The disappearing mother
Tulip Chowdhury is touched by sadness
Kit McMahon lived in the quiet Irish country of Lough Glass. Here everyone knew each other. Childhood sweethearts grew up amidst laughter and tears and married. Kit was at the end of her high school. Her life wound around her family, her best friend Clio and the other friendly neighbours. Sister Madeleine, the hermit living in a rundown cottage, was fond of Kit and always welcomed her. Philip O'Brien, her childhood pal, had loved her from very early childhood. To an outsider Kit's life may have seemed charming. But in the midst of all these seemingly good things Kit was deeply troubled by her mother Helen McMahon. Helen McMahon was a beautiful woman who seemed to find herself a stranger to the people of Lough Glass. Kit's father, the kindly pharmacist, had married her knowing well that she had loved a different man who had deserted her. He had brought her from Dublin. Helen never seemed to have settled down in this sleepy place and just did not fall into pace with the people there. She lived on her own with her two children, Kit and Emmet, her son. While at home she looked after the family and when restless she roamed around the lake, even at night. One day Kit saw her mother crying in the kitchen. She was deeply troubled. She wondered what secret had made her mother so mysterious. And while she continued to puzzle over the sight of her mother crying soundlessly, Helen McMahon disappeared one day. When there were no traces of her mother it was concluded that she had drowned in the deep lake. The whispers began that the strange Mrs. McMahon must have committed suicide. Kit found a note in her mother's room. Suspecting that it must be a note confessing to her suicide Kit burned it in the fireplace without even reading it. She destroyed it before anyone else could read it, for bodies in suicide cases are considered to be unholy according to Catholic law. However, soon a body is discovered from the lake. It was impossible to identify the almost decomposed body. And so on the assumption that the body must be the late Helen McMahon's, it was given a decent burial. Kit , Emmet and their father lived with a gnawing emptiness inside. The house was run by Rita, who having been in the house for many years ran the house efficiently. Kit went away to Dublin for higher education. In the meantime Kit began to receive letters from Nela, a woman in London. Nela claimed to be a very close friend of her late mother. Nela was married to Louis Gray, a man whom she loved to the world's end. Kit found a strange familiarity with Nela as she got to know her through the letters. Sometimes she wondered if Nela was someone else pretending to be a friend. But Kit did not allow herself to be disillusioned. One evening when the whole of Lough Glass was busy with a dance program a woman was found prying on the outside as if observing the lives of these people. As people began to describe the woman Kit found herslef having doubts over the death of her mother. She went to London to find the truth of her mother's disappearance. The mystery was solved as she unearthed a absorbing love affair here. She met Louis Gray, her mother's lover. However, she knew that no matter how painful the deception was, her mother must continue to live as dead, she must remain to others Lena Gray, the real Helen McMahon must be allowed to remain hidden. The scandal at Lough Glass would be too much for Kit, Emmet and their father. Although she blamed her mother for disrupting their lives she could not stop loving her mother who was trapped by a love for a man who had no intention of staying with the woman who had abandoned her family for him. The story in the The Glass Lake holds many characters. Though each character has his or her own unique part to play, at times the reader may have difficulty in keeping track of the different episodes. However, the life that goes on in the book is vibrant. The reader feels as if he or she is fully in tune with the characters for they seem so real. The plots are operatic and catch the readers' attention. It is a novel of love, obsession and the secrets that take root in the human heart.
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