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Summary
Summary
Lorna Landvik hypnotizes readers, telling stories with quiet power, brilliant wit, and amazing resonance. USA Today praised her novel, Patty Jane's House of Curl, as "fun and funny, spiked with tragedy and sad times." Now, in Your Oasis on Flame Lake, she continues to create real, resilient people we come to know and love. All you have to do is see a fiery sunset reflecting on the water to figure out how Flame Lake got its name. The small Minnesota town onshore is home to a close-knit group of old friends who discover their comfortable lives taking some unforeseen turns. Best friends fast approaching forty, Devera and BiDi (short for Beverly Diane) were recently voted "Least Changed" at their twentieth high school reunion. Once overjoyed, Devera now finds the label insulting. Oh, she loves her husband and still believes being a wife and mother is the main entree on life's plate. She just longs for the more exotic side dishes. BiDi is adored by her second husband Sergio but her only passions are her perfect household and her perfect body. These priorities sadden her daughter, Francine, a stocky fourteen-year-old and the only girl on the high school hockey team. Francine feels closer to her stepdad, a spirited, supportive soul who loves her right back. BiDi can't figure it out. Nor can she pinpoint the reason why her own sex drive is stuck in neutral, despite a thin and gorgeous chassis. Then there's Devera's husband, Dick Lindstrom, an ace car and appliance salesman with cabaret in his heart. He dreams of opening a night club in his basement. Nothing fancy. Just a BYOB joint to hang out in, sing, dance, tell jokes, and be yourself. The name? Your Oasis at Flame Lake. And it arrives not a moment too soon. For a violent, unexpected crisis will throw both families into chaos--and force them to take stock of their lives. A wonderful, heartfelt novel of feeling, loving, and forgiving, Your Oasis at Flame Lake proves that Lorna Landvik is a writer who has arrived.
Author Notes
Author Lorna Lanvik was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota in 1954. After high school graduation, she and a friend traveled in Europe and settled in Bavaria where they worked as hotel chamber maids and English tutors. After returning to the United States, she briefly attended the University of Minnesota before moving to San Francisco to perform stand-up and improvisational comedy. She moved to Los Angeles, where she did stand-up comedy at the Comedy Store and The Improv as well as worked a variety of temporary jobs including one at the Playboy Mansion and another at Atlantic Records.
She is an actor and playwright who has performed in plays she has written and produced. She has appeared in numerous plays including Bad Seed, Lunatic Cellmates, and Valley of the Dolls. She has written six novels and currently lives in Minneapolis with her husband and two daughters.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Everyone needs a refuge, and for the lucky residents of White Falls, Minn., respite can be found in Dick and Devera Lindstrom's suburban basement, a BYOB nightcub called Your Oasis on Flame Lake. Car salesman Dick is an extrovert who loves the idea of a neighborhood hangout and has little trouble convincing his wife and youngest daughter to help him. But as we slowly discover, the Oasis can't conceal the stresses that underlie their lives and those of others in the community. Using the voices of the Lindstroms, their daughter, Darcy, and their friends Sergio and BiDi, Landvik (Patty Jane's House of Curl) builds a narrative that touches on marital harmony and discord, teenage angst and generational tensions. Written with warmth, wit and tart dialogue, the book engages big themes (love, friendship, loyalty, betrayal and the quest for meaning) while recording the mundanities of daily existence. The focus of the plotan extended crisis involving first BiDi's teenage daughter and then Darcy, several injuries, a car accident and a deathseems almost irrelevant, a vehicle to highlight always fragile family relationships. Nonetheless, Landvik's quirky and passionate characters, and her ardent determination to give them dignity, make this a heartwarming story. Author tour. (July) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Booklist Review
Landvik was a stand-up comic, and she writes like one: her characters are clever and offbeat, like Garrison Keillor's or Fannie Flagg's. In a small Minnesota town, two friends chafe at being voted "Least Changed" at their twentieth high-school reunion. Timid Devera has an affair with her night-school teacher; BiDi, known for her still-perfect figure, gets pregnant by Sergio, her second husband. Devera's husband, Dick, a car salesman who dreams of performing his joke songs in a cabaret, opens "Your Oasis" in their basement and provides a town gathering place. When opposing hockey players ambush BiDi's daughter, Frannie, the hulking product of her first marriage and the town mascot for making the varsity team as a freshman and a girl, the families and town must make peace with the fragility of loved ones. The most captivating narrator is Devera's precocious daughter Darcy, a hat aficionado and self-appointed defender of justice. She and this book should delight most readers. --Kevin Grandfield
Kirkus Review
Quirky characters are a dime a dozen, but truly believable, lovable ones are not--a fact that makes Landvik's (Patty Jane's House of Curl, 1995) latest slice of American life a genuine pleasure. As chapters are narrated alternately by several characters, the reader swiftly becomes privy to the secrets of many in cozy White Falls, Minnesota. Lifelong friends Devera and BiDi are handling the rapid approach to 40 in their own unique ways: BiDi maintains a youthful zest by speeding through life, tossing off zinging one-liners along the way, while Devera begins a tawdry, slightly embarrassing affair with scrawny and supercilious Gerhart Ludwig, her night-class history professor. Blissfully ignorant, Devera's husband Dick happily runs the family Cadillac dealership and dreams of opening a swanky nightclub: Your Oasis on Flame Lake. BiDi's charismatic second husband Sergio (first husband Big Mike ran off to be born again) is successfully launching a chain of gourmet cake shops and conducting an innocent long-term affair. Darcy--Dick and Devera's hat-loving, show-tune-singing younger daughter--offers her sardonic take on events as well. Life rolls along in pithy fashion (Landvik was a stand-up comic) until more serious events encroach on the fun: Francesca, the oversize hockey playing daughter of BiDi, is beaten by hooligans one summer night and left for dead by the side of the road. Miraculously, she makes her own way to the hospital, where BiDi (who's disconcerted at no longer being the center of attention) and Sergio (who deeply loves his stepdaughter) soothe her and envision their revenge. The punches, and punchlines, keep coming: Dick finds out from the professor about Devera's quickie affair, and BiDi and Sergio's long-hoped-for son is born two months premature with a hole in his heart--helping make the end, which is happy, seem somewhat arbitrary. Still, in all, the perfect light and entertaining summer novel. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal Review
A varied cast of characters takes turns narrating this ultimately upbeat tale of friendship, tears, and laughter from the author of Patty Jane's House of Curl (LJ 8/95). Devera Lindstrom and BiDi Herrera, best friends since high school, are on the cusp of 40. While Devera has an affair with a pretentious college instructor, BiDi uses diet pills to keep her gorgeous body in shape and tries to hide her dissatisfaction with Franny, her athletic teenage daughter. Dick Lindstrom works for his father-in-law and dreams of opening a nightclub in his basement. BiDi's husband, Sergio, adores his hockey-playing stepdaughter but wants to have another child. Dick learns of Devera's affair, Franny is mysteriously beaten up one evening, and BiDi and Sergio's new baby is born prematurely. Yet in the end nearly everyone is happy and fulfilled. Close scrutiny reveals any number of weaknesses, including the overly busy, rather unbelievable plot; the pedestrian writing; and the less-than-three-dimensional characters. But why complain? Read it for what it is: a perfect purchase for popular fiction collections.Nancy Pearl, Washington Ctr. for the Book, Seattle (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Excerpts
Excerpts
I plan on being a world traveler someday, mostly for the experience but a little bit for the hats (I'm what my mom calls a "headware connoisseur": I'm not that into fashion, but I do love hats, which give you automatic style anyway. I can't wait to get berets and panamas and sombreros in the countries of their origin.) But I think I'd have to cross a bunch of time zones and ten times as many countries to find a place like Flame Lake. We're the only lake in our chain that has an ordinance against powerboats and you can still see your toes when you're standing in three feet of water. Dad says the lake got its name from a drunk fur trapper who ran a little corn-liquor business on the north shore. His still used to blow up every other month and the fireball would be thrown into the lake. Mom says that's a big lie concocted by the drinkers down at Bardy's Tap -- she says all you have to do is look at a sunset to figure out how the lake got its name. I vote with Mom on this one; some sunsets really do look as if they're setting the lake on fire ... I'd seen enough daytime talk shows and read enough of my mother's magazines to know that my family situation was pretty good, too -- I mean, we all loved one another (well, except for my sister Lin, who we tolerated). Growing up in that house on Flame Lake, it was pretty easy thinking that in the great poker game of life, I was holding a royal flush. I guess I still think that way, I mean Lin says I've got the biggest ego in the Western world. "If you were me, you'd be thrilled too," I tell her. The truth is, I don't feel like me much anymore. Sometimes it's as if I've aged at warp speed and I'm as old as my grandma Ardis, who thinks a cup of hot tea and a new Reader's Digest is a party. Other times I wish I'd never given up my blankie and my pajamas with feet. Lin and I don't share a bedroom, so she doesn't know how many times I've laid in bed, crying myself to sleep, scared that all the trouble that came to us was just a little preview of the main attraction. I try to tell myself that what happened is all over, finissimo, water under the bridge; but how can something you're always reminded of be over? I can't look in a mirror without seeing how lousy things can be -- I've got this row of false teeth and I haven't even been kissed by a boy yet. I mean one I'm not related to. Not that I'd want to. Oh well. At least you can replace teeth, I tell myself. I don't know if you can ever get back what Franny lost. Excerpted from Your Oasis on Flame Lake by Lorna Landvik All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
