Book review: The Light in the Lake

As I was writing my family’s 2022 annual report last year, I was thinking of all the people I would send it to, and I got to thinking about an old college friend of mine, Sarah Baughman. I had kept in contact with her a bit over the years, but hadn’t talked to her in awhile. I searched through my email a bit, and also searched for her online. I quickly stumbled upon her website and discovered that she had recently published several young adult books. Since I happen to have a couple young adults in my household, I thought this would be a great Christmas present, so I promptly ordered both of them. Of course, I wanted to read them as well. With some reluctance, my daughter let me borrow The Light in the Lake to read on our way back home from Christmas vacation. I will sum up my impression of the book in one word: wow!

I was surprised by how quickly the book introduces the main theme of the book. Within the first few pages, we learn that the protagonist Addie recently lost her twin brother Amos. The way that this is introduced, almost in passing, sets up the tone of much of the rest of the book around the topic of grief. It is quite rare that the characters in the book directly discuss Amos’s death, but the loss is inescapably present in so many everyday activities.

I have yet to lose someone really close to me. My parents, sister, and children are all still alive, as well as all of my close friends. This book really made me ponder what it will be like when I do lose one of them. The death that has affected me the most is probably the death of my best friend’s mother when I was in college. The healthy 48 year old died suddenly of a flu which turned into pneumonia, leaving behind three children aged 20, 18, and 16 years old. It was devastating for the family. It was hard for me too. I had spent so much time at their house that she was almost like a second mother to me. I saw how much it changed the family.

Looking back, it feels very much like how Baughman describes it in The Light in the Lake – before, and after. Before Amos’s death, their house was lively, filled with laughter (and also perhaps some typical sibling arguments). After the death, the house was quiet, filled with silence, with a fear that anything any one might say would remind them of Amos and they might suddenly break into tears. Wow! I was not expecting this from a young adult novel.

While the grief of Amos’s death is ever present in the book, it is only one of the many topics addressed, including friendship, trust, rural vs. city life, science, and conservationism. The main plot of the book centers around Addie researching water pollution in their local lake, and eventually coming to a surprising discovery about the source of the pollution. I was expecting a young adult novel to be a bit obvious when it came to this sort of surprise, but for me it was indeed unexpected.

I don’t usually read young adult literature, so I found myself wondering what makes this book intended for young adults. The language is not overly complex, and the protagonist is a teen, but other than that, I found the themes in the book very adult. I suppose in many ways, that is what being a young adult is like. I see this as I watch my children go through their teen years – in one moment they seem so grown up, making perceptive insights into life, and in the next, making a silly mistake like forgetting to turn in their homework which they actually did. In many ways, young adults are ready to start tackling difficult topics like death and grief, as well as societal struggles between science and tradition.

I have been on a Max Frisch kick as of late, recently having read Stiller and Homo Faber. I enjoyed both of them. They told interesting stories in beautiful prose. But at the end of each book, I was left feeling a bit let down and confused, asking myself: “what the heck was I supposed to get out of this book”? That was not the case with The Light in the Lake. I was sick last weekend, and spent most of Saturday afternoon lying in bed, during which time I finished the second half of the novel. At the end, I knew exactly what I got out of this book – I got a picture of what it is like to grieve for a loved one, and I got a new perspective on personal identity. Sarah Baughman (then Reinhard) was one of the first people I met in college. We were both in the same first-year tutorial with the theme about searching for identity. Among the books we read that I can remember were Homer’s The Odyssey, Death in Venice by Thomas Mann, Dangling Man by Saul Bellow, and Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse. In all of those books, I feel like the definition of self-identity is very, well, self-centered. In The Light in the Lake, Baughman presents an alternative view, that self-identity is also very much shaped by those around us, and that when we lose someone close to us, it can alter our own identity. At first it seems like there is a hole in herself where Amos used to be, but during the course of the story, she more frequently feels Amos’s presence, even though he is no longer physically present.

I am terrible at remembering endings for some reason, whether it be movies, tv shows, or books. I just finished this book a couple days ago, and I have already forgotten exactly how it ends. I suppose for me the ending is not the part I enjoy about a story – I enjoy the middle. I enjoy character development and the overall mood of a book. I like being able to paint a mental picture of the setting and the characters. In particular, I enjoy when an author highlights the complexity of life. Baughman excels at this wonderfully, as she describes the struggles with grief, scientific research, and rural life, all wrapped up into one cohesive story. I am obviously biased by the fact that I know Sarah personally, and I am not surprised that she wrote a great book. I was surprised however, when I found myself saying out loud that I think this is not only one of the best books I have read recently, but perhaps ever. I am very much looking forward to borrowing The Wild Path, Baughman’s second book, from my son.