Reviews for Chalk Lake

The average rating for Chalk Lake based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2019-08-09 00:00:00 Tomas Lajdar I've never been more sexually frustrated by a book in my entire life. I was so worked up, as I finished this freaking sexual tease known as Cavedweller last night, I Googled "nearest naval base," hoping I could drive over and catch some sailors on furlough. Yes, Dorothy Allison is an amazing, underrated author, but, why, oh why must she take the reader (over and over again) on her passages of taut prose, filled with tight, sexual tension and then refuse to allow the reader to reach the climax with these characters? I mean, what's with the sweaty man thighs and the dark lady nipples and the hard spots and the soft spots and the wet spots and then. . . the looking, the thinking, the going home alone and the wondering? Wondering. . . STOP WONDERING! I know exactly which item I want on the menu, and I order it, always, as soon as the server shows up. My meals have always come quickly, and I'm typically done eating before others have even figured out if they're hungry. You'll be dead in five minutes, people. Place your order! And if a cave isn't a metaphor for a vagina, THEN I DON'T KNOW WHAT IS. In the cave we go. . . we three beautiful women. . . giggle, giggle. Oh! Everybody's so wet in this dark, moist cave. . . giggle, giggle. Our shirts are off and we're all just naked in this cave. . . giggle, giggle. . . but we don't know if we're gay or not, but we think we are. . . and we're all so young and sexy and wet in this cave, so. . . let's grab our shovels and dig for stones and wonder about it. Stop wondering! Stop wondering and start figuring out if you're gay or straight by exploring caves with gay or straight people who are standing before you WITH THEIR SHIRTS OFF! This book is so infuriating; it felt like Ms. Allison went out of her way to decide that every character was either asexual after 100 pages of foreplay or had their coupling be suggested by them waking up together in bed with robes, newspapers and coffee. And, I'm sick of CAVES! Sick of them. They tease me with their possibilities. . . and nothing good ever seems to happen in them (last summer's disappointing cave read: The Clan of the Cave Bear). Okay, but let's pretend for a minute that I'm not interested in sex, and let's assume that the taut, teasing plot lines didn't torment me. . . and I was just in it. . . for other reasons. So, what of Dorothy Allison as a writer? She's badass, baby. Ms. Allison's a sassy, sexy Voice of the American South. I've never doubted a single character of her creation, never doubted the validity of her stories, either. And, unlike her more famous Bastard Out of Carolina, there's no disturbing sexual abuse on a child here (though, there is domestic abuse, so consider yourself warned). But, Ms. Allison. . . what I want to know is. . . if you can write foreplay like this, why do you back away in timidity when the sexual tension builds to a crescendo?? Stay in the game, baby. Stay in the game. DWELL LONGER IN THE CAVE, LADY!!

Review # 2 was written on 2007-12-05 00:00:00 Jack Dial I love and admire Dorothy Allison. Both her non-fiction work (Skin, Two or Three Things I Know for Sure) and her fiction (Trash, Bastard out of Carolina) is extremely impressive on an intellectual level, as well as deeply moving on a gut level. So I expected no less from Cavedweller, her second novel. And I'm sure it is only because I went in to reading it with such very high expectations that it was disappointing. Cavedweller is a very good book. It's just not as good a book as Allison's other books. The story, which follows the childhood of Cissy, who moves at a young age from Los Angeles to Cayro, Georgia with her mother, Delia, a recovering alcoholic and faded second-tier rock singer, doesn't hurt the way Bone's story in Bastard out of Carolina does. Though you are alternately in love with and pissed off by Delia, she doesn't spark the kind of pity and fury Bone's mother, Anney, does. Like in Bastard, the women in Cavedweller are strong and hard and more than a little bit crazy, and then men, both good and bad, are a little bit weak and simple. There is more room for forgiveness for that weakness and simplicity in Cavedweller, though, which may speak to Allison's greater maturity when she wrote it. The moral universe is not quite so black and white. But what it loses in clarity also makes it less compelling. Bastard out of Carolina, is, to my mind, the kind of novel that someone writes only once. Like To Kill a Mockingbird, it is the novel that takes the other novels out of you. Given that, I think it was brave of Allison to write Cavedweller at all. Still, it's a sophomore novel, and it reads like one (albeit a particularly good one). Farther, probably, from Allison's personal essays than any of her other fiction, it loses something as it moves away from her. The characters in it that seem the most familiar (the wild and pained Dede in particular) are the strongest elements. Should you read Cavedweller? Absolutely. You should just read all of Allison's other work first.