7.4 /10 1 Votes
Language English Media type Print ISBN 0-7432-4634-9 Page count 464 Country United States of America | 3.7/5 Goodreads Publication date Mar 2004 Pages 464 Originally published 2004 Genre Novel Publisher Charles Scribner's Sons | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Similar The Inverted Forest, The Concrete Sea, The city trap, The Art Of Dying Well, Practical Gas Flow | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Heaven Lake is the debut novel of American author John Dalton published in 2004. It won both the 2005 Sue Kaufman Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the 2004 Barnes & Noble Discover Award in Fiction. It gets its name from the Heaven Lake of Tian Shan in northwest China which features towards the end of the novel.
Contents
Plot introduction
The story begins in Douliu City, Taiwan where Christian volunteer and recent college graduate Vincent Saunders from Red Bud, Illinois, fluent in Mandarin, arrives to teach English and to share his faith. Soon after opening a ministry school, he meets wealthy businessman Mr. Gwa, who explains that he has fallen in love with a girl in mainland China but is unable to marry her due to the political situation between Taiwan and China. He offers Vincent $10,000 to travel to Urumchi in the far northwest of China near the eponymous Heaven Lake and marry the girl, bringing her back to Taiwan where she would be free to marry Mr. Gwa. Vincent refuses but later develops a relationship with one of his young students, which causes him to abandon his faith and to reconsider the offer.
Background and inspiration
John Dalton himself spent time in Douliu teaching English and was eating in a restaurant with other teachers when a local businessman approached and told of his love for a woman on the Chinese mainland and offered $10,000 to anyone who would marry her and bring her back. Dalton used this experience as the basis for his novel. It took eight years to write and he was inspired by a number of writers, among them Charles Baxter, Alice Munro and specifically Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee and Amy and Isabelle by Elizabeth Strout.
Reception
Reviews were 'mostly positive' :