Constant Reader March 2025 Adult Wilde Lake by Laura Lippman

Looking At Her Past, Lippman Shows A Woman Facing the Ultimate Unreliable Narrator — Herself

Author’s Note: I did mean to get this review up in time for February but as my readers know I’ve been dealing with a lot of other things and February is the shortest month. As apologies consider this a review for February 31st and that there will be one for March down the road.

By the time I finished reading Wilde Lake another in the seemingly endless line of brilliant novels by Laura Lippman I found myself pondering two questions, one of which is purely my personal belief, the other that Lippman never states directly but one might get from reading it. Both might add a certain explanation to the behavior of Lu Brant, the protagonist of her novel, but Lippman is too good a writer to imply that even if my readings were correct it would excuse her actions at any point in the story.

The first comes from my personal perspective: is it possible Lu suffers from kind of spectrum disorder? By the time the novel’s over we know that there are disposition to mental instability in her family and Lu herself has several problems with learning both as a child and in her adult life.

Both as a child and to an extent as an adult Lu has a way of hearing what people say in a very literal fashion…