Lake Effect
A Novel
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4.3 • 93개의 평가
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- US$14.99
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From the New York Times bestselling author of The Nest and Good Company comes a wry and tender portrait of two families forever changed by one lovestruck decision that will reverberate for decades.
It’s 1977 and an air of restlessness has settled on the residents of Cambridge Road in Rochester, New York, a place long fueled by the booming fortunes of Kodak and Xerox and, for some, the mores of the Catholic church. When Nina Larkin is given a copy of The Joy of Sex by her newly divorced friend, she can no longer dismiss the nearly nonexistent intimacy of her marriage. Just as her oldest child, Clara, is falling in love for the first time, Nina finds herself longing for the forbidden: a midlife awakening. An intoxicating fling with a prominent neighbor brings Nina a freedom she never thought possible—but also risks the reputations of both families and unravels Clara’s world, just as she stands on the threshold of adulthood.
Years later, Clara, now a successful food stylist in New York City, has never been able to move past the long-ago scandal. Drawn back home by the pull of a family wedding and wrestling with her own demons, she makes a pivotal decision that turns her life upside down. Written with Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney’s signature humor and insight, Lake Effect is a wise and probing look at love and desire, mothers and daughters, loss and grief, and what we owe the people we love most.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Sweeney's latest arresting family drama (after The Nest) tracks the fallout of an affair in 1970s Rochester, N.Y., across two generations. Nina Larkin, mother to Clara and Bridie and wife to Sam, knows something is missing in her marriage. She considers divorce, but worries about the social repercussions, and carries on an affair with neighbor Finn Finnegan, who runs a chain of upscale grocery stores and feels similarly trapped in his marriage. Early one morning, Nina and Finn flee to the Dominican Republic for a quick divorce and marriage, leaving behind shattering notes for their teenage children about their plans. Clara has secretly been dating Finn's son, Dune, and now Dune blames Nina for blowing up his family and refuses to see Clara, who digs into her grudge against her mother. The story extends to the 1990s, when Dune joins the family business and struggles with alcohol. Meanwhile, Clara refuses to forgive her mother and tells people she's dead, Sam finally accepts that he's gay, and Nina and Finn try to live a life back in New York that makes the pain of tearing apart their families worth it. Sweeney excels at exploring how the characters are shaped over time by their complex family dynamics. (As Clara's new boyfriend puts it: "People change. We change. Sometimes for the better.") The author's fans will enjoy this.
