While The Lake shows off many of the features that have made Banana Yoshimoto famous - a cast of vivid and quirky characters, simple yet nuanced prose, a tight plot with an upbeat pace - it's also one of the most darkly mysterious books she's written yet. It tells the tale of a young woman who moves to Tokyo after the death of her mother, hoping to get over her grief and to get a career as a graphic artist off the ground. She soon realizes she's spending too much time staring out her apartment window to do either a and she's gotten used to seeing a young man across the street staring out his window, too. They eventually embark on a friendship that hesitates on the verge of romance, until she learns that her newfound friend has been the victim of some kind of childhood trauma. Visiting two of his friends who live a monastic life beside a beautiful lake in the country, she begins to piece together a series of clues that lead her to suspect his experience may have had something to do with a bizarre religious cult a. With its echoes of the infamous, real-life Aum Shinrikyo cult (the group that released poison gas in the Tokyo subway system), The Lake becomes one of the most powerful novels Banana Yoshimoto has ever written. And as the two young lovers overcome their troubled past to discover hope in the beautiful solitude of the lake in the countryside, it's also one of her most moving.