A farm under a lake
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Description
As she takes May, an old woman she has cared for, to live with her daughter in Illinois, Janet recalls a summer twenty-years past when she loved two brothers but finally married one
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ISBN:
9781555971199
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Grouping Information
| Grouped Work ID | 48cf1c92-adbd-ca8a-03a0-233b7ae7c8b9 |
|---|---|
| Grouping Title | farm under a lake |
| Grouping Author | martha bergland |
| Grouping Category | book |
| Grouping Language | English (eng) |
| Last Grouping Update | 2025-01-08 19:18:18PM |
| Last Indexed | 2025-01-14 04:46:51AM |
Solr Fields
accelerated_reader_point_value
0
accelerated_reader_reading_level
0
author
Bergland, Martha, 1945-
author_display
Bergland, Martha
display_description
The title is apt for this first novel, in which everything has the slow yet magnified quality of being underwater--both real and unreachable. Narrator Janet Hawn, a 40-year-old private-duty nurse, is driving from Wisconsin to Illinois, transporting an elderly, senile patient named May to the home of her daughter. Janet's own roots are also in Illinois, and as she drives, old memories are stirred. Her thoughts drift back 20 years to the summer just before she married her husband Jack, a summer when she was in love with Jack's brother, Carl. Now, Jack--whom she has left waiting for her in Wisconsin--is unemployed and depressed, a man without purpose, a farmer, as a local saying goes, ""with a farm under a lake."" As she travels towards home, Janet sees the necessity to come to terms with her feelings for Carl and to rescue Jack--to bring him back to the surface of life. After her slow-motion start, she gets down to action quickly with a visit to Carl's farm and a phone call, guaranteed to make Jack res-spond. This impulsive, fast-acting Janet is the same one we've glimpsed in the flashbacks here when she was a warm and confused college girl in love with two brothers. But for much of this book Janet Hawn seems cleareyed but remote, almost icy, as if she were under a lake herself. She details her love and concern for Jack and for old May, but her precise and humorless monologue never quite convinces us. Bergland can write with plenty of feeling--it's there in all the scenes of Janet's reminiscences, which are wonderful, earthy, and evocative with farm life. But too much of the novel is washed away. Beautifully clear, but strangely colorless, it slips right through our fingers.
id
48cf1c92-adbd-ca8a-03a0-233b7ae7c8b9
isbn
9781555971199
last_indexed
2025-01-14T10:46:51.677Z
lexile_score
-1
literary_form
Fiction
literary_form_full
Fiction
primary_isbn
9781555971199
publishDate
1989
publisher
Graywolf Press
recordtype
grouped_work
subject_facet
Domestic fiction
Farm life -- Fiction
Illinois -- Fiction
Married people -- Fiction
Pastoral fiction
Farm life -- Fiction
Illinois -- Fiction
Married people -- Fiction
Pastoral fiction
title_display
A farm under a lake
title_full
A farm under a lake / by Martha Bergland
title_short
A farm under a lake
topic_facet
Farm life
Married people
Married people
Solr Details Tables
record_details
| Bib Id | Format | Format Category | Edition | Language | Publisher | Publication Date | Physical Description | Abridged |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ils:.b11545720 | Book | Books | English | Graywolf Press | 1989 | 199 pages ; 23 cm |