Black Lake

Johanna Lane was born in Ireland and studied English Literature at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, where she was awarded the Hemingway Prize for her short fiction, and then attended Columbia's Creative Writing MFA programme. Her first novel, BLACK LAKE, was short-listed for the University of East Anglia's Charles Pick Fellowship. She teaches composition and creative writing in New York.

"In BLACK LAKE Johanna Lane accomplishes the nearly miraculous: she paints the world of her story with such care and skill that, before you know it, it will feel more real than your own. And you won't want to leave it. In Lane's hands the smallest details bloom with meaning, the quietest moments resonate with the power of truth. They make this novel big. It takes on the largest of themes, the thunder-clap moments of life, wresting from them a wisdom rare in any writing, and simply remarkable in a debut. Bit by gentle bit, this beautiful book will break your heart."—Josh Weil, author ofThe Great Glass Sea
"I cannot tell you how moved I was by BLACK LAKE..I turned the pages with such ease! It was so beautifully written. Again and again I was caught up by the precise but unpretentious prose. I believed this story because of the voice, the voices, the details, the familiar yet strange things of these people's lives ...Lane conveys without any mawkishness the loss of this lovely place in the lives of this family, and the loss in all our lives of a childhood place wherever and whatever it was..."—Sheila Kohler, author ofBecoming Jane Eyre



"Johanna Lane's lovely novel is jeweled with shrewd insights into childhood and the way people relate to habitation and place. It's a book to admire and immerse yourself in."—Amit Chaudhuri, author ofThe Immortals


In this beautiful portrait of a family faced with unbearable loss, Lane reveals, not only what slips between the cracks in everyday communication, but also the secret loves and longings we all harbor, even if we never allow our hearts to speak, or our minds to dwell upon, what we need to say and hear, in order to continue as whole and undamaged spirits...a very, very good novel."—John Burnside, winner of the T.S. Eliot Prize and the Forward Prize

"A lush, beguiling beauty, like the Ireland of its setting. Novels like this one don't get written very often; when they do we remember why we love novels in the first place."—Elisa Albert, author ofThe Book of Dahlia



"Black Lakeis my favorite sort of book, a gripping story and a precise, insightful study of the inner lives and also daily lives of people to whom life has done its often brutal work. The setting, the circumstances, are odd and memorable. The emotions are recognizable, but no less memorable.Black Lake, quiet, deceptively simple, and deeply moving, will stay with me over time."—Robin Black, author ofLife Drawing
"A contemporary writer of great promise whose book reads like a classic, debut novelist Lane skillfully demonstrates how grief both erodes and reinforces the bonds of a family. Her subtle, crystalline style calls to mind the prose of Colm Tóibín; her narrative pacing is reminiscent of Kate Chopin's."—Library Journal(starred review)
"Sparkling... Lane describes the Campbells' world with such simple, intense prose that the reader feels the claustrophobia of the small cottage, the wonder of the sea, the rate and tension that permeates the home."—Bustle
"Quiet novels like Black Lake don't get much air-time, but it's worth cutting through the noise and losing yourself in this gently devastating read."—Harper's Bazaar(UK)
"Unsettling, impressively crafted, and bananas-insightful about marriage, family, and why we hide things from people we love."—BookRiot
"Black Lakebeautifully illuminates the gossamer filaments that bind a family to the land and to each other."
—Charlotte Rogan, New York Times bestselling author of The Lifeboat

"The intricacies of the Campbell family are fascinating, a stunningly accurate portrait of a quartet of people stuck together for a lifetime by no choice of their own, who deal with this turn of events through routine, familiarity, and lies--the same way we all do... But Lane's cold Irish pool of a novel is exactly the kind of place you want to visit again and again."—The Rumpus