#RivetingReviews: Rosie Goldsmith reviews THE LAKE by Bianca Bellová

The Lake may be fiction but the cruelty and suffering of its characters are so real and the destruction of nature and climate so familiar, that it must be based on fact. Anyone who is concerned about the climate crisis and Russia’s war against Ukraine, and who knows the history of the Soviet Union and of life under communism in eastern Europe, will recognise the background realities of this novel, which seem especially authentic, as the author Bianca Bellová grew up in the former Czechoslovakia.

As I read the novel I was reminded of the disappearance of the Aral Sea and Soviet-era pollution and agricultural policy. I thought of the Semipalatinsk Nuclear Test Site in Kazakhstan where the Soviets exposed the land and thousands of people to radiation. When my husband visited Semipalatinsk for the BBC in the early 1990s, he reported on children with no eyes, two-headed foetuses and horrific cancers.

All this, along with a fertile imagination, phenomenal literary talent and a gripping narrative led to the creation of The Lake, which has won several prizes, most recently the EBRD Literature Prize 2023, which Bellová shared with her translator from Czech, the outstanding Alex Zucker. The chair of the EBRD judges proclaimed that The Lake ‘deserves to become a European classic’. I agree. It is a great read, however grim.

The Lake is the story of young Nami, of his journey through childhood, across the lake and to the city, of the odyssey he embarks on to find his mother and somewhere he can be happy. The novel opens when he is three, living on the shores of the lake with his gramma and grampa, and, briefly, with his mother. She disappears, and he later remembers only the three triangles of the bikini she wore and the way she soothed him after a night of vomiting. It’s clear that the lake is poisonous – all the children in the fishing town of Boros are sick and have eczema; a baby is born with three hands. The vast lake is drying up, the shore receding and the bottom littered with ships’ hulls and abandoned detritus. The adults work in fishing and fish processing and survive on vodka. The men are rough and often cruel. When his grampa dies on the lake, Nami asks his gramma why she is sad: ‘He was always being rude to you. He beat you constantly…’

The lake is at the heart of the story. In spite of the real suffering and environmental damage, the people of Boros believe that the lake is their saviour. But it is their nemesis too – it is angry, voracious, toxic, and they have to appease its spirit by offering it sacrifices, often human. When Nami’s gramma falls ill, Nami asks the doctor: ‘You aren’t going to send her to the lake, are you?’

We see everything through Nami’s eyes, and the beauty of the novel (it is beautifully written) lies in his authentic voice and observations. His life is hard, but he lives in hope – the prospect of a better life propels him forward. The women of the novel are kind and generous in spite of their own losses and suffering. Young Nami is comforted at one point by ‘the dry kiss of an old woman, smelling of onions and lost self-respect’.

There is no adult judging events or providing explanations, which adds to the novel’s impact and raw humanity. We learn only through Nami’s encounters with them that the town is occupied by Russians, who are violent and obscene. At one time there is a Russian flotilla based in the bay and the whole town have to attend regular socialist rituals, gathering round the looming statue of ‘The Statesman’. Then the Russians leave (we guess this refers to the collapse of communism), abandoning Boros to even greater unemployment and poverty.

Nami also leaves and crosses the lake, to the capital, where he is subjected to further trials and misery. The novel expands to biblical proportions and ambitions: a plague of locusts swarms the city, there is no rain, harvests fail, fish die, women are raped, men hunt and kill. The people are oppressed and their homeland is on the brink of extinction. Will the Spirit of the Lake rescue them? Or is it punishing them? And will Nami, our impressive and determined young hero, find his mother?

The Lake teems with mysteries and narrative tension. Just before reading it I completed Barbara Kingsolver’s masterpiece, Demon Copperhead, set in the Appalachians, similarly based on the life lessons learned by a young boy, similarly depicting the poverty and decline of a whole society. The Lake is equally compelling, and I urge you to read it.

Reviewed by Rosie Goldsmith

THE LAKE

by Bianca Bellová

Translated by Alex Zucker

Published by Parthian Books (2022)

September 2023 #RivetingReviews titles are available to buy from bookshop.org.

Rosie Goldsmith is Director and Founder of the European Literature Network and Editor-in-Chief of The Riveter. She was a BBC broadcaster for twenty years and is today an arts journalist and presenter. She was chair of the judges for the EBRD Literature Prize 2018–2020.

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