Rating: 
Summary: A fantastic coming of age novel about expat life in Taiwan.
Review: "Heaven Lake" is really a fantastic coming-of-age novel about expat life in Taiwan. The Mormon missionaries who populate the countryside are just like Vincent in this book, facing similar problems of love, lust and faith. This book will make a great Hollywood movie starring Leonardo di Caprio or someone; it's a very engaging and vivid book.
However, one quibble. The cover of the book, and all the reviews here and elsewhere, make it look like this is a book about China. It is not about China. It is about Taiwan. Taiwan is a separate country from China, just like America is a separate country from the UK. But the cover and much of the critical reviews, and even the author himself, speak of Chinese culture and China as if this was part of Taiwan. They are not. Taiwan has its own culture, its own way of thinking, and it has nothing to do with China anymore. So I wish the cover showed a train rolling along the plains of western Taiwan, where Toulio is situated (I lived there once, too) instead of showing the sterotypical "China image" of those mysterious mountains in the background. China is China, and Taiwan is Taiwan; and this book is about Taiwan, not China. It is a very important distinction that I wish the author had paid more attention to.
Other than that, it's a great novel. Will make a great movie someday!
Rating: 
Summary: Almost a Five Star Title
Review: Dalton spent over eight years working on this novel; that dedication shows throughout the majority of the novel. This is the story of Vincent, a Protestant missionary on his way to Taiwan. Having known nothing but the Christianity he was raised in and his friends shared, Vincent begins to slowly shed the faith he intended to bring to the Taiwanese. This loss of faith is presented in an empathetic manner and--at first--appears to be the main theme of the novel. However, there is quite a lot more going on here. In addition to teaching bible classes, Vincent takes on a number of English teaching assignments. One is a class full of female teenagers, one of whom is obsessed with Vincent. He makes a bad decision and ends up sleeping with her. Rather than continue to be beat up by this girl's brother, Vincent decides to go to the mainland and retrieve a woman that one of his wealthy students wants to marry but fears he will be unable to given the political climate. The evocation of travel and the entirety of the country of China is wonderful. There are some truly memorable characters here. Vincent's journeys--both physical and metaphysical--are told with a combination of realism and wonder. However, I feel, as with so many good (as opposed to great) books, much of the strong points of the first 3/4s of the book have vanished by the end and given in to conventions of plot.
Rating:
Summary: Exquisite
Review: Exquisite; by far the best contemporary book I've read in quite a long time. Dalton's characters are vivid, his prose often poetic. The story is full of twists and turns that kept me turning pages. The details on Red Bud, Illinois, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and mainland China make this book a rich, satisfying and informative read. When I reached the end, I was truly sorry it all had to end.
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Summary: They'll need to pry this book from my cold dead hands.
Review: Finally, prose one can calibrate their soul to.In 1989, a twenty-six-year old American, Vincent Saunders travels from Illinois to a small town in Taiwan as a Christian volunteer. After Vincent establishes a ministry house and finds work teaching English to schoolgirls, he is seduced by one of his schoolgirls, Trudy. With this sudden sexual education comes the unraveling of Vincent's understanding of himself and of his religious beliefs. When the affair ends, Vincent finds himself publicly disgraced and beaten by Trudy's older brother. Without options, Vincent sets out on a harrowing journey into China to marry a beautiful young woman near Heaven Lake and bring her back for a wealthy businessman. The businessman claims he fell in love with the young woman, but is prohibited from marrying her by the political conflict between China and Taiwan. The young woman refuses and Vincent is left with her younger sister, the "ugly duckling." Once married, Vincent returns with his bride to find the businessman has disappeared and the only information Vincent can glean is the businessman may own a grim house of pleasure. Has Vincent been tricked into marrying a poor girl from provincial China only to deliver her into the squalor of urban prostitution?
Advanced praise has already begun!
Rating:
Summary: a masterful, majestic debut
Review: heaven lake doesn't feel like a first novel. it's too wise, on every level: the characters, from vincent on out, are layered, hilarious, heartbreaking, profoundly human; vincent's insights, about the landscape, other people, his own inner workings, are brave in their honesty; and every last sentence is eloquent and original. vincent's journey, external and internal, haunts and inspires long after the book is done.
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Summary: The Journey to Personal Salvation
Review: Heaven Lake is a story of several journeys - Vincent's journey to Taiwan, his journey from an evangelical faith which he has brought with him, a journey through different forms of friendship, but ultimately it is a journey to a full acceptance of the meaning of a deep faith rooted in an awareness of personal fallibility, personal sorrow and loneliness and the redeeming value of love.
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Summary: "You never know the way a thing will turn out."
Review: Heaven Lake is a stunning, bold and absolutely ambitious work - haunting and emotional, the novel encompasses the qualities of great literature, while at the same time being unashamedly, a traveler's tale. The young, naive, and morally forthright Vincent Saunders has left his town of Red Bud in small town America, and arrived in Toulio, Taiwan as a Christian volunteer. Fueled with a passion and rigor to bring the word of Christ to the local townsfolk, Vincent opens a ministry house, "an enterprise of deep-seated civility and gracious routine," to ostensibly teach English, but also to encourage bible study. In a fit of sexual abandon, he has an affair with Trudy, a young Taiwanese schoolgirl, and meets a wealthy, but duplicitous Taiwanese businessman Mr. Gwa. The illicit affair brings devastating and violent consequences for Vincent, and in a fit of compulsiveness he is goaded by Mr. Gwa to travel to Heaven Lake, in Western China to marry and bring back a young Chinese girl who Mr. Gwa has fallen in love with. Vincent's arrival in Toulio, and his subsequent extraordinarily harrowing journey to a remote city in China, is nothing short of fabulous storytelling. While in Toulio he meets Eric, a young, disparate Scotsman, who infuriates Vincent with his cavalier attitude towards life and his constant smoking and acquirement of illegal drugs. As the novel progresses, however, and as they accompany each other on the journey north, there evolves a certain trust and bond that is impossible to break. Arriving later in Toulio is Gloria Hamilton, a fellow Christian volunteer, who also feels that it is her mission to spread the word of god. She spends her days writing calligraphy and instructing Vincent on how to properly sermonize to the locals. When Vincent clashes with Gloria - who believes that their credence in God and small town virtues are superior - he begins to question his own faith, his role as a volunteer, and he wonders if his talent for faith is worth anything at all other than leading you down a series of "ever-narrowing pathways." The trip north makes Vincent aware of the wonders to behold and encapsulates him under the sway of a particular exaltation, and he begins to realize that there are voids "into which the light of Christ or Buddha or any other hopeful belief cannot travel." Despite Heaven Lake's didactic, moralistic undertones and its tenderhearted adherence to innocence as virtue, the story is pitted with dark crevices - witness Dalton's rendering of the bumper car mentality of the Chinese cities. Vincent passes through cities, bustling and reckless, with clouds of "smokestack soot." Hard-baked buildings and newer constructions cocooned in "knobby-jointed scaffolding." He sees areas suffocating under the rigors of industry to fortress like petroleum refineries, to mills, and chemical plants, that are ravaged by heavy machinery and near constant state of dust-blown commotion. Heaven Lake has a tightly focused narrative with a "seasons come, seasons go" pacing. The central section is wide and windswept and there is no denying the urgency of the storytelling or Dalton's passionate involvement in the fate of his embattled hero. This is a sprawling, rackety and daring novel that will do a great deal for Dalton's reputation as a stylist, but also in his portrait of a disillusioned man, Dalton has made an indelible addition to the gallery of literature's travelers. Mike Leonard May 04.
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Summary: Evocative and stirring story
Review: Heaven Lake is in some ways a modern update of Paton's unspeakably great classic "Too Late the Phalarope" but minus the grandly tragic darkness of that earlier time and nastier place. The consequences of sexual misconduct aren't quite what they used to be (thank goodness!) The book has a muted, subtle, and reflective tone. The main character Vincent never really has much life or personality, but that's actually a very realistic touch. How many real people are all that scintillating anyway? Yet the story and the setting are extremely interesting, and the brash and trashed aspects of modern China (and even Taiwan) are evoked with absolutely superb mastery. The emotional flatness of the (semi) 'good guy' protagonist (and his lately found true love) is all the more surprising in view of, or is thrown into stark relief by, the lovely characterization of the two picaresque sympathetically and lovingly drawn semi-villains of the piece, Alec and Trudy. You GO guys! Alec is a Mercutio type of figure, or more modernly, a Dean-like character ("On the Road"), a pub-crawling Scots scumbag who's dialog is brilliantly done, and whose golden presence enlivens the entire story especially constrasted with Vincent's affectless boring personality. While Trudy is the wickedly sexy high school siren. She also has more personality in her little finger than Vincent could scrape together in 1000 years. Mr. Gwa is nicely evoked also. Why an author with such a brilliant talent for supporting picaresque players can't turn his carving knife to producing a good main character is beyond me. Great book overall.
Rating:
Summary: Bravo! Enchanting, informative, fun, perceptive, & poignant!
Review: I am only about one-third through this novel, but want to express my enjoyment of it and give it my enthusiastic recommendation now. I bought Heaven Lake after hearing an interview with its author on my local public radio in station in Saint Louis. He told how he had worked for 8 years writing this book, his first novel. His eight years of effort show in the final product. Each sentence is finely honed to near perfection. The writing is lucid, with the exception of a few unusual adjectives that left me uncertain as to the author?s intended meaning. The story is delightful and engaging, and the characters feel like real people. Through the characters and the dialogue the author provides insights into Chinese culture and into what westerners often see as puzzling Chinese behavior. In addition, the novel artfully and heartfully describes a young American man?s journey in self-awareness and spiritual growth. If you have any interest in China (or Taiwan), Chinese culture, or its people, or if you just love very good literature, then you should read this book. It is a most auspicious debut for the author John Dalton. I just hope he has another story to tell as interesting as Heaven Lake, and that he doesn?t take another eight years to write it!
Rating:
Summary: Bravo! Enchanting, informative, fun, perceptive, & poignant!
Review: I am only about one-third through this novel, but want to express my enjoyment of it and give it my enthusiastic recommendation now. I bought Heaven Lake after hearing an interview with its author on my local public radio in station in Saint Louis. He told how he had worked for 8 years writing this book, his first novel. His eight years of effort show in the final product. Each sentence is finely honed to near perfection. The writing is lucid, with the exception of a few unusual adjectives that left me uncertain as to the author's intended meaning. The story is delightful and engaging, and the characters feel like real people. Through the characters and the dialogue the author provides insights into Chinese culture and into what westerners often see as puzzling Chinese behavior. In addition, the novel artfully and heartfully describes a young American man's journey in self-awareness and spiritual growth. If you have any interest in China (or Taiwan), Chinese culture, or its people, or if you just love very good literature, then you should read this book. It is a most auspicious debut for the author John Dalton. I just hope he has another story to tell as interesting as Heaven Lake, and that he doesn't take another eight years to write it!
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