Due to a sudden, unexpected passing in the family a few years ago and another more recently and my subsequent (mental) health issues stemming from that, I was unable to download this book in time to review it before it was archived as I did not visit this site for several years after the bereavements. This meant I didn't read or venture onto netgalley for years as not only did it remind me of that person as they shared my passion for reading, but I also struggled to maintain interest in anything due to overwhelming depression. I was therefore unable to download this title in time and so I couldn't give a review as it wasn't successfully acquired before it was archived. The second issue that has happened with some of my other books is that I had them downloaded to one particular device and said device is now defunct, so I have no access to those books anymore, sadly.

This means I can't leave an accurate reflection of my feelings towards the book as I am unable to read it now and so I am leaving a message of explanation instead. I am now back to reading and reviewing full time as once considerable time had passed I have found that books have been helping me significantly in terms of my mindset and mental health - this was after having no interest in anything for quite a number of years after the passings. Anything requested and approved will be read and a review written and posted to Amazon (where I am a Hall of Famer & Top Reviewer), Goodreads (where I have several thousand friends and the same amount who follow my reviews) and Waterstones (or Barnes & Noble if the publisher is American based). Thank you for the opportunity and apologies for the inconvenience.

This story was told from multiple POV.
I hated the ending to this book and felt it was unnecessary.
I felt some of the story was just told for the shock factor
Disappointing

I very much enjoyed this book. It has a good story and excellent main characters. I would definately recommend this book.

I was drawn right in to the story.The author writes beautifully the characters come alive.Kept my attention from beginning to the last page.#netgalley#littlebrownuk

The writing in this book was somethign special, but I wasn't hooked by the storyline and found myself getting a little bit bored at times.

I thought this book was extremely intriguing and read it really quickly, as I was enthralled by the characters and the storyline.

It’s 1986 and Vera takes her dog for a walk on New Year’s Day in the local woods, like she always does. This time she never returns home. Before her disappearance she makes a phone call to the police telling them that she has found a young boy wandering in the woods by the lake. By the time the police arrive, both Vera and the boy are gone. Vera’s car, however, and her dog remain.

Leo takes his two sons—Jesse and Dimitri— out to the woods, so they can write their New Year’s resolutions on paper boats and push them onto the frozen lake. But things don’t quite go to plan.

Lewis pulls into the parking lot of Squire Point expecting to be greeted by Vera and the boy she found. Instead he finds an abandoned car and a dog left alone. What has happened to Vera and the boy?

Vera and her husband argued the night before her disappearance, so naturally the police think he is involved. But when they discover that Vera made a phone call to a woman named Evelina from the same pay phone she called the police, focus shifts away from Vera’s husband, Denny.

Told from multiple points of view, How a Woman Becomes a Lake is a spellbinding novel about familial bonds, making mistakes, secrets and whether or not new beginnings can undo the damage of the past.

This is an outright thriller and sits perfectly within that genre as a great example of a ‘missing person’ novel. I don’t think we have to make extra claims about how well written or literary it is. Celona manages to take a well worn genre, and by carefully drip feeding clues, introducing ambiguous characters and using psychological suspense she makes it new. There’s also a definite nod to Nordic noir in the use of landscape and that moral ambiguity - even the best characters have deep flaws and shadows.

The setting is West Coast USA near the border with Canada and a small fishing village called Whale Bay. On New Years Day Vera goes for a walk with her dog Scout and never returns. She’s a successful professor of Film Studies, wife, and mother.

There is a background significance to the title of the novel. A journalist called Jia Tolentino wrote an essay in the New Yorker in 2018, exploring a current phenomenon; the need for mindfulness or stillness. Tolentino refers to recent politics and the onslaught of depressing news items. There are times when I’ve felt permanently agitated and day by day I see people taking social media breaks. We need quiet or as Tolentino more eloquently puts it ‘it’s been a long time since I’ve felt lake-like - cool and still’.

Might Vera have felt the need for the that same stillness? Vera holds a tutorial with a student and daydreams about taking him by the shoulders and shaking him. She wants him to understand the hard work it has taken her to get here. Vera has succumbed to a 21st Century Woman’s dilemma. It’s not just about being successful at work, but being the perfect wife and mother too. Vera has succumbed to this pressure. It’s possible she just wanted to be free.

I liked that the novel does finally reveal what happens on New Years Day, but that it isn’t the only focus. The characters are interesting and multi-dimensional, even the crime’s investigators have their flaws. As the years go by these characters develop, and we see the effect of Vera’s disappearance. I was intrigued till the end. This book was an unexpected pleasure.

Thank you for this ARC. I will be posting an extended review on my blog before the end of March.

“Missing person” stories have become the gift which keeps on giving. Over the past year I must have read about four or five novels built on the premise of a mysterious disappearance (I’m honestly losing count). The good news is that this trope - or genre, which is what it has basically morphed into – keeps reinventing itself, with every author giving it an idiosyncratic spin.

In Marjorie Celona’s How a Woman Becomes a Lake the missing protagonist is Vera, a thirty-year old filmmaker and lecturer who lives in the small West Coast fishing town of Whale Bay, “just a stone’s throw from Canada”. On New Year’s Day 1986, Vera goes out for a walk with her dog Scout and fails to return home. The local detectives immediately presume foul play. Vera’s considerably older husband, Denny Gusev, becomes a murder suspect, particularly since neighbours claim to have heard the couple heatedly argue on the evening of the disappearance. Officer Lewis Coté, however, refuses to accept this neat solution. Just before going awol, Vera phones the Police claiming that she has found a boy in the woods. Could it have been one of Leo’s two sons, who were out near the lake on the same day? Do the boys know more than they are letting on?

The book’s blurb describes this novel as “a literary novel with the pull and pace of a thriller, told in taut illuminating prose”. It’s the type of description which, unfortunately, shows the stigma still associated with genre fiction. There would have been nothing wrong or shameful with describing How a Woman Becomes a Lake as a “noir” or an outright “thriller”, because (i) that’s what it is and (ii) it is a noir/thriller in the best senses of the word. It is a page-turner which reveals its secrets cunningly. In a nod to Scandi-thrillers, it also uses landscape and nature to wonderful effect. Also, at a more ‘philosophical’ level, it is in keeping with the noir tradition which revels in psychological and moral shadows. The best characters have their faults, whilst even the worst have redeeming features.

Celona borrows her title from a New Yorker essay by Jia Tolentino, which in turn references Ovid. This title, with its echoes of Classical mythology, suggests a magical realist aspect to the novel, one which becomes apparent in its more whimsical, poetic chapters. It also invites a metaphorical reading of the book: a cry against the gender politics of a patriarchal society, reflected in the expectations society makes of Vera, of Evelina and, conversely, of Lewis, Leo and Denny.

How a Woman Becomes A Lake provides much food for thought. Which, of course, does not make it any less of an exciting noir.

How A Woman Becomes A Lake is an absolutely mesmerising read, I'm not even sure how to describe it in the context of genre - the mystery element is very low key, whilst there is an eventual reveal of what happened on "the day that never happened " it's not what the novel is about, nor is it at all unexpected. 

I think the multi arc character drama of it is what makes it rise above- the writing is purely beautiful, the lives being lived within the pages utterly compelling. The voice of a dead woman resonates throughout, whilst those close to her and those involved and knowledgeable about her final moments, live with the very personal mental consequences.

The years flow by, the relationships ebb and flow, ever changing with the seasons...all the while as a reader you are completely gripped, until the final, emotional pages.

Very good indeed. A little literary delight.

It was an interesting and engrossing read, full of food for thought.
I liked the style of writing and I liked the storytelling.
It's one of those stories you have to read slowly to savour the words and beauty of the descriptions.
Recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine.

There was something rather wonderful about the writing in this book.
How it voiced so many things,the feeling that Leo is going to explode any minute,that Jesse hates himself and the most stand out voice, Vera.
As everyone wonders where she went,what happened,was it the husband?
The reveal was perfectly timed and in some ways it felt inevitable what happened,but then there was more.
An interesting read.