Rating: 
Summary: A psychological mystery which didn't deliver
Review: As I sit here typing this review I am sorely disappointed after reading The Lake of Dead Languages by Carol Goodman. I will be the first to admit that I really enjoy books and movies which take place at a boarding school, i.e. Daddy Long-Legs by Jean Webster and New Girls by Beth Gutcheon or on a college campus setting as in Red Leaves by Paullina Simons. I also seem to enjoy a good psychological mystery as well. That said, I'm afraid that reading The Lake of Dead Langauages never seemed to interest me as much as when I first opened up the book and read the dust jacket notes. Perhaps it was the comparison to Donna Tartt's well reviewed book, The Secret History, which put my nose out of joint or maybe it was the fact that this book quickly wallowed in murky V.C Andrews territory while all the while this book pretended to be something much grander with its talk about Greek mythology and the high school subject of Latin, often referred to as a dead langauge. Jane Hudson, on the verge of a divorce and the mother of a young child, returns to the boarding shcool she attended as a scholarship student. The very sight of the school Heart Lake and the lake itself, where school activities and private assignations took place, is enough to send Jane reeling back to her senior year when scandal rocked the once very proud and illustrious institutuion. Suddenly Jane begins receiving messages which seem to have been lifted straight from her writing journal which has been missing since that fateful last year. And as if this isn't bad enough, copy cat incidences from that year seem to be happening once again. It is at this point that the book takes off on the most dizzying and wild roller coaster ride which eventually had me scratching my head wondering why I bothered to finish this book. On the plus side I wil agree with the readers who said the writing and descriptions especially about the freezing lake, cold weather and ice storms was most lyrical. But I found I didn't much care for the main characters or some of the other principl players. Try as I might I found these people and the plot so bizarre and much too much of a convoluted tale. Way before the end of the book, I netiher cared what happened to Jane or her students or the school itself. After a while I found myself comparing this book to a maudlin romantic suspense book. And don't get me wrong. If this was the authors intention that would have been fine and I might have expected it but she tried so hard to make this such a serious book. Finally it was the last two pages and coincidences which were simply too much as the author provided her readers with a happily ever after ending which was truly ridiculous. Guess the next time I expect a good read from a boarding school or college campus, I better think twice.
Rating: 
Summary: A Satisfying Companion to the Secret History
Review: Carol Goodman's novel the Lake of Dead Languages is a worthy companion to Donna Tartt's Secret History. If you mourned finishing the Secret History, pick up Goodman's book. While not as lush as Secret History, the Lake of Dead Languages has enough similarities to its predecessor to feel like a continuation of Tartt's book. Heart Lake School for Girls in the Adirondacks is described as a "last resort for a certain kind of girl." That is, the kind of girl who's bright, troubled, and mostly a bother to her moneyed family. Intelligent girls who've been kicked out of other boarding schools for the usual offenses (sex, drugs, acting out) are sent to Heart Lake. The school has steadily fallen in rank since its inception in the late 1800s. Jane Hudson, the story's protagonist, was once a student there when the school was of a higher rank. When Jane separates from her husband and has to fend for herself and her daughter financially, she returns to Heart Lake to teach Latin (the dead language of the title) and regain her footing in life. Heart Lake has a dark legend (some would say curse), and the teenage girls at the school work hard to keep the legend alive. Problem is, actual events reinforce the legend, if not dictate the certainty of events. In Jane's quest to get at the truth of the past and the present, two parallel stories unfold. When the past seems to repeat itself at the school, Jane decides to find out exactly what happened all those years ago. She muddles through the events of her youth at Heart Lake, carefully piecing together memories, family relations, old photos, and old journals to finally learn what happened to her close friends Lucy, Matt, and Deirdre. At the same time, she discovers that the current event is not as open-and-shut as everyone previously thought. Jane's committed to finding out what happened at the school when she was a student there and what's going on now, but she seems like someone who simply got caught up in the momentum of her life. Having no strong sense of self or ambition, Jane's meandering life took her right back to where she was as a young woman: caught up in the events at Heart Lake. Jane learns far more than she bargained for, both about the past and the present. I'd suggest keeping a list of character names, to keep things sorted out as the story progresses. Characters in the present parallel characters from the past. Add to that their Latin names, and it's easy to lose track of who's who. My one criticism of the story is the all-too-tidy ending. Fortunately, I didn't see it coming, and it transpires fairly quickly. That doesn't detract from the overall experience of the story. Lake of Dead Languages is an engaging read that you can polish off in a day or two. Perfect for a cold, dreary weekend.
Rating: 
Summary: A haunting mood piece
Review: I can sympathize, if not agree, with some online reviewers who were dissatisfied with this book due to its unlikeable characters and convoluted storyline. It is sometimes difficult to enjoy a work which contains people you really don't care for. However, the fact that a few characters were unlikeable did not detract from my caring about them. I think that's because Goodman manages to so clearly paint the picture of an unsure, awkward teenager who is mixed in with situations she can't clearly understand due to her own naivete. While doing this she presents us with people who may do bad or wrong things but who are merely human, as well as people who seem uncapable of doing wrong yet do it anyway. However our first impressions of the events which took place when Jane was a student are revealed through Jane's original remembrances...the remembrances of a trusting girl who tried to believe the best of those she loved. As realizations unfold and the plot twists and thickens, we discover that there is more than meets the eye, and that still waters do run deep.
As for the storyline itself, I was compelled rather than dissuaded. Every discovery caused my eyes to fly open in surprise, even though I always thought I knew "whodunit". I was constantly capitvated by the twists and turns Goodman took me on, perhaps because I went into the process of reading this book much like Jane goes through the process of discovering the past: Blindly, assuming only the best of the kids mixed up in a tragic situation. By the end I was deeply impressed with the way everything worked together.
The most important aspect of this work is the mood Goodman weaves. I felt immersed in this world and I wasn't sure if I wanted to surface. It's simply beautiful writing. As soon as I finished reading this book, I flipped back to page 1 and started all over again, and I've never done that before or since. What's that tell you?
Rating:
Summary: How can Carol Goodman sleep at night?
Review: I picked up this book while traveling, entirely on the strength of an on-the-cover review comparing it to Donna Tartt's "The Secret History." What the cover review doesn't say, however, is that Goodman's "atmospheric" novel is little more than a clumsy mimicry of Tartt's chilling tome. While "Languages" is admittedly well-written, nearly EVERYTHING about it is an obvious plagiarism: the eerie private school setting, the lonely, dispossesed protagonist looking back with guilt at events of the past; the seemingly impenetrable clique of bright students, including an incestuous brother & sister duo; the study of a dead language under the line-crossing tutelage of a revered & mysterious mentor; an obsession with pagan ritual; and of course, a series of tragic deaths. If you haven't read Tartt's glittering novel, I'll admit you might enjoy this. If you have, however, you'll find little here of interest. (...)
Rating: 
Summary: Big Let Down
Review: I should not even write a review of this book since I have not finished it. But I can not. And I will not. This book actually started out really good. But after the introdution of all the characters, it went down hill rapidly. About half way through the book, I got sick of the Latin Lessons! The Latin was even more interesting than the long descriptions of the Lake and the water and the ice and the path and the woods and the rocks and the snow and give me a break! There was one very interesting paragraph about how ice forms on a lake. That was a nice little lesson I guess I missed in High school earth science class. The book had so much potential! OH Well!
Rating: 
Summary: A disappointment in the end
Review: I was truly excited to read this book after reading the comparisons to Donna Tartt's book. Maybe this comparison is what led me to expect too much from this novel. I have to agree with many of the other reviewers, though. The suspense plot was reprtitive and predictable (I figured out who the "bad guy" was 125 pages from the end) and the "surprise ending" was just plain silly. I also thought too many of the plot devices were too neatly wrapped up. I also found it difficult to identify with the flat main character and the pat way that devices were moved in and out of the story -- for example, I found the way that her daughter was so important to her and then was simply carted off to her father's mid- novel pretty unbelieveable. The writer was trying too hard to describe how it was rather than let the characters simply tell the story -- as another reviewer said, successful fiction should show, not tell.
Rating:
Summary: A good, well-written read!
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: fantastic, completely enchating and intriguing debut
Review: Jane Hudson has returned to Heart Lake - a girl's school nestled cosily beside the waters of said lake - after 20 years to teach Latin. Many years ago, whilst studying there as a scholarship student under the charismatic Domina Chambers, a tragic series of events (the suicides of two roommates and her best-friend's brother) occurred, that burnt themselves into the very fabric of Jane's self, affecting who she is today. Now she's back at the school, amidst the turbulent emotions of the teenage girls, struggling to cope with all the emergent memories, when, with horror she has to watch as the cathartic events of two decades ago appear to be recurring before her eyes... This book is quite, quite amazing. I've not read a novel containing such rich, beautiful prose in a long while, with each word combining to form a fully realised almost tangible image, full of wonderful detail. Certainly, I've never come across a writer who can describe a lake in so many varied, and, quite frankly, once again beautiful, ways, with each new descriptions causing a bright smile of utter contentment to spread across my face, happy in the knowledge that our language can be used to evoke such wonder from a single image. The tone is, often, very claustrophobic and haunting, given the insular nature of the community in which the involving mysteries take place, and especially when concerning the eerie "three sisters", - named thus due to an old myth surrounding the school - which are 3 stones which rise up out of Heart Lake, and seem to have some kind of mystical pull over the impressionable teenage girls of the school. The characters are great, especially Jane Hudson (our likeable and very human narrator) and her young students, whom, in her Latin class are given classical "nicknames", such as Vesta and Athena, which may be indulgent, but I found to be another completely magical touch. The plot itself is marvellous, original and puzzling all the way through and very engagingly told. Some people have said that aspects of the plot are predictable, but I didn't find them so...I was far too wrapped up in the writing style to bother trying to second-guess the plotline. There are revelations throughout the story, each one bringing a wonderful level of ice-like clarity to one particular feature of the plot. The suspense is built up masterfully, yet almost invisibly, so you don't notice it much, until suddenly there is a great sense of foreboding at the events soon to come. I am surprised that this is her first novel. All of this culminates brilliantly - along with the explanation of what truly happened all those years ago - to a pulse-pounding conclusion atop the frozen-solid surface of the lake. Some books appeal to the heart, and some to the mind. For me, this one went straight to the soul.
Rating:
Summary: Bleh.
Review: Jane Hudson, the protagonist of this overwrought and under-written book, is a supposedly bright woman who, nevertheless, can't seem to put two and two together. The plot is intricate, but only in the way a train wreck is intricate. The story depends heavily on a series of unlikely omissions and on Jane's apparent inability to recognize... well, just about anybody, ever. Descriptions are sparse and clumsy and, in most cases, act as little more than an excuse for awkward foreshadowing, hastily introducing a character trait or prop just in time for it to be used, a few pages later, to advance the increasingly unlikely plot. A barely passable mystery, all in all, but not worthy of the comparisons it has drawn with Donna Tartt's far superior _Secret History._
Rating:
Summary: I haven't had a book captivate me like this one in ages
Review: The Lake of Dead Languages was recommended to me, and I am so glad I took that recommendation for once. I was not disappointed. I hope to read more from this author.
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