Book Review: Wilde Lake by Laura Lippman - Entrepreneur Generations

One of my favorite summer traditions is to read a Laura Lippman novel (my review of After I'm Gone from last summer); the English teacher in me loves her novels' twisty and smart plot lines and their well-drawn characters, while the proud Baltimore resident in me loves her use of setting details. And something about their readability and even fun (while still being thought-provoking and literary) just says "summer" to me.

So this summer -- the latest summer ever for me, not starting until June 22 with all the snow days added to the BCPSS calendar -- I began my reading by burning through Lippman's latest, Wilde Lake. I was not disappointed. (I should note that I didn't technically read the book, as I listened to it on audible.com, narrated by Kathleen McInerney, who did well except for the pronunciation of Arundel Mall a few times.) 

The joys of Wilde Lake for me, had to do with the usual trademarks of Lippman novels -- some great sentences and insights, a sense of humor, characters that feel authentic, and Lippman's seeming goal to go beyond just the entertainment of a mystery novel (here, she is exploring themes having to do with the illusiveness of memory and the multigenerational impact of mental illness, as well as the law's inconsistent relationship with true justice, for example). But it was more than that, too. I had not read anything about the novel before I began it, but from the first few paragraphs, I realized connections with Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird. Just as in that novel, Wilde Lake opens with a description of the narrator's brother having his arm broken in an accident years before, just like Jem's arm is broken by Bob Ewell in Mockingbird.

This first detail could have been a coincidence, but as I progressed through the novel, the connections were more obvious, and enjoyable for me. The protagonist is Luisa "Lu" Brant, the first female state's attorney for Howard County; her widower father held the position previously. There's your Scout and Atticus, and the word "taciturn" (which I remember prominently in Mockingbird) is even used to describe the father character at one point. There's a Calpurnia-type character (described as having an "ersatz" marriage with Lu's father after being the family's caretaker, just as Calpurnia and Atticus seemed to be the "parents" to Scout and Jem), a Boo Radley-type character (although there is a diagnosis in this novel), a Jem-type character (the older brother of Lu, A.J.), and even a Dill-type character (who doesn't just seem gay, as in Mockingbird, but actually is called the f-word slur and comes out as gay an adult). I don't know if I've ever noticed another novel using the word "chiffarobe" before this one, and there's even a cute little interaction with a new elementary school teacher that reminded me of Scout's first day of school. Lippman even manages to work a scissors stabbing into her narrative. I loved it.

With that being said, as fun as all of these To Kill a Mockingbird details were for me to pick out, the novel is ultimately a sad one. By the end, when there are no clean answers, when Lu realizes that the law cannot dole out justice as she had once hoped, we realize that Lippman has been affirming what the social engineers that created the utopian, inclusive Columbia eventually realized: that this sort of happy clarity isn't possible. 

The novel opens with a flashback to 1980, when Lu's brother A.J. is involved in the accidental death of a man who had stabbed A.J.'s black classmate, who had been accused of raping his white girlfriend (all of this, of course, is reminiscent Tom Robinson and Mayella Ewell). The implications and aftermath of the case end up connecting to one of Lu's first cases as State's Attorney in 2015, in interesting and unexpected ways. 

Wilde Lake's last quarter closes with some scenes that seem like they would have worked in Harper Lee's Go Set a Watchman, had that drafty novel been more successfully executed. The adult Lu and her elderly father's confrontations are satisfying and sad, and, even though this novel follows the mystery genre's tendency to wrap up loose ends much quicker than you think would be possible as you're reading and getting to the end, it's all part of a rewarding examination of Lippman's themes. Her use of To Kill a Mockingbird as a sort of template was certainly pleasurable for me, but she also uses the allusion as a way to add some resonance to her ideas here; part of the novel seems to be a critique of the kind of perfect social engineering that towns like Columbia (complete with its artificial, manmade Wilde Lake) attempt, and showcase that below the surface, people still tend to fall to our most base instincts, just as in Mockingbird decades before.

In addition, the novel is dedicated to her father (like Harper Lee's novel), who died in 2014. The loving portrait of a complex, elderly man was one of my favorite parts of Wilde Lake, and it felt personal and authentic to me (Lippman also grew up in Columbia and went to Wilde Lake High School, just like the characters in the novel, so this makes even more sense.)

Lippman goes back and forth between a 1st person point of view (from Lu's perspective) and a 3rd person limited point of view on Lu. At first I didn't get it -- we can read Lu's thought in the 3rd person, so why do we need to read them in the 1st person, too? -- but eventually I think I figured out that one of Lippman's goals with the novel is to examine the importance of memories on our actions. By hearing from Lu herself, we learn her memories in ways that feel more personal than if presented in the 3rd person, and it adds some resonance to what she is doing in the present. Plus, I just liked hearing the two voices tell the story, even if they were essentially the same person's thoughts.

In terms of Baltimore connections, Lippman wrote the book from approximately April 2014 until June 2015 (I did the math from this interview), and the details she works into the narrative feel especially recent:
“It was April 2015. Police were obligingly shooting young men everywhere. Four weeks later, Baltimore would burn in the wake of Freddie Gray’s death, his body broken on a classic Baltimore bounce, an unsecured ride in a police van.”

She uses this partially to describe why a white man wasn't successful in his suicide-by-cop mission, when a black man would have been.

Lippman's allusions to Baltimore are sprinkled throughout the book: Lu's brother lives in southwest Baltimore, in a neighborhood I presumed to be Hollins Market or thereabouts, and he hides his wealth by buying the rowhouses on either side of him but pretending he just lives in the middle one. Marilyn Mosby is mentioned, though without her name. But there are other details of Baltimore that I love picking out in Lippman novels -- the location of all the Five Guys, discussion of the new condos being built on Fort Avenue in Federal Hill, description of how Baltimore residents break out their shorts early in the spring at the first signs of a 70-degree day -- but much of the novel is set and centered in Columbia, so at some point this summer I'll probably take a drive and walk around Wilde Lake to see what matches up.

A rewarding and literary page-turner with superb characters, my summer reading got off to a great start with Wilde Lake, and I think Lippman's books just keeping getting better and better. 

from Epiphany in Baltimore http://ift.tt/29351jO Book Review: Wilde Lake by Laura Lippman - Entrepreneur Generations

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