Gone Away Lake

by Elizabeth Enright

This is a wonderful book. It seems that everything I've been reading has such dark overtones, making this sunny, reassuringly normal book about a summer vacation in the country a real treat.

There is very little plot to speak of. A girl and her brother visit their cousin in the country. In the course of their explorations, they find a lake that dried up when it's source was dammed, and two elderly people living in what's left of the summer colony houses there. The old folks reminisce about their past when they used to summer at the lake, the young ones fix up a room in one of the houses for a clubhouse ... it sounds mundane, but reads beautifully. Of course it helps if you love descriptions of woods and swamps and wildlife.

Above all, though, I just love that this book is set squarely in the real world, with no overtones of fantasy at all, yet still manages to weave such an entrancing spell.