How a Woman Becomes a Lake

By Marjorie Celona

Shortlisted for the 2021 Crime Writers of Canada Award for Best Crime Novel
 
From the Giller-nominated author of Y comes How a Woman Becomes a Lake, a taut, suspenseful novel about the dark corners of a small town, and the secrets that lurk within...

It's New Year's Day and the residents of a small fishing town are ready to start their lives anew. Leo takes his two young sons out to the lake to write resolutions on paper boats. That same frigid morning, Vera sets out for a walk with her dog along the lake, leaving her husband in bed with a hangover.

But she never returns. She places a call to the police saying she's found a boy in the woods, but the call is cut short by a muffled cry. Did one of Leo's sons see Vera? What are they hiding about that day? And why are they so scared of their own father?

Told from shifting perspectives, How a Woman Becomes a Lake is a compelling, lyrical novel about family, new beginnings, and costly mistakes, and asks, what do you do when the people who are meant to love you the most, fail?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Penguin Group
• Release date: Mar 3, 2020
• ISBN: 9780735235830

Reviews for How a Woman Becomes a Lake

[paradiseporch · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This book is difficult to pigeonhole. It's not really a mystery, nor a thriller either, although there are elements of both, and a little too much of them to be considered literary fiction. It IS a very suspenseful novel, a slow burner that comes together in a demonstration of human nature and circumstances gone out of control. Recommended.

[romonko · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This book is as strange as its name. I don't know what I was expecting, but it wasn't this semi-thriller, semi-paranormal and semi-dysfunctional family type of story. The book is quite well written as well which makes it somewhat like literary fiction as well. The story is set near the ocean in a place called Whale Bay. I'm not sure if this is a real place in Canada or not,The time line is from January 1, 1986 when the incident occurs to 1993, and the final chapter is set in 2020, so it's more like an epilogue. On this 1986 New Year's Day Leo is taking his young sons for a walk along the lake. Leo and Evelina have been separated for awhile by now, and this is Leo's day to entertain the boys. It is a fateful day, and the occurrences from this day forever haunt all the people in this family. The secrets kept and the appalling lies threaten to tear the family apart. A woman goes missing at this lake on the very day that Leo and his boys are there and that mystery haunts the family as everyone knows that they were at that spot when the lady goes missing. It is hard to like most of these characters. Even the two boys are not really likeable, but at the same time I felt sorry for them because of the home life that they have had. Jessie and Dmitri's father is not a nice man, and he is even worse when he's been drinking, which he always does. The book is told from different perspectives throughout so I found it quite disjointed and caused the plot to lurch along rather than to flow. I also didn't care for the ending as everything is left up in the air and it's quite unsatisfying. But the writing is exceptional. The characters are very well-drawn, and the story does carry you away as you read. I listened to this on audiobook so it was an unusual experience as this method with this book made the characters appear very real, and very creepy. An audiobook forces the listener to proceed at the pace of the narrator, and I found this a bit frustrating with this particularly obnoxious family. I kept thinking that they all needed a kick in the butt. This is a slower paced thriller, but worth a read.

[synade · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

It has been quite a while since I have been sucked into a book so quickly and completely. Marjorie Celona has a gift for crafting characters of great such interest and such depth that they seem to belong in the non-fiction section; their emotions and reactions have an amazing realism about them. They are not easy to let go of once you put the book down... or, perhaps, it is the characters holding onto you. When a woman takes her dog for a morning walk at the lake in the morning on New Year’s Day, there are numerous directions, complete with various twists and turns the tale can take. These only increase in number when she finds a young boy standing in the snow, alone and freezing, and almost forces him into her car for warmth. Her gorgeous dog is an unwitting lure to the boy. Neither of them knows at this point that the world is about to shatter and spin out of control in ways that nobody could have predicted. They will both be launched into a lifelong nightmare of silence, although for one of them, it will be all too short. I honestly cannot see this title in the mystery genre, it is perhaps more fitting for thriller. It is a slow pace, but it is steady and unrelenting. I would highly recommend this title to those who like a good solid read! It kept me a little unbalanced throughout... just when you are sure you know what is coming - nope! Born and raised on Vancouver Island, BC Canada, author Marjorie Celona’s debut novel, Y, won France’s Grand Prix Littéraire de l’Heroïne, and was nominated for the 2012 Scotiabank Giller Prize. Thanks to NetGalley and Penguin Random House Canada for the ARC!#NetGalley#HowaWomanBecomesaLake

[pgchuis · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I received a copy of this novel from the publisher via NetGalley.This is beautifully written, full of complex, flawed characters. The mystery (such as it is) was reasonably obvious once you were about half way through the book, but by then you cared so much about the characters that you were more interested in them than plot development. I'm deducting half a star for the chapters from Vera's point of view, which struck me as a bit unnecessary. The ending was very good.