 3. The stylistic choice to not use quotes sometimes means a brilliant, seamless expression of thought. Sometimes it falls flat and only means more work for the reader. 4. Zach's "making lists" exercise is not concluded satisfactorily.