“Lake Huron rolls, Superior sings
In the ruins of her ice water mansion,
Old Michigan steams like a young man’s dreams,
The islands and bays are for sportsmen.”
-Gordon Lightfoot, “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald”
While Laura K. Cowan’s Music of Sacred Lakes doesn’t actually make mention of Lightfoot’s iconic song, I think that it is a fitting introduction to her novel, not only because it is literally music of the lake, but because like Music of Sacred Lakes, the song is lyrical with just a touch of the Gothic.
In a post elsewhere, I stated that past-me would have identified strongly with Music’s main character, Peter. Having finally finished the novel, I still believe this is the case. Unfortunately, many of the things that make me similar to that character also make him unlikable to me. Peter is, essentially, an embittered young man who finds himself working a series of part time jobs in order to escape a life of working on his family’s farm. Feeling isolated and perhaps uncertain of his relationship with his mother, father, and older brother, Peter tends gardens and collects garbage for wealthy out-of-towners while he himself is barely scraping by. A moment’s distraction brings all of this to a halt when Peter’s inattention accidentally causes the death of a young girl named Marissa. On the one hand, I can certainly empathize for Peter’s position as a directionless and grief-stricken youth. On the other, my own reaction always tended more towards anxiety and sadness than towards feeling angry at the social macrocosm. Therefore, it was interesting to read about a character so similar but different from my self.
Some of my favourite passages in the novel involve Peter’s dreams of Lake Michigan and of Marissa, whose ocean-themed name makes her an ideal avatar for the lake itself. These are left purposely ambiguous, so that the reader is never entirely certain whether the speaker is some manifestation of the lake, the child’s ghost, of simply a mental creation born of guilt and dreamstuff. The figure herself suggests that distinguishing between the three is counterproductive or even harmful. “It’s all lake”, and Marissa can be ghost, water sprite, and mental apparition all in one. This is the paradoxical message of the text and the one that Peter must eventually come to understand: that all things are connected, and that even if we must leave a person or place, it is not truly an end because our connection to them will remain.
My primary complaint with the novel is the abbreviated nature of Peter’s relationship with Lila Briseau (whose name is also relevant, Lila meaning “night” and brise eau meaning “break water” in French). Lila is one of the out-of-towners Peter so despises, and it is through her that we begin to see that their bright, idyllic existence is anything but. Lila is beautiful and cynical. For her, the lake holds no spiritual power. Rather, it serves as a meaningless backdrop for the meaningless lives of her parents and their wealthy friends. Cowan makes little of Lila’s viewpoint, quickly replacing her in favour of a brighter and far more typical love interest: Abby Gott (whose surname means God, just in case you’re keeping track) a bright-haired, bright-hearted girl who longs to open a bakery and who serves as the light to Lila’s dark. Peter will eventually dismiss Lila as just another poor little rich girl, and while it is true that Abby is a better match for him, it seems unfair to dismiss Lila by turning her into some sort of allegory. One of the main concerns in the novel is the ways in which young people deal with familial expectations, and Lila has many such expectations encircling her. Had she been given more of a presence in the novel, we might have seen Lila making some decisions on her own instead of simply seeing Peter make decisions about her. This is not a feminist issue, because several of the male side characters serve a similar function in the text; it is simply an avenue that would have been interesting to explore had Cowan wished to complicate her narrative a bit.
I am unsure whether the central theme of the novel – eternal connectivity – strengthens or invalidates my critique. It may be that existing as part of a greater being makes it acceptable, even advisable, to view others as symbolic representations of oneself. They become a part of you, or perhaps you both become offshoots of a greater entity, and therefor in learning from them, you benefit not only yourself but the entity as a whole. Perhaps. However, it seems to me that in failing to comprehend the nuances of the other offshoots you are actually failing to understand yourself, and therefor by isolating himself from Lila and all that she represents, Peter is actually attempting to deny his connections to her or at the very least to ignore them. Lila, whose self-centred cynicism seems so hazardous to Peter’s new philosophy, actually evokes both self-centredness and cynicism in Peter, and perhaps this is what is so troubling about their relationship. If his philosophy is true, then Lila is not some source of corruption to be cut away, but an echo of himself to which he will always be connected.
Alright, so clearly there’s a lot going on below the surface in Music of Sacred Lakes and clearly it’s not as straightforward a tale as it appears to be at first glance. So what are my final thought on the novel?
Overall rating: 4/5 stars
Recommended if: You’re looking for a story that demands overanalysis. This is a book that introduces many things then allows the reader to draw their own connections and conclusions.
Skip it if: You’re looking for a spooky ghost story. There are ghosts here, but they are used to explore a concept, not to terrify the reader. Also avoid it if you’re looking for something told from multiple viewpoints. This is Peter’s story, which means that the other characters get very little on-screen development.
ASP Reviews 