Review: The Lake, a place that surprises with subtlety and insight
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 11 3, 2011
This Kindle Short by Frank Gilroy has more drama, humor, orgiastic sex ("and then at his touch, EXPLOSION!"), pathos and above all poignancy than a big brick of a novel five times its length, and "Lake," I'll go out on a limb here, stands beside "Our Town" in its perception and in the way it succeeds in evoking another time, a different place.It's a story of a New Jersey summer community on the shores of a lake, a fully realized anecdotal account that spans a generation beginning in the 1920s. In a relatively few number of pages, "Lake" manages to be sprawling in its very large cast of characters.Told in vignettes, "Lake" is a collection of sketches that could as easily be performed as read. We get glimpses into the lives of summer and year-round residents, including a fetching snippet of Mae West who is seen being rowed around the lake by her secretary to the delight of the men watching from the shore and docks.Most of the vignettes, some no longer than a sentence or two, tell a complete story. Some in a single paragraph capture the arc of an entire life. For instance, Fanny prefers her proper name but can't escape the flighty persona the nickname implies. "When I married Walter Church and signed the register `Frances' I felt a great relief. By the time I realized it was Fanny he loved, we had a child. As Fanny I have what actors covet: a role to my dying day."Well into the story, draft notices start arriving in mailboxes and the tone shifts to somber and even plaintive as the war clouds roll in over the Lake.Mrs.  David had a habit of blowing a whistle - twice long, once short - to call her boy home. Even though he was teased by the other children, he always obeyed his mother's summons.  A small, frail kid with trusting eyes, no one thought he was eighteen until he was drafted.She stills blows the whistle and she realizes everyone thinks it's because she can't admit he's dead, killed in the war. She continues to blow the whistle, she tells us, to remind everyone an innocent "was slaughtered."Gilroy describes the Lake community as a place existing in the hammock of time between the stock market crash and WWII. The place, he says, is "like a roll of film developed long after it was shot, it surprises." Not only does "Lake" surprise, it downright delights in its subtlety and insight.