A FARM UNDER A LAKE

by Martha Bergland ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 15, 1989

The title is apt for this first novel, in which everything has the slow yet magnified quality of being underwater--both real and unreachable. Narrator Janet Hawn, a 40-year-old private-duty nurse, is driving from Wisconsin to Illinois, transporting an elderly, senile patient named May to the home of her daughter. Janet's own roots are also in Illinois, and as she drives, old memories are stirred. Her thoughts drift back 20 years to the summer just before she married her husband Jack, a summer when she was in love with Jack's brother, Carl. Now, Jack--whom she has left waiting for her in Wisconsin--is unemployed and depressed, a man without purpose, a farmer, as a local saying goes, ""with a farm under a lake."" As she travels towards home, Janet sees the necessity to come to terms with her feelings for Carl and to rescue Jack--to bring him back to the surface of life. After her slow-motion start, she gets down to action quickly with a visit to Carl's farm and a phone call, guaranteed to make Jack res-spond. This impulsive, fast-acting Janet is the same one we've glimpsed in the flashbacks here when she was a warm and confused college girl in love with two brothers. But for much of this book Janet Hawn seems cleareyed but remote, almost icy, as if she were under a lake herself. She details her love and concern for Jack and for old May, but her precise and humorless monologue never quite convinces us. Bergland can write with plenty of feeling--it's there in all the scenes of Janet's reminiscences, which are wonderful, earthy, and evocative with farm life. But too much of the novel is washed away. Beautifully clear, but strangely colorless, it slips right through our fingers.

Pub Date: June 15, 1989

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Graywolf

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1989

Categories: FICTION