Water
Given its title and the fact that the novel is set largely on, near, and in a lake, we were expecting some pretty good water imagery and symbolism—and we were not disappointed. This notion o...
Animals
The line between human and animal gets pretty blurry toward the end of the book, when the narrator decides (as part of her effort to connect with the spirits of her departed parents) to shed all th...
Children and Childbearing
For a novel with essentially no children in it, it's kind of striking how often the twin topics of children and childbearing come up. The novel seems pretty preoccupied with (and ambivalent about)...