Why a Booktrail?
2000s- A family reunion, a family dinner with a lot more on everyone’s plates than just the food.
Daughters of the Lake
What you need to know before your trail
Madalena has invited her four adult children to a family dinner with a difference. For as each one of them arrives,it soon becomes clear that they have each brought something to the table, the serving of which will definitely be a talking point at dinner!
Madalena rounds up her dysfunction offspring – Annie, Portia with her dark secrets of betrayal, Vienne and Laurence….all have something to say and it might not be what anyone else wants to hear.
The event is to celebrate the fortieth anniversary of her lakeside hotel but the past comes back as one very unwelcome guest
Locations
ResetTravel Guide
“She counted the cranes. Did any country have the same constant state of renovation at Switzerland? This obsession with perfection?”
There is no sense of perfection at the dinner table at the family hotel but the weights of the past are something which stand as bulky cumbersome loads which have to be shifted if the family is to survive.
Many Swiss anecdotes and details of the Swiss way of life are dotted around in this family tale like holes in the best Swiss cheese. Just when you think you’ve bitten into a piece of family history, a little nugget of Swiss culture adds to the story. This is the Switzerland where all four of the children were raised and even one of them seems to have struggled with their past in some way here and have bad memories of one sort or another.
Switzerland is an extra character at the dinner table for the Swiss mindset and culture are at the heart of the family’s discord. Switzerland is a beautiful country and the setting of the hotel is stunning (evoked on the cover as well as via the words) but behind that stunning facade, lies the truth of the four siblings now gathered back ‘home’.
Switzerland is described as being static, afraid of being late or spontaneous and ‘safe’ but perhaps the most telling is when someone asks ‘ Did you know that Dadaism originated in Switzerland? Dadaism is an European artistic and literary movement which flouted conventional values and artistic conventions and critique social constraints and society itself. Maybe like the family at large?
Switzerland is as varied, deep and distinct as each member of this family. You have to scratch the surface to see the real beauty and the gritty underbelly.
Trail Gallery
Where Next?
