REUNION BY THE LAKE

An ailing, embittered man finds himself dependent on his long-suffering wife in Gilbert’s family drama.

Facing imminent death, Richard Collins invites his three adult sons—Seth, Dexter (“Deck”), and Nick—to join him and their mother at their southern Illinois lake house. It’s anything but a cozy family reunion, as Richard plans to reveal the shocking details of his will—he seems to be anticipating the devastating impact with almost spiteful satisfaction. Richard, an overbearing retired lawyer, snaps at Grace as she tends to his meals, refills his whiskey, and physically assists him; the division of his wealth will be the patriarch’s last chance to really throw his weight around. While tension between the couple is palpable, it’s Richard’s final wishes that force Grace to re-evaluate their life together. On the surface, Grace is a dithering, doting wife, but secretly she questions whether she ever truly loved Richard: Was his unkindness and harsh judgment of their children emotional abuse? Nick, a professional cellist who keeps his boyfriend private, constantly disappoints his father; commitment-phobe Deck has arrived with yet another new woman in tow; and Seth, the adopted misfit, has found a sense of belonging in religion and with his wife, but he earns little selling roadside flowers. As the family gathers, festering issues surface, evoking a feeling of intense claustrophobia. Through carefully crafted interiority and multiple points of view, Gilbert captures the complexities of damaged relationships in a way that feels unnerving and real. (Reflecting on marriage, Richard bleakly considers the “androgyny of two sexless bodies bound together in greying frailty.”) The story’s pacing lags due to excessive backstory and repetition; however, the lake-house scenes are so intimate and immersive it’s like being a fly on the wall witnessing a family in crisis. Although some wounds are never completely mended, there is healing, and each of the characters undergoes varying degrees of transformation.

An intense and despairing portrait of an ordinary, dysfunctional family harboring deep-seated resentments.