Alex Cabe reviewed Lakelore by Anna-Marie McLemore
Tight focus on the characters' inner lives
3 stars
This sort of reminded me of the Netflix series Adolescence in that I found it more interesting as conceptual exercise than a story.
The book is in (usually) very short chapters and jumps back and forth between the viewpoint characters. In that way it's kind of an ADHD simulator. Early in the book I found it hard to tell Bastian and Lore apart from each other. That's sort of a commentary on how we tend to classify and box people in by ethnicity and gender expression, but it also forced me to take notes to remember which character was which. Later in the book we learned how Lore had to keep notes for everything, so the book succeeded at putting me into the shoes of the character.
This was a small story that focused on the inner lives of the two viewpoint characters and everyone else was pretty one dimensional. …
This sort of reminded me of the Netflix series Adolescence in that I found it more interesting as conceptual exercise than a story.
The book is in (usually) very short chapters and jumps back and forth between the viewpoint characters. In that way it's kind of an ADHD simulator. Early in the book I found it hard to tell Bastian and Lore apart from each other. That's sort of a commentary on how we tend to classify and box people in by ethnicity and gender expression, but it also forced me to take notes to remember which character was which. Later in the book we learned how Lore had to keep notes for everything, so the book succeeded at putting me into the shoes of the character.
This was a small story that focused on the inner lives of the two viewpoint characters and everyone else was pretty one dimensional. There's nothing wrong with a small story sometimes, but I felt that the world under the lake was underutilized. It was very richly described, but it taught the characters a simple lesson and then didn't figure much into the last third of the book.
All in all, very interesting conceptually and gave me a better emotional understanding of ADHD and Dyslexia, but not a lot of fun to read and I wasn't eager to get to each new chapter.
