Tim O'Brien

In the Lake of the Woods

This remarkable new novel from the National Book Award-winning author of Going After Cacciato and The Things They Carried combines the power of the finest Vietnam fiction with the tension of a many-layered mystery. It begins in a remote lakeside cabin deep in the Minnesota forests, where Kathy Wade is comforting her husband John, an ambitious politician, after a devastating electoral defeat. Then one night she vanishes, and gradually the search for Kathy becomes a voyage into the darkest corners of John Wade's life, a life of deception and deceit - the life of a man able to escape everything but the chains of his darkest secret.

In the lake of the woods

Excellent. A book full of doubt. Two flawed people, lost in time and to each other. When Kathy goes missing, John’s tenuous grip on life starts to loosen. 

The book has no resolution. Which is a good - and useful - thing. There are a number of chapters devoted to hypotheses of what happened to Kathy, and John himself is no help: we don’t know if he’s being honest, or just providing some sleight of hand to throw us off the scent. The back stories and the treatment of the massacre of a Vietnamese village id very well handled. An excellent book, and is lack of finality and certainty pleases me. 

Jan Jackson

Excellent. A book full of doubt. Two flawed people, lost in time and to each other. When Kathy goes missing, John’s tenuous grip on life starts to loosen. 

The book has no resolution. Which is a good - and useful - thing. There are a number of chapters devoted to hypotheses of what happened to Kathy, and John himself is no help: we don’t know if he’s being honest, or just providing some sleight of hand to throw us off the scent. The back stories and the treatment of the massacre of a Vietnamese village id very well handled. An excellent book, and is lack of finality and certainty pleases me. 

Dorian Avers

I honestly don't know how to feel about this book. The author states near the beginning of the book that this is not a story that gets tied together with a bow at the end. There are many possible explanations and interpretations of the actions in this book. I thought the character John Wade was very realistic and deep. This book made you empathize with John Wade and some of his fellow soldiers for doing terrible things. Once you read about the conditions and abuses of power you can understand how people can come back shattered from overseas. Even if their actions can't be justified, they need help. Not to be brushed aside or locked away. 
 This book also made me a bit paranoid. The images of the scalding water on flesh and the fact that both John Wade and Kathy convince themselves and others that they are desperately in love with one another. Truly believing that this twisted, surface level thing they have is love. That's terrifying. They lived like that for years. Never truly revealing themselves because they tried to only speak of the positive. They held their tongues when something was unpleasant and swallowed their words when they were unhappy or angry. 
 I was a bit confused with the Hypothesis and Evidence chapters. Who was supposed to be writing these? The author? A random reporter? Vinny Pearson? I also didn't know if this was supposed to be based on a true story. I didn't know anything about this book before my mom passionately recommended it. And I try to never look up information related to a book while I'm reading it or before I write a "review". I ask because before the book starts there's a disclaimer about it being based around real events and places, but John and Kathy and other aspects being a work of fiction. Overall, this was a quick, interesting read. The Evidence chapters could sometimes drag on a bit, and sometimes I didn't understand how some of the quotes were relevant. The Hypothesis chapters just seemed like nice, smooth breaks most of the time. I did like the time jumps and how something set in the present will vaguely hint at the past, but we don't know exactly what until later on. I like it. It's like piecing together a puzzle and having some aha moments and trying to figure things out.

In the Lake of the Woods

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