In the Lake of the Woods
by Tim O'Brien
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Book Summary Information
Author: Tim O'BrienEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2006-09-01
ISBN: 061870986X
Number of pages: 336
Publisher: Mariner Books
Product features:
- ISBN13: 9780618709861
- Condition: New
- Notes: BRAND NEW FROM PUBLISHER! 100% Satisfaction Guarantee. Tracking provided on most orders. Buy with Confidence! Millions of books sold!
Book Reviews of In the Lake of the Woods
Book Review: A Psychological Study of the Layers that make up a Man
Summary: 5 Stars
John Wade, Minnesota native and political up and comer has lost his bid for a Senate seat...lost it by a landslide. Now, while on a retreat from politics to the northern woods of Minnesota John has lost his beloved wife Kathleen.
In this brilliant 1994 novel by Tim O'Brien, we see the psychological layers that make up a man; everyone in this book is hiding secrets and no one is who they seem to be. O'Brien uses short, richly developed scenes to describe not only the horrors of war, but the ramifications of holding in secrets that are too dark to reveal. When Senate hopeful John Wade loses the election due to unearthed information linking him to the massacre at My Lai the spider web of deceit that he has woven begins to come apart. The problem is that Wade has become so adept at hiding his secrets that he loses his ability to recognize truth from fantasy...and here in lies the mystery that the reader shares in. We are shown facts, suppositions and viewpoints from multiple angles and are forced to deduce/intuit the truth within the words. We discover that perception and memory are dodgy things at best. This is a brilliantly chilling piece of writing that fully engages both sides of the brain. Like life, there are no pat answers here; no neat endings or perfect closures. This novel asks the reader to look deeply within ourselves to witness our own shadows and to realize that no matter how much we love another it is virtually impossible to fully know them and equally difficult to fully know ourselves.
If you're afraid of some frankly dark images; vivid descriptions of the My Lai massacre and the horror of war, then this may not be your book. But if you're not afraid to look (even within your mind's eye) at the darkness without and by doing so face the darkness within, then "In the Lake of the Woods" is a must read morality play that is ambiguously shaded in greys rather than the moral black and white that is so comforting to us as humans. This is a novel that is destined to be a classic.
Summary of In the Lake of the Woods
First published to critical acclaim by Houghton Mifflin, Tim O?Brien?s celebrated classic In the Lake of the Woods now returns to the house in a gorgeous new Mariner paperback edition. This riveting novel of love and mystery from the author of The Things They Carried examines the lasting impact of the twentieth century?s legacy of violence and warfare, both at home and abroad. When long-hidden secrets about the atrocities he committed in Vietnam come to light, a candidate for the U.S. Senate retreats with his wife to a lakeside cabin in northern Minnesota. Within days of their arrival, his wife mysteriously vanishes into the watery wilderness.
Tim O'Brien has been writing about Vietnam in one way or another ever since he served there as an infantryman in the late 1960s. His earliest work on the subject, If I Die in a Combat Zone, was an intensely personal memoir of his own tour of duty; his books since then have featured many of the same elements of fear, boredom, and moral ambiguity but in a fictional setting. In 1994 O'Brien wrote In the Lake of the Woods, a novel that, while imbued with the troubled spirit of Vietnam, takes place entirely after the war and in the United States. The main character, John Wade, is a man in crisis: after spending years building a successful political career, he finds his future derailed during a bid for the U.S. Senate by revelations about his past as a soldier in Vietnam. The election lost by a landslide, John and his wife, Kathy, retreat to a small cabin on the shores of a Minnesota lake--from which Kathy mysteriously disappears.
Was she murdered? Did she run away? Instead of answering these questions, O'Brien raises even more as he slowly reveals past lives and long-hidden secrets. Included in this third-person narrative are "interviews" with the couple's friends and family as well as footnoted excerpts from a mix of fictionalized newspaper reports on the case and real reports pertaining to historical events--a mélange that lends the novel an eerie sense of verisimilitude. If Kathy's disappearance is at the heart of this work, then John's involvement in a My Lai-type massacre in Vietnam is its core, and O'Brien uses it to demonstrate how wars don't necessarily end when governments say they do. In the Lake of the Woods may not be true, but it feels true--and for Tim O'Brien, that's true enough. --Alix Wilber
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