The Boy in the Lake

Rating:
Summary: conflicted adult confronts childhood guilt, sexuality
Review: Eric Swanson's brilliant, subtle and evocative novel, The Boy in the Lake, brims with elegant language, compelling dialogue, and universal themes of sexual longing and childhood guilt. The protagonist, a capable mental health professional involved in an unravelling romantic relationship, confronts a childhood rife with a sterile home life, a nascent awakening of his homosexuality, and a series of traumatic events which underscore his feelings of powerlessness and guilt.

Swanson draws his characters compassionately; each has literary integrity and authenticity. Parts of this slim novel are carried by powerful dialogue (in many ways reminiscent of Hemingway); other sections contain absolutely elegant imagery (as if you were reading a prose poem).

For those readers who lament that modern American male authors lack ability to describe and analyze relationships, The Boy in the Lake will be a pleasant reminder that dissecting the heart is not exclusively a female literary occupation.

Rating:
Summary: Lyrical, funny, and heartbreaking.
Review: The author effortlessly shifts through time and place, merging his character's boyhood past, recent past, and present in this compelling, brief novel. He has a gift for evoking a setting without getting bogged down in descriptive passages. His restrained use of dialect illustrates beautifully how a little can go a long way in revealing the character of a place. He is compassionate in his treatment of even his minor characters. In one example, when Christian learns of his father's death* we are allowed a glimpse of the kinder side of an unpleasant gossip.

This story of a middle-aged man revisiting his past in search of redemption is not a new one but the theme is timeless and Swanson has a refreshing, unpretentious voice. It was disappointing to discover he has only published one other novel. I don't read a lot of travel prose but I will definitely check out What the Lotus Said: A Journey to Tibet and Back based on how much I enjoyed The Boy In the Lake.

* This is not a spoiler --- we are informed at the beginning of the novel that he had lost both his parents by the time he is 13.

Rating:
Summary: Terse, intense, intriguing, energetic
Review: Try as I did, I couldn't help zooming through this book. Mr. Swanson's simple, engaging style made the actual reading easy, and the need to find out what is going on in Christian's life was so great, I could only zip through the story without the brakes. The present tense/past tense alternating flashbacks and present narrative has been done quite enough, IMHO, but it certainly didn't detract anything from this novel. I went through it a 2nd time just to pick up some of the details I whizzed by the first time and that was definitely worth the effort. Although this is a short book, it isn't too short or lacking structure, development, or detail. Mr. Swanson has told a complete story in just the right amount of time and space.