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A review by julesthebookdragon417
Lake of the Ozarks: My Surreal Summers in a Vanishing America by Bill Geist
2.0
Actual rating 2.5. I received an advanced reader copy of this book through a Goodreads Giveaway.
Lake of the Ozarks is a time hop. The reader is transported to the 1960s, peering into the past as though through a portal into the author's summers spent in the Ozark mountains. The sense of nostalgia is contagious, and I found myself smiling back upon memories that weren't at all my own, but were universal in their themes: growing up; the freedom of being away from home for the first time, and the haphazard jolt of pseudo-adulthood that comes with that; family formed by proximity and shared experience; the painful but hysterical experience of a terrible but somehow enlivening, all-consuming job; and the uncanny experience of moving between two very different worlds, and uncovering very different parts of yourself within them.
I chuckled, I cringed, I narrowed my eyes in disapproval while snorting in amusement. The dry humor and vivid scene-painting work well together, and the book reads like a movie plays. What details weren't provided were easy to fill in, and though I maybe couldn't describe individual characters too well after finishing, the place that is the Arrowhead Lodge came alive with vivid personality.
My main complaint, though, is the lack of an overarching...well, purpose. The book does an excellent job of transporting the reader to a different time and place. But outside of the introduction and postscript, it's unclear what the point of that transporting is. Is Geist telling us the story of how he grew up? Of the rise and fall of this pocket of tourist culture? As entertaining as the thematically-grouped exploits that make up most of the book were, I found myself wishing for some sort of story line or progression to follow. What I felt was lacking though was a story: a beginning, a middle, an end, with a problem or challenge that needed to be hacked away at and overcome, and transformation of the main character that we could watch and track as it unfolded.
Reading this book was like a tiny little vacation. I used the phrase "time hop" intentionally; this really felt like I was dropped out of the sky into a completely different landscape. The change was thorough and vibrant, and the personality of this place and time shines through. Reading this book felt like jumping into a lake, and being submerged by a murky, "other" world as the water overtook me. I just wish there had been something of a plot, like a current to carry me down the river once I broke back through the surface.
Lake of the Ozarks is a time hop. The reader is transported to the 1960s, peering into the past as though through a portal into the author's summers spent in the Ozark mountains. The sense of nostalgia is contagious, and I found myself smiling back upon memories that weren't at all my own, but were universal in their themes: growing up; the freedom of being away from home for the first time, and the haphazard jolt of pseudo-adulthood that comes with that; family formed by proximity and shared experience; the painful but hysterical experience of a terrible but somehow enlivening, all-consuming job; and the uncanny experience of moving between two very different worlds, and uncovering very different parts of yourself within them.
I chuckled, I cringed, I narrowed my eyes in disapproval while snorting in amusement. The dry humor and vivid scene-painting work well together, and the book reads like a movie plays. What details weren't provided were easy to fill in, and though I maybe couldn't describe individual characters too well after finishing, the place that is the Arrowhead Lodge came alive with vivid personality.
My main complaint, though, is the lack of an overarching...well, purpose. The book does an excellent job of transporting the reader to a different time and place. But outside of the introduction and postscript, it's unclear what the point of that transporting is. Is Geist telling us the story of how he grew up? Of the rise and fall of this pocket of tourist culture? As entertaining as the thematically-grouped exploits that make up most of the book were, I found myself wishing for some sort of story line or progression to follow. What I felt was lacking though was a story: a beginning, a middle, an end, with a problem or challenge that needed to be hacked away at and overcome, and transformation of the main character that we could watch and track as it unfolded.
Reading this book was like a tiny little vacation. I used the phrase "time hop" intentionally; this really felt like I was dropped out of the sky into a completely different landscape. The change was thorough and vibrant, and the personality of this place and time shines through. Reading this book felt like jumping into a lake, and being submerged by a murky, "other" world as the water overtook me. I just wish there had been something of a plot, like a current to carry me down the river once I broke back through the surface.