When Does "The House Across the Lake" (2022) Take Place?
"The House Across the Lake" is a horror mystery novel written by Riley Sager a.k.a. Todd Ritter that released June 21st, 2022. So when is "The House Across the Lake" set?
It takes place in the year:
We know this because near the end of the story Casey Fletcher narrates to the reader: “I do know there hasn’t been a drowning there since my great-great-grandfather built the earliest version of the lake house. Len had been the first since at least 1878.” A “grandfather” would have lived about 75 years in the past, a “great-great-grandfather” about 125 years back. This places the entire narrative roughly around 2003 AD.
2031 AD
We know this because near the end of the story Casey Fletcher narrates to the reader: “I do know there hasn’t been a drowning there since my great-great-grandfather built the earliest version of the lake house. Len had been the first since at least 1878.” A “grandfather” would have lived about 75 years in the past, a “great-great-grandfather” about 125 years back. This places the entire narrative roughly around 2003 AD.
25 x 5 = 125
and
1878 + 125 = ~2003.
HOWEVER, Casey tells us partway through the book, “I’m in a set of Versace athleisure wear borrowed from Katherine” and Versace only introduced athleisure options at Paris Couture Week Spring/Summer 2016, which started on January 24th, 2016 AD. So it must be after January of 2016 AD.
More specifically, she says that "My mother made her Broadway debut at nineteen" and then, much later, "my parents had me" when "My mother was forty-one" ... "But motherhood was less interesting to her than performing. Within six months, she was back to work in a revival of The King and I" and there were revival productions of "The King and I" (1951) in 1977 AD, 1985 AD, 1996 AD, and 2015 AD. Which one was Lolly Fletcher in? We learn from her own narration that she was recently "At age thirty-five" (followed almost immediately by "For the next six months," strongly implied to bring us to the present) but when was Casey Fletcher born?
2015 AD? Could Casey be born in 2015 AD, 22 years after Fletcher got her first break in a Broadway stage show and was then celebrated enough that an early passage reads, "YouTube is chock-full of her appearances on The Lawrence Welk Show, The Mike Douglas Show..."?
41 - 19 = 22
and
2015 - 22 = 1993.
1993 AD would be too late for Fletcher to make appearances on the real-world variety television program “The Lawrence Welk Show”, which went off the air in 1982 AD. So 2015 AD is out.
1977 AD? Could Casey be born in 1977 AD, 35 years before our story is told?
1977 + 35 = 2012.
2012 AD would be too early for the appearance of the aforementioned Versace athleisurewear. So 1977 AD is out.
1985 AD and 1996 AD remain.
1985 + 35 = 2020
or
1996 + 35 = 2031.
The fact that there's no mention of the famous and tragic 2020 worldwide COVID-19 pandemic, which caused all kinds of disruptions to social interactions as well as medical and police protocols from February of 2020 AD onward, strongly implies it must be far from 2020 AD. Even in October of 2020 AD (we'll see soon that the story is set in an October), the effects were ongoing. So 2020 AD is out.
The remaining option is: the 1996 AD revival of "The King and I" as the one Lolly Fletcher takes part in 6 months after Casey Fletcher is born and 35 years before she would turn 35-years-old in 2031 AD!
This gives us a year after 2016 AD, not too far from the generational approximation of 2003 AD, while Casey can be 35-years-old after being born in the year of a Broadway revival of “The King and I" in 1996 AD, but also far enough away from 2020 AD that any mention of the 2020 covid-19 pandemic would be rare.
During the New Year's Day 2032 AD epilogue, a character specifically names the month of the main action when they say, "I need one thing in my life not tainted by the events of October" and adds "It's been ten weeks since my last real drink" giving us the exact timeframe of "ten weeks" since we saw her drinking in the main action, i.e. 2 and 1/2 months.
10 divided by 4 = 2.5 months.
and
12.2031 - 2. = 10.2031.
So it is October of 2031 AD!
Finally, there's an epilogue that takes place on New Year’s Day 2032 AD, as a character narrates, “We all rang in the new year”… “ten weeks since my last real drink”. So it’s December of 2031 AD and then January of 2032 AD.
