Customer Reviews

The Lake of Dead Languages

5 star:		(52)
4 star:		(49)
3 star:		(33)
2 star:		(21)
1 star:		(9)

 

 

The Lake of Dead Languages begins with one of the most intriguing first sentences I've read. From there, the author weaves a delicate and delicious story. Many sentences I reread for the pleasure of hearing them again in my head. This book is part poetry, part suspense, part mystery, and all-absorbing. I left the phone unanswered, dinner unmade, and appointments unkept. I look forward to hearing more from Goodman!

This book reminded me of The Secret History by Donna Tartt. It has the same feeling of things, mysteries, hidden beneath the surface. Jane Hudson, an instructor at Heart Lake, teaches at the same school she once attended. While a student there, her two roommates killed themselves. Now, girls in the class she teaches seem to be coming to the same end. Jane has to come to an understanding of what happened in the past in order to help her students now.

This is a dark, gothic novel, full of mysterious alliances, secrets kept, and secrets told. This is a really good read on a stormy weekend with a cup of tea at your side. You wind up caring for all the characters, and wondering what will happen to them in the end.

You know, I tried to explain the plot of this thing to my husband last night. It took almost ten minutes, partially because it's so convoluted, and partially because I kept having to stop to giggle like a fiend.

Some reviewers have, rather snarkily, compared this book to V. C. Andrews. I think that's very apt-- it just saddens me that they've said it like it's a bad thing. This book has everything that made you love V. C. Andrews, back in those hormone-soaked days before you had taste or shame: Secret births! Hidden legacies! Incest! A girl's school with a deadly curse and a dark secret! Best of all, it has enough solid writing, character development, and Latin to keep the adult in you from feeling like a twit when you read it.

If you do buy this book, try not to think of _The Secret History-. The similarities are there-- boy are they there--, and the other reviewers are absolutely right when they say that this book isn't as strong. Still, it's a delightful, gothic, prurient little gem, and a fine companion for a rainy afternoon. I can't wait to read her second one.

While being rather predictable, Carol Goodman's novel of mystery and intrigue in an east coast boarding school delivers an entertaining read. For a mystery novel it rises above the genre in its literary expectations of the reader. One might even call it a literate mystery. Jane Hudson, the main character is sympathetically rendered and the girls are likable enough, yet something seems to be missing from the book. It lacks a cohesive sense of motion. Goodman's forte is certainly in the set-up. She creates interesting characters and an intriguing plotline, but then descends to a somewhat trite, formulaic conclusion. I enjoyed the first two-thirds of the novel, but felt slightly dissatisfied by the ending. Still, it is an enjoyable book - and a mystery that does not make you feel as if you've sunk to the level of genre fiction.

I enjoyed this book so much, but I am not sure I am able to explain why in a way that would encourage you to read it. It reminded me of the old gothic novels I used to read, but has much more substance than that. There is a mystery that drives the story, but the most important thing is how this book is written. I am so impressed with this author, her ability to make the reader feel, smell, see, and hear what the character is experiencing. I can't encourage you enough to read this book. I envy you the time you will have wrapping yourself up with this book. When I finished it, I knew that I would be reading this book again, unusual with a mystery, but that is how much this writing affected me. I look forward to Ms. Goodman's next book.

Comparing this novel to a Secret History was probably a mistake, setting a level of comparison that this novel did not achieve.

Setting and plot sequence construction are imaginative and interesting, but story is overly melodramatic, farfetched, and repetitive.

Good fiction needs to show and not tell. Ending also predictable.

I'm not normally a mystery reader, but was really intrigued by the cover and the description of the book. When I started reading "Lake of Dead Languages", I was pleased to find a really well-written, descriptive book where the language is used to evoke emotions and "memories" of places that the characters have experienced. An added plus is that the book is easy to read, but doesn't talk down to the reader.

I liked Ms. Goodman's use of transitioning between past and present, and was stumped for the entire book about the identity (in the past) of the evildoer (from the present). And since one of the reasons I'm not normally a mystery reader is because I figure out the "whodonit" before the story completely unfolds, I really enjoyed having to wait til the end of the book to find out!

I'm looking forward to more books from Ms. Goodman, and heartily recommend this one.

I picked The Lake of Dead Languages up because I read a great review of it. It was better than I'd expected--a mystery, suspense, detective story and psychological thriller all in one. The characters are perfect--human, flawed, quirky, and they develop as the book goes on. The relationships between the characters are so honest and true to life, they leave you marveling at Carol Goodman's understanding of human nature. This just became my favorite book. I highly reccomend it.

This book starts off well and is compelling for a fair time in. Then you realize that you've solved the mystery early into part 2 of the 3-part novel, but the heroine still has about 300 pages remaining to figure it out. At first, this makes you feel incredibly smart, then pretty sorry for the character, then quite frustrated at her persistent ignorance, and finally, just bored. Throughout, words and phrases are repeated within sentences to a distracting degree. (Example: something like "She raised her left wrist in the air and slashed her left wrist.") This could just be a little sloppy editing, but then there are a couple of spots where paragraph-long descriptions of places or people are lifted practically verbatim from one part of the book to another. While this does help make the who-done-it easy to solve, it also comes across as carelessness or condescension on behalf of the author. The story runs on, the phrasing is frequently a little off, and the protagonist seems largely unsympathetic and sometimes just plain dumb, but none of these flaws are fatal until you hit the last 10 pages. Small spoiler here: the end of this novel is overly simplistic, completely unbelievable, and disgustingly unworthy of the rest of the book, which would've been much better off without it. "Deus-ex-machina" sure seemed to be one Latin phrase this author took to heart. If this type of story sounds interesting to you, please try Donna Tartt's "The Secret History" instead.

This book is acceptable as a light, predictable mystery. The plot is familiar and the ending not at all a surprise. Jane Hudson, the main character, needs a more complex treatment in order to engage the reader's empathy. My primary irritation with this book was the author's occasional Latin errors (and there was also an English grammatical error). Although her quotations from Vergil were appropriate, she made occasional errors in Latin vocabulary and grammar. Surely a Vassar graduate and Latin major would proof her work more carefully!