In the Lake of the Woods

Apparently I'm the only one that thought "The Things They Carried" by this author was ridiculous. Well, because I bought "In the Lake of the Woods" at the same time, I had to read it. I was sometimes just as confused by this book as the previous one. There is no doubt Tim O'Brien is a talented writer, but he is so far "out there" I don't enjoy his writing. This book focuses on the atrocities at My Lai and the main character's participation in them. I believe my Viet Nam Marine Corps husband when he tells me the killings of civilians, suspected North Vietnamese supporters, happened all the time, just not in the scale of My Lai. That is why the rules of engagement which the soldiers and Marines in Iraq and Afghanistan have had to put up with are so foreign to him. Obviously babies and children should not have been held responsible, but women and old people definitely helped the North Vietnamese. The author spent so much time recounting reports and court martial proceedings from the My Lai incident. If that was what he wanted to relay, why not just write a book about My Lai?

I really disliked the main character, John Wade, and I had no idea why his wife, Kathy, was with him. When she accidentally turns up pregnant, he makes her have an abortion even though they are married and both eventually want children. That really pissed me off and showed me how selfish they both were.

When Kathy disappears after one of John's wierdo episodes (always the fault of Viet Nam), we never find out what happened to her. The author cleverly speculates on what happened from both Kathy and John's point of view. I wanted to know, but didn't particularly care if she were dead or alive. When John takes off when he finds out about an upcoming police search warrant, I didn't care if he lived or died either. There wasn't a character in the book that I liked.

I thought this book was absolutely brilliant. The organization took me a little while to get used to because the story didn't run from start to finish. It skipped around as we were given little flashbacks/glimpses into his past as well as sections with quotes from books and testimonies from the case. Once I got used to it, I absolutely loved it. There were some bits that were repetitive (which normally I despise in a book) but this time I enjoyed it because we were given more information each time. It was like...each time John Wade thought about something, he remembered a bit more even though his brain had tried so hard to block it out.

The storyline itself was violent and thrilling. I found the entire book to be very interesting because you followed the already mentally unstable John Wade as his mind really started to unravel after a major loss on top of everything he saw/did in Vietnam.

This novel has haunted me since I finished it over a week ago. The reader really isn't sure about much of anything in 'In the Lake of the Woods' except for the Vietnam passages and the fact that the main character lost an election. The rest almost seems like an extended dream sequence. Nothing is as it seems, or maybe some of it is? I've continued to think about it since closing it out and I assume that's what Mr. O'Brien intended.

The book has a unique structure. The 'evidence' chapters include a bunch of references, citations, quotations, interviews, and other material relevant to the main character's past, his current situation, and speculation about what may have occurred. It's a unique approach that I thought added context to the story line. The writing is superb, the dialogue is great, and the plot is both unusual and compelling. The ending isn't exactly what I expected, but it was a possibility I should have identified.

This was my first encounter with a Tim O'Brien book but won't be my last. He's a wonderful writer and this is a great book. I know he's characterized as a Viet Nam war-focused author, and although the war was certainly a key part of this story there were much bigger themes involved. It was a 'different' book, but I loved it.

I was steered to Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried by a reviewer who had commented on another post-Vietnam, anti-war novel which I'd read, and been profoundly impressed by. It was a good recommendation, introducing me to a reflective, powerful, brilliantly crafted writer who was new to me.

In The Lake of the Woods, first published in 1994, and therefore written some twenty years after active USA involvement in that war, has as its meta-theme, war, and the thin layers of reasoned, tender humanity which we build over - not our animal nature, but something which arises from our consciousness and the complexity of rationality itself.

O' Brien was a vet, and that experience - and, he suggests, the experience of that entire generation is now buried deep, and therefore, not always clearly seen, in the psyche of modern American. What is deep-denied cannot be engaged with, worked with, used and transformed.

John Wade, a rising Democrat politician suddenly, crushingly defeated in primaries, following the revelation of forged military history which hid his involvement in Charlie-1 platoon (the My Lai massacre), escapes the media circus by holing up in Lake Of The Woods, an isolated part of Minnesota, with his beloved wife, Kathy. Then Kathy disappears.

This can indeed be read on one level as a mystery or thriller. But it is also a portrait of not just a nation with festering wounds, but of this tendency to darkness within collective and individual psyche.

The interesting structure of the book weaves `the facts' of the story of John and Kathy, (fictional characters) with police and procedural enquiries. Some of these are fictional - but interwoven with these, as the character of Wade and his background in Charlie-1 emerges, are real reports from enquiries into My Lai, and what happened. And lest anyone thinks the atrocities where particular only to that time and place, other writings, other reports are cited, into the whole history of young America and How The West Was Won - and early British settlers, too, when this side of the pond thought America was ours.

"There is a line that a man dare not cross, deeds he dare not commit, regardless of orders and the hopelessness of the situation, for such deeds would destroy something in him that he values more than life itself" J. Glenn Gray, The Warriors : Reflections On Men In Battle, quoted in this book.

O' Brien is a subtle, complex writer, delving deeply into nuances of collective and individual psychology - he postulates many versions for what `might have happened' to Kathy, in chapters of Hypothesis, and refuses, and explains why he refuses, to give the reader the easy fictional, tied-up, wrapped up end.

Partly a clearly argued, unfolding look at what is unresolved, at skeletons in cupboards, partly a beautifully chilling thriller, it is also a darker exploration into something which does not sit well with a society which tries to rationally categorise, weigh and measure everything, - the possibility of more ancient forces - does sin itself exist, does evil?. The Ancient Greeks may well have found stories like these easier to understand than a society which believes darkness can always be banished by fluorescent strip lights. The brighter the light, the darker the shadow.

What resonates for me in O' Brien's writing, is his ability, as writer, to sneak up into the face of the reader, and address him/her directly, to remind us this is story, but where story comes from, to make the reader take a long, cool, gravely thoughtful look at themselves in the mirror. What lies beneath the surface you recognise? Whose is the face beneath the practiced mask? And dare you even look? This is a fine writer indeed, who can entertain whilst extending, instructing, and maybe even fulfilling the role of shaman, rending the veil between the seen and the unimagined.

"This could not have happened. Therefore it did not

Already he felt better"

I held off from that final star as I felt many of the quoted sources were repeating information, re-iterating points already made, so some of these sources could have been cut, making the book tighter, and with even more deadly punch

When I bought this book, I did not realize I was about to read a war novel, because the back-of-the-book blurbs led me to believe that it was about the disappearance of a wife and the subsequent suspicion that the husband had killed her, similar in content to the current bestseller Gone Girl. Those elements were certainly part of the plot, but the book concerns itself with much more: the violence of war (in this case, the war in Vietnam), the aftermath of the violence in the lives of the participants, the suppression of secrets and the damage it causes. It's part mystery thriller, part love story, part a harsh picture of war, and part (a large part) an examination of the darkness in one man's soul.

O'Brien constructs his novel most effectively, with a narration of the events by a supposed biographer or reporter, interspersed with sections titled "Evidence" and sections titled "Hypothesis." The reader is given several alternatives to consider as to what really happened. Some readers will most likely feel cheated that no sure solution is provided, but it appears that sometimes the truth is slippery, even to the participants in a drama. What or whom do we ever know for sure? Can even our own minds bend or suppress the truth we have experienced?

In the Lake of the Woods is written in a deceptively simple and straightforward style, but the subject matter and its implications are anything but simple and straightforward. That's part of the genius of this book.

Also highly recommended are O'Brien's The Things They Carried and Going After Cacciato, both concerning the war in Vietnam.

This is also my first Tim O'Brien novel. Look at me, so many reading firsts this week!

This is a hauntingly suspenseful novel about a Vietnam vet who loses a major election and then his wife. John Wade's failures are public, both from when he was in Vietnam following orders and when he lost 4:1 in an election for Governor of Minnesota. To escape the failure and the publicity, John and his wife Kathy accept an offer to spend two weeks in a highly secluded cabin on The Lake of the Woods.

While John struggles to accept defeat and a sense that no one 'loves' him, his wife Kathy is dealing with her own emotions, her own mystery. A marriage that has been strained by the many different obstacles that life throws us, John and Kathy are stretched thin financially and emotionally. John wakes up one morning, sleeping in late, to find that Kathy is gone. The author, Tim O'Brien, weaves us in and out of John's memories of Vietnam, his tarnished childhood memories of his alcoholic father, and the deception that he's had to weave in order to get where he is right now ... nowhere. John again feels an overwhelming sense of failure as now his wife has disappeared and all eyes are on him. Suspect number one.
This book will give you chills not only because of Kathy's disappearance in the wilderness without a trace but also because of one Vietnam vets efforts to undue what he was ordered to do as a young man and the harrowing effects of such a harsh war on not only one man, but thousands.

Tim O'Brien is the Vietnam writer.

One cannot really ENJOY a book where a woman is missing and her husband had been one of those soldiers who had tortured villagers while serving in Viet Nam. "Enjoy" would indicate something positive and happy.

However, this speculative book is incredible. I read it on the recommendation of a Veteran whose opinion I trust, and he was right once again.

O'Brien's book manages to go back and forth between the decades without being confusing. Our protagonist's wife, a woman he truly loves, goes missing shortly after a failed political election attempt. "In the Lake of the Woods" interviews family and law enforcement, goes back to his time in the war, and visits their college days. O'Brien segues neatly, leaving the reader spellbound.

I purchased "In the Lake of the Woods" as an audio book, for my commute. I'd volunteer in the office to go to the bank or to pick up coffee, just to get in five more precious minutes of the story. Again: I did not "enjoy" this book, but I certainly recommend it highly.

Another of O'Brien's books, "The Things They Carried", was more satisfying, although not what I would call an award winner. This one doesn't even measure up to that. Several things bothered me about this book. For one, things were repeated constantly throughout the book, boring me to tears. I got it, already, but the author couldn't seem to turn loose of it. For another, the characters are just kind of there, no depth, no real presence in the reader's mind. A third, quips and quotations are used throughout that seemed to have little to do with the story, if there really was one. Fourth, The story is so jumbled, it took a great deal of effort to keep up with what was going on. Flashback after flashback kept me guessing as to where I was. I believe I understand what the author was trying to say, but I didn't enjoy the way he said it. Fifth, some of the historical prose served only to perpetuate the misinformation fed to the public about actions of our troops in Vietnam. Oh sure, the My Lai incident was a big deal, but there were others. And our troops weren't the only ones who participated in such travesties. That sort of thing has been going on for centuries. It's nothing new. And last, the author's style is different. Not in the best kind of way. I can't see it as an award winner. Just because something is different might inspire the judges to take note and toss some award that way. But the book itself is not what I would call really good. There is certainly some good writing, there, but not that I would give it an award.

The novel In The Lake Of the Woods by Tim O'Brien is a dark and exciting story following John Wade and his wife Kathy Wade. John is an intelligent, self-determined, psychopath running for president. After a recent loss in his campaign to become a part of the U.S. Senate, he flashes back to his war struck past. John was also a Vietnam veteran, although not a very honorable one at that. His division, Charlie company, swept an entire village, Thaun Yen, full of women and children with no gun in sight. After losing the election by a landslide, largely due to the fact his war crimes were made public, John takes both him and his wife Kathy to move up to Lake Of The Woods, Minnesota. However, after a night of so John wakes up one morning to find his wife missing. Throughout the story, John receives flashbacks to his haunting past of Vietnam while the readers are left to figure out what happened to Kathy. A prevalent theme I found in this novel was love and desire, as John and Kathy both love each other dearly, making the disappearance all the more out of the ordinary. John also desired his spot in the U.S. Senate, and when didn't win, he went into a mental breakdown. Another theme I found in this story was violence as it flashes back to Vietnam, and we see how gruesome war is through the eyes of not only John Wade some of his other fellow soldiers, Richard Thinbal and PFC Weatherby. Overall, I found this book very interesting although it was a bit disturbing at times.

It's not that long ago that the events surrounding the massacre of My Lai reverberated in the minds of Americans. The men of Charlie Company were sent on a search and destroy mission which got out of hand with the resulting deaths of approximately 300 Vietnamese civilians who were apparently unarmed.

"In the Lake of the Woods," tells of John and Kathy Wade, who are together at that lake in Minnestoa, on the U.S. Canadian border.

They are taking time together to try to figure out what John would do after John's landslide loss in a political campaign. He had been a rising star, politically, being lieutenant governor at age thirty-seven. From this lofty success, he doesn't know how he'll deal with the end of his dreams.

The author describes John and Kathy's early life at the University of Minnesota. They married after his return from Vietnam.

After John's staggering loss, a friend had offered them the use of his cabin. At first, things seemed normal. However, John awakens one morning after a possible blackout and Kathy has disappeared. John cannot remember what might have caused this.

What is interesting is that the author offers different hypothesis. Did Kathy run off? Did John kill her and hide the body? Did she have an accident on the lake?

With Tim O'Brien's journalistic manner of writing, he describes John's actions while stationed in Vietnam as a member of Charlie Company. The story is filled with quoted statements from other participants in the massacre. We wonder what is the psychological effect of these actions on John.

John's character is well described as is the setting and the historical happenings in Vietnam. Perhaps John is an extreme example of Post Tramatic Stress Syndrome, not only causeing the downfall of a politician on the rise but led to whatever happened between John and his wife.

This dark novel is an imaginative and stimulating portrayal of the aftermath of war and the disollution of a man's spirit and possibly, his life.

I wanted to love this book, since I love Tim O'Brien so much. I went to it thinking I would love it. I even bought an extra copy of it at our used bookstore and put it in the little library. I was that sure.

But, I just didn't. The writing is beautiful. And he writes war so well (obviously). You can smell the air almost.

But the characters were so boring. I didn't care what happened to any of them. Whether they were happy or dead or anything in between. I didn't like the chapters of evidence, because they didn't add anything. And there was one chapter that flashed to 5 different time periods. Practically each paragraph was a different time in his life. None of the story lines ever really developed enough for me to care.

I still love him though.

The Lake In The Woods by Tim O'Brien
Story of Wayne and wife Cathy and his attempts to become a state senator are over with. They take a trip to the lake where there is a forest to recoup and reconnect with one another.
Problem is there is a deep chasm between them and one day he wakes up to find his wife gone. He is investigated as the cops not found her and the story goes back in time to when he served in Vietnam.
Horrid scenes unfold. Her sister comes to help search for her and her talks with Wayne reveal the past secrets and also how his wife hated the political campaigns. Magic, illusions, sorcery,
Pat fears Wayne has killed Cathy...as a child his father bullied and teased him due to his weight...
I received this book from National Library Service for my BARD (Braille Audio Reading Device).

I read this book at least six months ago, but I can't stop thinking about it. If you know Tim O'Brien, which you probably do, then you'll go into this story assuming you'll read about a politician with dirty secrets, and that Vietnam is going to come up. That's all true.

Some of the reviews comment on PTSD, and I wouldn't say John Wade -isn't- afflicted, but he had real emotional problems before the war. What came across to me is a man who is putting in overtime just to pass for normal. He has an unhealthy view of relationships and the people around him. He has suspicions and schemes, and while I found him distasteful, I couldn't help but notice the truth in what he says: you can never -really- know someone. Most of us aren't so conscious of the desire to own all of a loved one, but I think a lot of us -act- on it. Logically, no one can ever know the truth about him either, whatever they dig up about his past.

You're set down, at the edge of this massive lake, in the fall. You learn that John's wife, Kathy, is missing, and you learn about John as a person. Things keep getting darker, and colder, and more hopeless... There's so much to appreciate in this book, but for me, nothing beats setting a story in the North. Those shrinking days...

Tim O'Brien has written a novel that successfully explores the question of what is truth and illusion. Is an event the truth because it happens or is the truth what we believe happens? John Wade and his wife Kathy are recovering from a devastating political defeat at an isolated cabin on the shores of a Minnesota lake. One morning John awakens to find Kathy gone and the mystery begins or so the reader thinks.
Kathy's disappearance is the surface mystery, while the real mystery in this story is what has made John Wade the man he really is. Is he the slick politician and loving husband that he appears to be or is he a murderer? O'Brien reveals slowly through the book that John Wade was a lonely boy who was taunted by an alcoholic father, who then retreats into a world of magic tricks and illusions. After his father commits suicide, he creates the father he always wanted by envisioning him in his mind behind the "mirrors" he has put up to block the painful memories. Later, O'Brien begins to tell a stunningly graphic and horrifying tale of Wade's tour as a soldier in Viet Nam. The reader is thrown again and again into the agonziing re- telling of his memories of the My Lai Massacre. Wade's personna as the "Sorcerer" helps him endure these memories without going crazy. Wade covers up this event both psychologically and phyically by altering the records, but eventually things unravel when the fact of this incident becomes public.
O'Brien brilliantly uses third person narrative with fictionalized "interviews" from friends, family and people who knew the Wades as well as accounts of the investigation into the My Lai Massacre and finally different quotes from various historical events to give a real feeling to his work. As a reader you are drawn into this story as if you are reading a real event in the newspaper, it gives it a very eerie quality. There is a narrator of this story, not displayed in the traditional sense, but by small comments that appear in the footnotes of the interviews and finally taking a larger role in the end of the novel, perhaps echoing the readers point of view.
This is not a mystery in the traditional sense and frustrating to some readers may be the fact that there is not a tidy ending. There are no neat conclusions and the reader is left to ponder as is the narrator, the various hypothesis and eventual outcome of John and Kathy. This is a unique, dark tale that is more about the human psyche, the tricks we play ,secrets we keep and as in the story, there are no neat endings.

In the Lake of the Woods, by Tim O'Brien, can neither be called a mystery, nor can it be called a horror story. Rather, this novel is a mind twisting tale about the protagonist's, John Wade, wife, Kathy, who goes missing. O'Brien poses a lot of questions but never actually gives the reader any answers. Being a Vietnam veteran, O'Brien wrote In the Lake of the Woods in order to give the reader insight into the minds of other Vietnam veterans after the war. He is also able to share his experiences in war, indirectly, through the perspective of the main character, John Wade. Each chapter tells the story of John and Kathy wade in a different structure, all of which are very effective. This was my favorite part of the novel; after each chapter, I looked forward to reading the different structure in the next chapter. However, by the end of the novel, I was left dissatisfied because none of my questions were ever answered, yet I felt well informed and sympathized with the many war veterans whom John Wade might resemble. To those readers who do not like not knowing the answers to things, I would not recommend this novel. However, if you are a person who likes the mind twisting thrillers, then this novel is for you.
I would relate this book to Waiting for Godot, by Samuel Becket. They are similar in the fact that they leave the reader with questions that never actually get answered. Yet, they are very satisfying in that they get their ultimate points across, the ultimate point being that all questions need not be answered all of the time.
In the Lake of the Woods revolves around a secret that John Wade has kept from everyone but which people later find out about. The general moral of the story is that honesty is the best policy. If John had told the truth about what he did in Vietnam, many of his later downfalls could have possibly been avoided. Throughout the novel, O'Brien keeps going back to what Wade's experiences in Vietnam making the reader think about morals. Was Wade wrong or was he just following orders; is everything really his fault? There is no real way of knowing. This, in addition to Kathy's disappearance, is one of the main reasons this novel gets irritating, but for some reason keeps the audience reading. All in all, I would give this novel four stars.

In the Lake of the Woods is four things at the same time: a thriller, a Vietnam war book, a love story, and a parable on storytelling. It is layered accordingly, with flashback chapters interspersed between shorts and quotes from the investigation and the main storyline. This makes for a formulaic but effective novel. Some will find the ending unsatisfactory, but this is where the parable on storytelling comes to fruition.

Most of Tim O'Brien's work seems to be related more or less closely to the Vietnam war, of which he is a veteran. Here it forms but a background to the failed political career of John Wade, the protagonist. The book begins as Wade retires to the seclusion of a northern lakeside cottage with his wife Kathy. Wade's secrets reach farther back than his two-year stint in the south Asian jungle. But as Kathy leaves without warning, the plot comes to revolve around her disappearance. O'Brien makes a convincingly intricate rendering of the relationship between the Wades, itself at the heart of Kathy's vanishing trick. The onion is slowly peeled and the story well paced. Both entertaining and interesting.

Throughout most of his first twenty years of writing, Tim O'Brien used fiction to come to grips with his experiences in the Vietnam War. In his 1994 novel, In the Lake of the Woods, O'Brien does not exactly shift his focus (readers would have to wait until 1998's Tomcat in Love for that) but he does widen his scope. Yes, the story's protagonist, failed politician John Wade, is a Vietnam veteran. However, the novel, describing the mysterious disappearance of Wade's wife after his landslide loss in a Senatorial race, is about more than the war and its ghosts (although both are certainly addressed). In the Lake of the Woods is also about the addictive nature of merit; America's destructive relationship with its most ambitious sons and all that can go wrong in the process of healing. It is a bold and brainy book unafraid to dig deep into the American psyche. It is also one that shows O'Brien's knack for readjusting the conventions of fiction. Chapters entitled "Hypothesis," narrate possible explanations of Kathy Wade's disappearance while ones labeled "Evidence" consist of quotes elaborating on John's mindset, some from friends and family and others from existent sources as diverse as court testimony from those involved in the Mai Lai massacre and guidebooks to Wade's childhood hobby, magic tricks. In the Lake of the Woods shows O'Brien continuing to flex his muscles and show why he is one of today's writers most worth reading.

I don't read novels about war. If I am attracted to a book by an interesting cover design and I see the words, "Vietnam War," anywhere on the back cover, I immediately put it down. I found this book at a Goodwill and, despite its subject matter, was intrigued by the plethora of glowing reviews. I am thrilled that I ignored my initial instincts and would gladly read any book written by Tim O'Brien, no matter the topic.

From the opening lines, Mr. O'Brien creates an atmosphere of foreboding, of impending horror. His language is spare, yet remarkably poetic. The story of a popular politician who has lost a big election due to the revelation of his involvement in the My Lai massacre plays out slowly, like a mystery. His almost complete denial of his role in the horror illustrates the utter mutability of truth in memory. How we can choose to revise history - our own personal history or the history of a nation. Like the boyhood magician seeking his father's approval, he cultivates a talent for making things conveniently disappear. Even his disillusioned wife -who has either been murdered or, if one chooses to believe the alternative version of her final hours that is presented, has merely drifted away, despairing, into the ether.

This book is, at once, disturbing, heartfelt, beautifully written and deeply moving. Truly rates a full five stars.

War, elections, family relationships, and a desire to be perfect all affected John Wade's life. The main character of In The Lake of the Woods by, Tim O'Brien, wanted to appear perfectly content to the public, therefore, he had to cover up some aspects of his past by burying them deep down inside. Experiencing a major war, being ridiculed, and watching a father kill himself are not situations that can be easily forgotten and ignored. John Wade's life did not work out the way he wanted it to, because he was trying to live a lie. John Wade's past affected his career tremendously, as it affects any politicians life. "Lieutenant governor at thirty-seven. Candidate for the United States Senate at forty. Loser by landslide at forty-one," (5). Wade was not perfect, because he could not cover up all the mistakes he has made. John Wade was overconfident, and far from perfect. This is a deadly combination in the political world. The Magician believed that he was untouchable, and had the whole country fooled, but in reality, John Wade had no chance of becoming a United States Senator. Some people still believed that John Wade was a good, trust worthy individual. Wade could still fool some people. One of these people was his neighbor, Ruth Rasmussen. She was quoted as saying: "For some reason Mr. Wade threw away that old iron teakettle. I fished it out of the trash myself. I mean it was a perfectly good teakettle," (30). Ruth was is possession of the weapon that killed Kathy Wade, and never even suspected it. Kathy had been missing for months, and never once did she think that John Wade had anything to do with her disappearance. Wade had convinced himself that he was not responsible for the death of his wife, by changing his own memories. This made it easy for Wade to convince others of the same. John Wade used more than emotional tactics to cover up his misconduct. He first did this to cover up some of the brutal things that he did during the Vietnam War. He went to the files and dug out a thick folder of morning reports for Charlie Company. Over the next two hours he made the necessary changes, mostly retyping, some scissors work, removing his name from each document and carefully tidying up the numbers. In a way it helped ease the guilt. (269).
This selection shows that Wade could convince himself of his own innocence, and convince others through illegal activities and lies. John Wade had a very small conscience, which was easily ignored and forgotten. Wade would stop at nothing to make himself appear to be an All-American kind of guy. The ability to change his own memories was a frightful characteristic that John Wade had. He made himself believe that he was a good person, and that he was in no way responsible for the death of his wife. He fabricated alternative scenarios to explain Kathy's disappearance. He made it a freak accident, which occurred because Kathy had not planned a day trip will enough. She just ran out of gas, and was waiting somewhere to be found. "And here in a corner of John Wade's imagination, where things neither live nor die, Kathy stares up at him from beneath the surface of the silvered lake," (288). John Wade had blocked out this painful memory, just like he had blocked out his memories of the war in Vietnam. No feeling can stay buried forever, John Wade's pain would be known to the world eventually. Unfortunately it resurfaced through the murder of Kathy Wade. What would John Wade be like if he had never experienced war? Would he just be a silly old man who did magic tricks, only to be made fun of by the people in his life? John Wade did not have an easy life. He had many situations to struggle through. What made John Wade the way he was? "Can we believe that he was not a monster but a man? That he was innocent of everything except his life?" (303). If John Wade had never experience the turmoil of war, he would not have been a criminal, but he would not have been a prominent politician eith! er. The war took John's innocence away from him. John Wade would have feared the world, rather than have tried to conquer it, if he had not been in Vietnam. War changed John Wade. It ruined him, and his marriage. War made John an angry murderer, who could not even face himself. He had to become a new person in order to stay alive, but unfortunately for John, the illusion of his life was not complete.

I bought the hardcover when it was published but it took me five years to actually sit down and read it. I read "If I Die In A Combat Zone" as a high school junior in 1980, and have bought and read Tim O'Brien books ever since. Why did it take so long to read? Reading Tim O'Brien requires concentration and an emotional space where you can reflect on his message. I didn't want to read it when I was in a great mood because I knew it would bring me down. Similarly, I didn't want to read it when I was depressed because I wouldn't be able to appreciate his understated message of hope for the human heart. So I waited until I was on a pretty even keel yet also feeling introspective.
This is not a book for anyone seeking easy answers. I am often frustrated reading authors who present one dimensional characters who are entirely predictable and understandable. How many people are really like that? The most interesting people are enigmatic, and this book presents hypothesis rather than solutions. I would have felt let down by a stock dime store ending where the author tied up all the loose ends and left me nothing to reflect upon.
Tim O'Brien's message is that the questions he presents the reader are more important than any answer that he might propose. How well does one person truly know another? Why do our loved ones love us? Are we defined by our history, or may we transcend it?
Thank you, Tim O'Brien, for not attempting to answer these questions for me. Thank you also for giving me a framework to ponder them.

This is a powerful novel, with all the hallmarks of thought-provoking literature. The prose is clear and vigorous, the images powerful, the characters fully-realized. Elements that make this novel stand out are: (1) ambiguity. O'Brien seems most comfortable writing in a literary wave-state, suggesting that there is no ultimate truth, no one "true story." In this novel what "happens" to the main characters remains open to interpretation. Some of his chapters are titled "Hypothesis" which represent the writer's own projections on what may or may not have happened to them. At times he even presents two or even three alternative outcomes, leaving it up to the reader to sift through the contradictions in the plots to find the deeper meanings behind them. Adding to the idea of no one truth are the chapters of fictitious interviews and literary quotes. (2) Vietnam and psychology. Like much of his other work, O'Brien paints some seriously powerful, beautifully imagined vignettes from Vietnam. He makes you feel the experience in your knees and in your teeth; the sensations are sickening and hypnotic; he takes us to the limit of human cruelty, to the far-flung pole of possible experience, then follows the psychological ramifications of this to their conclusion, in this case decades later. After reading this book you will have a better understanding of veteran psychology.

So much is done right in "The Lake of the Woods," that focusing on any shortcomings feels cheap. I will only say that some of the themes are re-iterated a few too many times by the end, that perhaps the book could have been edited a bit tighter at the end. But at no time dose the novel ever feel redundant. It's a smooth, deep read, worth every minute you spend inside it.

After reading the initial short story that became O'Brien's "The Things They Carried," I found myself interested to read his other material. "In the Lake of the Woods" lives up to the same beautifully, haunting prose that makes up O'Brien's style. The "problem" (and I place this in quotes since I don't really see it as a problem) with O'Brien's work, is that one isn't sure whether he is writing fact or fiction. His memories of Vietnam that make up "The Things They Carried" make one question whether they are fact of fiction. (And I mention this here since the ghosts of Vietnam have their hold over the main character of this novel as well.) The same holds true for "In the Lake of the Woods." O'Brien uses character interviews and references, footnooted in the Evidence chapters to build his narrative to its climax.
"In the Lake of the Woods" tells the story of a disintegrating marriage, that neither partner is ready to admit to. John and Kathy Wade have escaped to a cabin in the woods for two weeks until the world around them has calmed down. John is a politician who was slaughtered in the last election when the dark secrets of his past are revealed. And as a politician, he cannot have any "skeletons" in the closet (how apt that I read this in an election year). The two hardly communicate, their bond is fragile and their future uncertain. To complicate matters, John wakes up one morning to find Kathy missing. The locals suspect foul play; John claims he is innocent, but he is not above reproach. The novel then sets about trying to uncover the mystery not only of Kathy's disappearance, but of John's secret past.
O'Brien has again proven himself a master story-teller. One is immediately enthralled by the main characters and their mysteries. While reading, one is torn between like and dislike for John Wade, known to his war buddies as the magician, and one wonders just what tricks he has up his sleeves. The tricks that O'Brien has are his vivid characters and beautiful prose. His chapters fluctuate between differing points of view to offering evidence to what happened, as well as to what might have happened. O'Brien ends his novel by giving the reader the ending, allowing them to choose the scenario they like best. This is the only way a novel of such depth and intrigue could have ended; leaving a mystery unsolved, as though the "facts" of the story were real. Perhaps they are.

I loved "The Things They Carried" Short Story collection by O'Brien, so I decided to try this novel. I was skeptical at first because I am primarily interested in his fiction dealing with the Vietnam War, but this is a large part of "In the Lake of the Woods" Like some of his other writing, O'brien circles around and around events and actions, revealing more and more of what happened. I really liked the chapters of quotations from characters as if questioned by police along with quotations about John Wade and quotations relevant to the novel. O'Brien leaves it up to the reader to decide if Wade really did make his wife disappear or not with hypothetical chapters. It is a twist on on a mystery because it doesn't tie up all the loose ends and right away it is implied no one may ever really know the truth. I think this novel would make an excellent novel to read and discuss as a group or in a class. There is just so much to talk about. If you have never read anything by O'Brien this is a wonderful place to start. If you have read anything else by him, this will not disappoint.

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.

John and Kathy Wade have rented a cottage on a lake in northern Minnesota following John's crushing defeat in a race for the U.S. Senate. It's the end of political life for John and he needs to plan his future. As the days at the cottage go by it becomes obvious that there is a deep chasm between the married couple of which Kathy is accutely aware. Yet John remains impervious as he mulls over the devastation of the last couple of months. John's whole life has been motivated by the need to succeed in public office and when his campaign manager asks if there are any skeletons in his closet he unfortunately says no. What might have been a bump in the road, had the manager known, becomes John's undoing.

Several days after their arrival at the lake John wakes to find that Kathy is absent. At first he dismisses this as her need to go for a walk by herself, but when she doesn't return later in the day he panics and goes to the neighbors for help. As hours become days the police get involved and soon there is a manhunt for Kathy.

While the search continues John lapses into long periods of rumination. Of course he wonders what has happened to Kathy but he is still wrapped up in his own bad memories. Gradually the reader learns the secret in his past that cost John the election. John's obsessive relationship with Kathy is exposed as well as her difidence toward the role of political wife. John's time in the military during the Vietnam War is examined during flashbacks distributed through the novel. John's hobby as a magician is treated and we learn that even as an adult he still wants to make things disappear.

The author of THE THINGS THEY CARRIED is at it again with this book -- and he's at it again with equal acuity, adeptness and aptitude.

Tim O'Brien moves away from the trenches and rice paddies of Vietnam to come home to Michigan's Upper Peninsula (if memory serves...I read this book several months ago), but the trenches and rice paddies of Vietnam won't move away from Tim O'Brien.

We, of course, are the ongoing beneficiaries of his authorial brilliance. I don't know that he has another (or even several) book(s) in him whose focal point is not the Vietnam War, but let's hope for all readers of serious literature that he does. I, for one, wouldn't like to be deprived of one scintilla from Tim O'Brien's particular pen.

RRB
04/16/11
Brooklyn, NY, USA
Trompe-l'oeil (or, The In and Out. Of Love.)

Well written and fascinating are the descriptions that first come to my mind in reviewing this book. The main characters are interesting, but not very likable. The story is suspenseful and terrifying, but not resolved. I gave the book 5 stars for the quality of writing and its unusual style, but I have to admit that the conclusion did not add to my enjoyment of it. Maybe it had to be the way it was because the main character was a magician and we could not really know the secret to his trick. Still, I'm not generally a big fan of the "pick your own ending" writing style. And, I have to admit that the ending of this story left me disappointed.
However, I so enjoyed the journey to the ending and so admired Tim O'Brien's terrific writing that took me there, that I have to recommend the book. I don't think it is as good as If I Die in a Combat Zone, but it shows a versatility of writing that is quite impressive. References to My Lai are probably better appreciated if the reader has done other reading about what happened there and who the real characters were. Otherwise, the storyline should appeal to almost any mystery fan.

Would say it almost have no plot. What is the point to write about a ruined non-elected politician who not willing to face debts waiting for him as a consequence of a failed attempt to win a political election, looses his wife too? Did he killed her or did she suicided vanishing in the canadian lakes? -May i say that is all the plot? Nothing else. Of course one loves that great short story Tim O'Brian wrote "The things they carried", but have not found, until now, nothing else from him that can say i like. This is just a novel that with what have said as a start, could have been something else, something more, something to write about. As it is, is just boring and not deserving the so many pages the author dedicates to. Pitty.

I just finished reading this novel for the second time, and I loved it just as much as did the first. Tim O'Brien does his usual: an amazing feat of writing that defies all genres and pigeonholing, and cuts to the core of the human experience.

More so than any of his other books, "In the Lake of the Woods" is a haunting story. It does not contain the humor seen in many of his other works, like "Tomcat in Love" or "The Nuclear Age", but such humor would have been grossly out of place in this book. Instead, he focuses on duality, the nature of man, and the correlation between love and deception that exists in many relationships between two people. This is a haunting masterpiece of fiction and psychology... not to be missed.

At 37, John Wade was Lieutenant Governor of Minnesota. At 40, he ran for the U.S. Senate. He was heavily favored to win. At 41, he wasn't just beaten in the primary, he was crushed --- "loser by landslide."

What happened?

John Wade had a secret. As secrets will, it came out at the worst possible time. And, suddenly, he was no longer a rising star --- he was a war criminal, a killer of babies, a man to be shunned.

His secret was My Lai.

The Vietnam War is now so far from us, and American history --- especially the history of a war we lost --- is so sketchily taught, and some of you are so very young that I really ought to take a minute here and, in quick brushstrokes, relate what happened in a little Vietnam village on March 16, 1968.

Better idea: let Tim O'Brien tell it. He arrived in Vietnam a year later, and served as a foot soldier there for a year. Got wounded, got traumatized, the whole deal. Here's his account:

At approximately 7:30 on the morning, a company of roughly 115 American soldiers was inserted by helicopter just outside the village of My Lai. They met no resistance. No enemy. No incoming fire. Still, for the next four hours, Charlie Company killed whatever could be killed. They killed chickens. They killed dogs and cattle. They killed people, too. Lots of people. Women, infants, teen-agers, old men. The United States Army's Criminal Investigation Division compiled a list of 343 fatalities and an independent Army inquiry led by Lieut. Gen. William R. Peers estimated that the death count may have exceeded 400. At the Son My Memorial, a large tablet lists 504 names. According to Col. William Wilson, one of the original Army investigators, "The crimes visited on the inhabitants of Son My Village included individual and group acts of murder, rape, sodomy, maiming, assault on noncombatants and the mistreatment and killing of detainees."

Eventually, after a cover-up that lasted more than a year and after the massacre made nationwide headlines, the Army's Criminal Investigation Division produced sufficient evidence to charge 30 men with war crimes. Of these, only a single soldier --- First Lieut. William Laws Calley, Jr. --- was ever convicted or spent time in prison. Found guilty of the premeditated murder of "not less than" 22 civilians, Calley was sentenced to life at hard labor, but after legal appeals and sentence reductions, his ultimate jail time amounted to three days in a stockade and four and a half months in prison.

Terrible, terrible. (And ironic: Seymour Hersh, who broke the My Lai story, now writes about the Iraq War for The New Yorker.) But in fiction, O'Brien doesn't play judge and jury. John Wade may have been at My Lai and done terrible things there, but he found a way to live with his shame. And here's the remarkable thing --- Tim O'Brien bends over backward to see it Wade's way.

What I tell you now may seem like a plot "spoiler." It's not. "In the Lake of the Woods" is a mystery --- maybe even a thriller --- but it's totally innovative in form. That is, we know right off that something happened. The first question is: What happened? And then a gloomier question: Who did it?

What we know: After the primary defeat, John Wade and his wife Kathy retreat to a cabin in the Lake of the Woods, a part of Northern Minnesota so remote that there's nothing but water and islands between it and Canada. Thirty-six hours later, Kathy disappears.

Did she flee?

Did she drown?

Did her husband --- reliving his Vietnam experience --- kill her and dump her body into the lake?

Not easy questions. And O'Brien doesn't answer them: "I tried to make each hypothesis plausible. John may have killed Kathy. Or Kathy may have run off with someone else. Or maybe she simply drowned. Or got lost in that vast wilderness. I believed in each hypothesis as I wrote it. I inserted evidence to support each hypothesis --- just as life itself gives us contradictory evidence about a great many things. But in the end, it's all a mystery, insoluble, beyond certainty."

And to make it more mysterious, O'Brien tells the story from multiple perspectives. Offers testimony from many people. Cites historical documents. And then amps up the uncertainly by giving Wade a hobby --- magic.

And maybe that's what it comes down to --- an ungainly kid, an abusive father, a need for approval that never got satisfied. As O'Brien writes:

"A fat little kid doing magic in front of a stand-up mirror. 'Hey, kiddo, that's a good one,' his father could've said, but for reasons unknown, reasons mysterious, the words never got spoken. He had wanted to be loved. And to be loved he had practiced deception. He had hidden the bad things. He had tricked up his own life. Only for love. Only to be loved."

Too simple? A clue that takes you away from the solution? Could be: O'Brien is that good. (He won the National Book Award for "Going After Cacciato". The New York Times named The Things They Carried as one of the best books of the year in 1990 --- and chose "In the Lake of the Woods" for that list four years later.)

This much is sure: You start "In the Lake of the Woods" expecting one kind of book and quickly get another, darker, scarier book. You find yourself thinking "God, this is awful," even as you read faster and faster. You cringe at what Wade might have done, wince for what might have been done to him. And, as he comes apart, so do you.

This is a harrowing book, as grown-up as it gets. It's a great story, masterfully told. And more: It draws you in, demands your opinion. And then it demands your honest opinion --- because you have your secrets too, don't you?

Of the four Tim O'brien books I've read, this one was the best. So compelling and shocking that I was forced to put the book down more than once just to get myself together. In his classic style, the reader spends two thirds of the book struggling to piece together what's really going on from what's going on in the character's mind. The book assumes a quality not unlike being suspended between dreaming and awake, a confusing arena where one sees parts of themselves they never knew, or perhaps wished never, existed.
Though the book is touted mostly as a "Vietnam" book, it really focuses on the dark side of all of us and only uses the Vietnam card as a starting point for his own personal horrors. The book speaks just as well to anyone who has haunting skeletons in the closet from past adventures and experiences. Creepy. Absolutely compelling story.
Where most authors struggle to provide one or two good insights into human nature and the truth of life, O'brien pinpoints at least a dozen zingers. This was perhaps my favorite book of all time.

An amazingly rich study of a tragic life ("tragic" in the Shakepearean sense, wherein a person achieves greatness through powerful strengths, yet ultimately destroys his life and the lives of those around him through equally powerful weaknesses). The style of the book, written as if it were a non-fiction investigation into the death of Kathy Wade, brings the reader so close and yet so far from understanding who John Wade was. On the one hand, I felt as though I knew so much about him since, within the context of the story, the fictional "author" had done a great deal of research into his life. But of course, the "author" never actually meets John. We get no firsthand accounts of him. All we get are quotes, suppositions, and re-creations. His story is sifted through multiple filters, leaving the real man tantalizingly out of reach.

I read this book because of The things They Carried and I am a better writer and reader for it. Not only does this book present some of the most haunting suppositions in fiction, it takes on the issue of guilt and redemption with a modern brilliance.
As a writer I was blown away bu what O'Brien was able to accomplish with the novel form. As a reader I was amazed at the depth of this story and the sense that there is something beneath us all still troubled and unsettled by the Vietnam war. When reading Lake of the Woods I was struck with the sense that there was some unspoken communication between O'Brien and Yusef Komunyakaa. The two seem to approach their subject matter from the same perspective.
Take the time to read this book. If not for the wonderfully troubling subject matter, for the new idea of fiction that you will be treated to by turning each page.

I felt like a deer confronted with an on coming car. The book was disturbing but, once engaged, I could not turn away. At age 56, I remembered the historical references which I had not thought about for ages. It's the forgetting that claims us all...which comforts us all. Upon completion, I was left with a chilling understanding and, surprisingly, a sense of forgiveness for things I'm happy to not have witnessed in my life. Time does not heal all wounds and honesty, with ourselves, seems impossible when life gets too hard to witness. A conclusion that makes me more convinced not to judge that which I do not know. Gripping...disturbing...thought provoking.

...I didn't think the ending was that mysterious. I thought there was a lot of foreshadowing telling us what happened to the wife...starting with the title, and other descriptions of Kathy as "ghost like" and saying Wade knew during the search for Kathy, "there was nothing to find - he knew that."
That said, I liked the book a lot. It is not without flaws: There were some big holes in the plot and character development, I thought it was about 10 pages too long, and got unnecessarily preachy at the end. But I still liked very much O'Brien's careful crafting of the moral dilemma at the heart of this story. It's probably one of the best setups for moral dilemma of any book I've read - Wade's a mess, unlikable, but the world has made him that way, from distant parents to a treacherous war. What is his responsibility?
O'Brien might have made this a simple story of a soldier who was negatively affected by warfare, returns home with PTSD and commits a heinous crime. But he went so much further in trying to explain why one of many soldiers comes home and keeps on killing, but so many others don't. Wade, from birth to the end of the book, is the perfect storm and he's a fascinating character, no less so than other confounding figures such as Nixon, president of the most powerful country in the world who is dogged and ultimately undone by his own insecurity. By using an interesting mix of quotes throughout the book, O'Brien also draws other questions into readers' minds - slaughtering women and children has long been a practice of warfare, even if off the books, so how can we convict those who take part? Can there really be "rules" of war? If we send them to war, who are we to judge their actions from the sidelines?
This would be a great book for a book club or high school class, although plenty of high schoolers seem to hate it and others are furious by what seems to them an open-ended mystery. As I said, the answer IS in the book. Just listen when you read. Highly recommend.

Back in the old days, the "Army" liked to shoot soldiers for demonstrations of "Cowardice" (the unwillingness to return to battle and its scenes of carnage) or temporarily hospitalize them for treatment of "Shellshock" (the total nervous collapse of the soldier during or after battle). Neither approach seemed to help very much.
This novel tells the story of an untreated case of what is now known as "Post Traumatic Stress Disorder" as it effects a veteran of the Vietnam "Conflict". Here, the old notion of "Shellshock" is revealed in its latent and most sinister form: the total personality disintegration that can occur years after the original trauma (in this case, the atrocity of War).
The novel is disturbing. It should be.
The prose of the story is excellent , the interweaving of memory, hallucination and reality disorienting in the extreme.
A masterpiece.

Every chair in the four-hundred plus seat auditorium on the campus of Eckerd College in St. Petersburg, FL was filled, Saturday evening January 18, 2014 to hear a reading by Vietnam veteran and award-winning author Tim O’Brien. There was not a dry eye in the room when he finished his selection “How to Tell a True War Story” from The Things They Carried (1990).

But, as O’Brien says “a true war story is never about war,” and not too long after The Things They Carried was published he came out with In the Lake of the Woods (1994) which is another war story that’s not about war.

What it seems to be about is a woman who has gone missing while on vacation with her husband, but it’s also about how sons cope when they can’t please their fathers, about how secrets people keep come back to haunt them, about young love and married life, , and about how the setting sun over a lake in northern Minnesota makes you feel when one plus one equals zero.

It’s also about what you might have done if you had been ordered you to kill every living peron and animal in the village at My Lai in 1968 and about how it would have affected you no matter what you chose to do––to kill or just watch.

It’s also about how long a woman can live with a man who spies on her, who has secrets he can’t share, and who is not who he pretends to be for the public.

The evidence is all there and the evidence is inconclusive. You, the reader, must decide: did a murder take place or did two people in love plan an ingenuous escape to recapture their dreams? Another fine story from Tim O’Brien that is and is not about war.

This story concerns a failed politician who moves into a cabin in the woods to lick his wounds. The scenery as described is absolutely gorgeous, and the lake plays a big part in the absence of his wife. His despondency about the loss of an office he should have had and his lack of any kind of successful future leads him to do some very strange things.
When the loving wife is gone, he tries to lead the police astray with the idea that she took the boat out and rowed away all the way to Canada. No body was ever found, so we really don't know what happened as the writer gives suppositions of how she would have disappeared on her own and the reasons for doing so.
The fact that he spent so much time in the boathouse the night of her disappearance certainly makes one suspicious of his actions. When the heat gets too much for him, his neighbor (who loves to dauble in politics) lends him a good motorboat and a cell phone; he too disappears into the night.
Suspenseful and well-written, this story can be seen in your imagination as the author spins a webb of beauty in nature in the woods on the lake. Too bad I can't swim or I might be tempted to search out such a place.

This book defys description. Is it a love story? Yes. A mystery? Yes. A thriller? Yes. Fiction? I don't know....and that's what makes it so compelling. This is a book for a reading group because it will elicit so many more questions than there are answers and after you've completed it, believe me, you're going to want to talk about it with someone else who's read it.
The construct was terrific and as a result I book 2 more of O'Brien's books immediately. While both were good, neither matched the plot, suspense, and tempo of In the Lake of the Woods. I would recommend this book to anyone, but I especially think Vietnam Vets could really relate.
Now, I'm off to try Tomcat in Love. Since O'Brien can write the serious scary stuff that only nightmares are made of, I want to see what he can do with humor and love.
What a find. I'm so glad I found this book listed in Bas Bleu because I hadn't seen it hyped anywhere else.

At first I was ready to condemn this book because it hinges on a psychological mechanism which is too readily apparent. Instead of being a gradual unveiling of a man's psyche, most of his problems are obvious from the beginning. He practied magic as a boy, and in Vietnam was awarded the nickname 'Sorceror' - and through the whole book you get phrases like 'the trick was to forget' and 'the trick was to make her love him and never stop,' and past a certain point you want to scream that you _get it already_. You get why he behaved the way he did, and what problems it caused. There is no real suspense; and, in the end, his character is not really all that complex. O'Brien also has the annoying habit here of liberally using quotes from other documents to demonstrate things which he could have shown in the lives of his characters - sometimes, the quotes work well, but sometimes they don't. It's difficult to believe he could have gotten through even one writer's workshop without someone telling him: "Show, don't tell," and using quotes from pyschology textbooks and magician's manuals is as rankly telling as any narrative device.

Still, I have to conceed that O'Brien is an amazing writer. He has values, a sense of the real world, and a way of insistently asking important questions which give him a powerful style. In the Lake of the Woods may have been flawed in conception - may not have been as good as a book with its premise could have been - but it's still, in the end, an enjoyable read. After reading The Things They Carried - which is just on a whole other level from this book - I wondered if O'Brien could write a good narrative which wasn't firmly based on his own past, and I think he certainly can, but that it will take some more work.

This is the first of Tim O'Brien's books I've read. Although I don't regret having read it, and it's beautifully written, I have to say that I found the ending to be most frustrating. O'Brien seems to leave up to the reader exactly how the tension in the book is resolved and while that may work for some, it didn't work for me. I like my loose ends neatly tied up, and that doesn't happen here. Still, there is much to recommend it. The reader has to work with this book--it is told from sundry points of view, all of which make the characters come vividly to life. The flashbacks and oblique references to the main character's former interest in magic makes for fascinating subplot, and both greatly enhance our understanding of what makes him tick. The main character's foray into plant care (I can't be more specific or I'll give something important away) inspires the same level of horrifically scary chill one gets reading in Stephen King's "The Shining" that the main character's novel consists of nothing other than the sentence, "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy" over and over and over again. I found the "interview" tidbits to be distracting, but they do enrich the novel with additional points of view. Is it a love story? A story of moral and political corruption? A Vietnam cautionary tale? It's all of these and more.

I only write a review on books that really make an impact on me. This book falls very much in that category. Having only newspaper knowledge of the Me Lai massacre it was terrible, but seemed very remote. This book brought that event up close and personal. Whenever I hear a remark about Viet Nam in the days to come this novel and its recounting of Me Lai will spring to mind. Isn't this exactly what a book should do--enable you to experience places and events you will never face in real life? I marvel at the intricate way this story was put together: smoothly combining fiction, actual events and notable quotations. It is a work of art. I couldn't put it down and read it in two days. There are so many interwoven threads that I will think about In the Lake of the Woods for days to come. It is a new entry on my list of books that get under your skin (at least my skin): Andersonville, and Spirit Lake by MacKinlay Kantor, The Stand by Stephen King, A Prayer for the Dying by Stuart O'Nan to mention a few. It is not a book that will resonate with everyone, but it is a memorable book.

As always, Tim O'Brien's writing style is amazing, surprising. His structure is enjoyable to read, and re-read. I'll likely read this book again within the next few years just for the great description and prose.

However, as much as I enjoyed the style, it took me a few chapters to get into the story. Had I not previously read a couple of O'Brien's other books, I might not have granted it as much time as I did. Luckily, I did give the book a chance because as soon as the story picked up, I was into it.

O'Brien's veteran experiences provide a wonderful backbone for his characters and John Wade (the protagonists) is interesting and real. As an Iraq War veteran, I found a number of traits in the character that I could understand, and a couple I could relate too. At times I was surprised but the plot and I enjoyed where the winding trail led me.

In the Lake of the Woods is a good book and I'd recommend it to anybody wanting to understand the inner working of a PTSD mind.

This is one of the few books I've read that resonated with me. The book describes in subtle yet exact prose how the past can return, how regret can motivate us as humans, and how the present is only slightly more than the sum of our past events. Furthermore, this is a tale of passionate people in extreme circumstances - circumstances that call their bluffs and force them to put their cards on the table. Friendships and professional relationships are strained to the point of extinction. And the bounds of the marriage bond are pushed. This story will force you to ask challenging questions of yourself, it will leave you unsure of what exactly comprises 'history' and 'truth', but most of all, it will leave you with a sincere desire to better know yourself

How could I not have read this book sooner? It's been around since 1994. Maybe you, too, have been missing out on IN THE LAKE OF THE WOODS for 20 years. Read it now.

It's about a politician and his memories and his need for love. It's about keeping secrets, the effects of war, a missing wife, and some possible explanations. But it's the way this story is told that makes this book unputdownable.

I won't spoil the story. Read it. And read the footnotes.

I thought the book had a certain aspect to it, that I had never experienced before. You knew how it was going to end from the beginning... which just goes on to prove that the ending wasn't the story. The plot wasn't the story. The questions were the story. The truths that we want to believe in our lives become actual truths, even if they are illusions. Everything is relative. This review is relative. Maybe it meant something to me, only because it had truth for me. I think it was beautifully written, from the heart, and true to O'Brian. Negative reviews are by people who just didn't see the meaning, the theme, the point beyond all words, plots and literary techniques: the truth just doesn't exist. Life is illusions.

Tim O'Brien's novel, "In the Lake of the Woods," is a book about evidence and truth. Kathy Wade, the wife of John Wade a politician who was just slaughtered in an election, disappears. The evidence that is left behind is utterly inconclusive, she could have walked away and kept walking forever, she could have been killed of kidnapped by a stranger, or her own husband could have murdered her, but whatever happened, evidence, at least in this novel, does not lead to truth. The facts do not add up to a conclusive resolution. As the novel itself states, "Evidence is not truth. It is only evident. In any case, Kathy Wade is forever missing, and if you require a solution, you will have to look beyond these pages. Or read a different book" (30).
The inconclusiveness of this book both gives the reader a peculiar power and leaves the reader in an uncomfortable place. We are used to books with resolution. We are used to completing a novel and discovering whether the characters have been punished or rewarded. As a country, Americans like neat, tidy things. This is not a neat, tidy book, and if you are looking for that, then just as the text suggests, you may want to read a different book.
That is not to say that this is not a good book. I enjoyed the ambiguity of "In the Lake of the Woods." I found that the inconclusiveness let me imagine my own ending, like a choose your own adventure book from childhood. There is a certain power in that, but there is also the floundering of unknowing. O'Brien never tells us if John Wade kills his wife, he never tells us if she has just walked off to a better place, and that is frustrating. Just as frustrating, in fact, as real life, this is probably why O'Brien chose to write this book. In real life, we often do not know what really happened, there are facts but they are inconclusive, and so we often turn to fiction where things are in black and white. When you reach the last page of most novels any critical reader knows exactly what has happened. In this book, however, only an uncritical reader thinks they know exactly what has happened.
Near the end of the novel the reader's uncertainty is addressed again, "[If everything was known] nothing more would beckon, nothing would tantalize. The thing about Custer is this: no survivors. Hence, eternal doubt, which both frustrates and fascinates. It's a standoff. The human desire for certainty collides with our love of enigma" (266). If the reader can accept this, can accept the fact that this book is both frustrating as well as fascinating, then it's a great read, a real page-turner. If, however, you seek answers in literature, hard and certain facts, then don't even bother with "In the Lake of the Woods" because you will be utterly unsatisfied.
O'Brien presents the courageous reader with a world that very much mirrors our own world, a world where the answers are not clear, the evidence does not always add up, and the truth is not always discovered. For those few willing to adventure into this realm, adventure on, you will be rewarded with a fascinating text.

I read this book for an English introductory course in college, and fell completely in love with it. Let me note that we didn't analyze this book too in-depth. Our professor told us to simply read the novel for face value and enjoy it for the masterpiece that it is. That really allowed me to get deep into the great plot of the story. There is some obvious analysis that can be made, such as Wade's nickname being "the magician" and his wife dissappearing, as well as him not being able to willingly kill anyone in the combat zone, yet he may have murdered his wife. My favorite aspect of the novel is the story of love between Wade and Kathy. At times, their love is described as such a deep love, surely soul mates. For example, there is a passage when Wade is describing how Kathy used to giggle and reach out for her toes like a little girl, and you can literally picture Kathy doing that and you feel the love that Wade feels for her; however, as another reviewer mentioned, Wade and Kathy's love is based mostly on lies and secrecy, so is it even possible to have an altruistic love for each other under these circumstances? When you throw in the suspence of not knowing what really happened to Kathy and whom might be involved in her disappearance, this book adds up to a 5-star experience for any reader!

I am a huge fan of Tim O'Brien's but after reading "In the lake of the woods" I have come to the conclusion that he really has only one story to tell. It is just that it is such a huge, emotionally devastating, psychologically destructive story he has to return to it in each of his bestsellers. The story is war and what it does to innocent young men cast adrift in a world filled with suffering, fear and hate. This time the fictional narrative run backwards, and is told through a series of personal flashbacks, incomplete, distorted and confusing, through which runs a later account by Tim O'Brien himself in the guise of an investigative journalist, complete with academic references, witness sound-bites and extracts from police files. It gradually becomes clearer what the main character lived through first as a young boy and then while serving in Vietnam, how this crippled him mentally and psychologically and how it all came back to drive him to new delusions and probably remorseless criminal acts. It is a powerful, distressing and unforgettable read.

As the author of a mystery novel featuring a former politician as a protagonist, I found Tim O'Brien's IN THE LAKE OF THE WOODS a fascinating work when I first read it during its initial release. This week, following the revelations by the former Senator Robert Kerrey of his haunting tale from his service in Vietnam, I read O'Bien's book once more. IN THE LAKE OF THE WOODS survives the test of time. It remains a brilliant work by one of the giants of contemporary American literature. The ambiguities involving the disgraced political leader, the disappearance of his wife, and America's role in Southeast Asia continue to resound as powerfully today as when the novel was first written. It is an excellent book, and I recommend it wholeheartedly.

The most interesting thing about this book to me was the analogy between the investigation into the branches of the lake with the psychological investigation of the main character. It was as if we were exploring his brain in a boat. I did not at all mind not knowing, I found that exciting.But a book with a metaphoric structure like this has a coherence like the coherence of the universe which enables the book to seem full and complete even when there are great mysteries. I don't agree that O'Brien has not made progress in his work. I think that compared to this book, Going after Cacchiato was vague and fanciful, like a dream. This book is solid and metaphapysical and grounded in the verities of the solid human psyche.

Tim O'Brien's In the Lake of the Woods is such an amazing creation that I'm not sure exactly where to begin. I suppose ... first of all I should tell you what it is not.
It is not an easy book to get through. The story of John Wade, who may or may not have had something to do with the disappearance of his wife, is haunting. It's hard not to get caught up in the drama and peer closely at all the clues, trying to discover what happened. But while both wonderfully written and obsessively engaging (I finished the book in a quick few days, missing sleep along the way), it's also painful to read. Two scenes in particular actually made me want to put the book down and stop reading, so vividly does O'Brien paint the horror on the page.
I'm not easy to scare, either. I spent entire summers of my youth reading Peter Straub, Stephen King, Clive Barker and others and watching every horror movie I could. But what's scary in O'Brien's world is that there are no ghosts and ghoulies, only people doing terrible things. And it's told in such a way that the actions burn themselves into your mind for weeks to come.
(One of these images, which involves Vietnam, is a sore point for me, because many of the reviews I've read talk about how Vietnam plays a central role in all of O'Brien's literature. I don't believe that is the case here. At least not to the extent that it has played a role in his other works. It has some importance, but rather than MAKING John Wade what he is, here Vietnam merely reshapes and toughens the lie that he has ALREADY made himself. If anything, by including Vietnam O'Brien is toying with his image a bit, because he knows people will immediately leap to it in trying to figure out what he's saying.)
I read this over a month ago and memories of those two scenes still scare me. But that's just Tim O'Brien playing with his audience. Giving us some kind of dramatic resolution so that readers interested only in THAT will walk away with some kind of satisfaction. There's much more going on here, though.
More than anything, this is a book about storytelling--how a story can be told, the necessity of it, the reasons people need them--and at the end, a question about the value of resolution.
Right in the beginning, O'Brien's narrator tells us that we won't uncover what happened to Kathy Wade. This should alert careful readers that something else is going on behind the drama.
Also important is the narrator himself. The book is structured by the narrator, and we learn he has researched John and Kathy Wade for some time, to the point of obsession.
He tells the story in three different ways. The first is in sections that read like a standard story; they are told in near first person, following John Wade. His second method is the chapters titled Hypothesis, where the narrator is an actual presence reconstructing what may have happened. Lastly, he uses Evidence chapters that feature famous quotes and interviews from people close to the Wades as well as lists of items (a.k.a. evidence).
The narrator also intrudes in footnotes on several chapters, telling us not only factual piece of information his feelings and reflections. It is through these footnotes that most of the story the narrator wants to tell us is given. The basic gist of the lesson he wants to impart--or at least that he discovers--is that "We find truth inside, or not at all."(p.295)
It's very easy to attribute this worldview (and this narrator) to O'Brien, but I disagree wholeheartedly. He takes great pains in distancing himself from the narrator, starting before the book even begins by having separate title pages; one with his name and one without it.
All of this makes it difficult to ascertain what O'Brien was intended in writing this novel. If he truly believed the lessons learned by his narrator (which is very possible, because soon after he finished this book O'Brien decided to stop writing indefinitely), then he may be the first writer ever to actually discourage writing. But he has also published books since writing this, telling me that he either disagreed with the view but found it valid enough to explore ... or came to grips with fears that were haunting him.
I believe that this book was for O'Brien a statement of his uncertainties. That he is writing again makes me applaud that we have not lost his talent.
For readers, this is a powerful thriller whether you read it as the dramatic story of John and Kathy Wade (what really happened?) or the thematic concerns that involve the narrator (why is any of this important to anyone in the first place?).
I admire this book a great deal and recommend it to anyone who loves powerful, intelligent fiction that pushes the boundaries.

This book is rather hard to understand; it jumps around from different times to often. There are many times where I will be reading and I have to stop and go back because I do not know how the book entered into the current flashback. I also, didn't like how this book didn't give you too much of Kathy's thoughts. She is essentially living with a mentally ill man, yet, the reader never finds out what she truly thinks of him, or why she even married him in the first place. Lastly, this book lost a star for not having one specific ending. Out of personal preference, I have always liked books with one ending, so I do not have to sit there and wonder for the rest of eternity. Even if I don't like the one ending I'm grateful to have a conclusion.

Anyone familiar with Tim O'Brien's work knows that he continually wants to push his readers to think deeply and past the mundane conventions of story telling. In the Lake of the Woods does not differ in this aspect. The narrator of the story admits to the readers at the very beginning that, if you like stories tied in beautiful little bows at the end, a tight little plot snipped off into a happy and satisfying end, this book is not for you! I completely agree with the narrator, after finishing the novel; you will not be satisfied if you're reading this novel purely for a cut and paste plot with a resolution at the end. However, I think this novel is wonderfully written and offers a great challenge to anyone wanting to push the limits of their mind and think differently. John Wade, an ambitious politician has just lost his a primary for the US Senate and has turned to a hideaway cottage in the Lake of the Woods with his wife Kathy. Dealing with the depression of his letdown, John and Kathy struggle to keep their marriage intact. However, all seems futile when one morning, John wakes up to discover that Kathy is gone. The novel continues to explain John's past-his childhood playing with magic tricks, his experience in the Vietnam War and his love affair with Kathy. Meanwhile, O'Brien (or the narrator, whichever you chose to identify him as) provides wonderfully, descriptive hypotheses of what could have happened to Kathy. The narrator spoils it for you write away, so I might as well tell you, you're not going to find out. And, yes, you're going to struggle with that-we are taught that at the end of the story, everything is resolved, whether happily or unhappily and then we can go one with our lives, but O'Brien, I think, expects more from his readers. O'Brien's works are continually thrusting me into new realms. This story not only provided me with hours of captivated reading, but I also felt that I learned more about the novelty of stories and how it's okay for them to step outside of conventions. His writing is amazing, and this novel is no exception. Perhaps one of the most earth-shattering aspects of not having this story tied up nice and neat at the end is the fact that these characters come to life! they live and breathe through O'Brien's writing and you want to know so much more about them. That talent is amazing-I want to keep reading after I'm done, and it isn't only because the story doesn't resolve itself. O'Brien has created a world for me that I'm not ready to leave. This book is wonderful. Read it a hundred times. But a caution for those who like stories with a resolution. You're not going to find it here. But I recommend that you challenge yourself. O'Brien's writing is definitely worth it and I think that anyone can learn a lot from this book.

"What drives me on, I realize, is a craving to force entry into another heart, to trick the tumblers of natural law, to perform miracles of knowing. It's human nature. We are fascinated, all of us, by the implacable otherness of others, and we wish to penetrate by hypothesis, by daydream, by scientific investigation those leaden walls that encase the human spirit, that define it and guard it and hold it forever inaccessible. ("I love you," someone says, and instantly we begin to wonder -- "Well, how much?" -- and when the answer comes -- "With my whole heart" -- we wonder about the wholeness of a fickle heart.) Our lovers, our husbands, our wives, our fathers, our gods -- they are all beyond us."

That passage sums up the book well for me -- how impossible it is to truly know another. We all have secrets, and many of us even keep secrets for ourselves.

I generally don't like stories with ambiguous endings -- I like to know what REALLY happened, as we all do. I will make a huge exception for In The Lake of the Woods, because it is such a beautifully crafted book -- the story is so well laid out, and the possibilities so well explored, with the "evidence" doled out just so -- that I am simply amazed at O'Brien's storytelling powers. I enjoyed thinking about both the mystery of what happened to Kathy Wade and the mystery of what the human heart can contain. I'm sure I will be thinking about this book for years to come.

This is the first O'Brien novel I have read. The book was recommended to me as being about PTSD. The book was written from the perspective of a former fellow soldier who was with John Wade at My Lai, and was trying to make sense of what happened to Wade and his wife after they both mysteriously disappeared. Presumably, the events leading up to the disappearance would be related to Wade's PTSD. As the novel unfolds, we learn instead that Wade experienced significant trauma at the hands of his father and appears to have developed either a personality disorder or the beginning of a more severe mental illness in high school and college. The trauma Wade experienced at My Lai was not convincing to me as sufficient to bring on PTSD. Wade's experiences at My Lai and his later being wounded seemed more likely to be precipitating events for more severe symptoms related to his earlier mental problems. However, when Wade returned from Vietnam, he married his college sweetheart, seemingly breezed through law school, and was subsequently elected to two State-wide offices--pretty atypical for someone returning with PTSD. New symptoms only emerged when he lost badly in a major election. I don't doubt that Wade had mental problems, but they were not convincing to me as being directly linked to PTSD. I also agreed with other reviewers that the "evidence" chapters were more disruptive than helpful and maybe I would have liked to have had some kind of happy ending, as well.

That is where this review might have ended, however, somewhere in the process of trying to make sense of John Wade's life, Tim O'Brien subliminally or subconsciously injected into Wade's life story and thought processes "something that worked" in a similar way that a seemingly weird movie about Russian roulette, The Deer Hunter, was lost on most viewers, but triggered connections in many seemingly unaffected Vietnam Vets that caused them to sign up for VA Clinics. O'Brien was, in fact, quite successful with this novel! This was not just a mystery or thriller to enjoy while reading it; In the Lake of the Woods brought back feelings and issues and had me thinking about and trying to put myself in Wade's head for days after finishing the book. It was a book about PTSD--just not the way I expected it to be.

A little over a year ago, I got acquainted with the work of an author that I quite genuinely believe is one of the great geniuses of the modern literary world. I know I am not alone in this assessment of Tim O'Brien. My introduction to O'Brien was through the short-story-anthology/novel (it has the characteristics of both), The Things They Carried. It was love at first read, and I am surprised it took me this long to get to In the Lake of the Woods. I am far from the only one singing Tim O'Brien's praises, but I want to put in a specific word for this novel. If you haven't gotten acquainted with O'Brien, now is the perfect time to do so by diving into the Lake of the Woods.
This is a novel that took so much of Tim O'Brien's soul to write that for a time after it, he was convinced he would not write again. On that merit alone, this novel is more than worth the time you will spend with it. Like other works by O'Brien, very little happens as expected. If you're looking for a conventional story, this is the wrong place to look, but if you're willing to give O'Brien's subversions a close enough look, you will be intrigued. O'Brien subverts the conventions of suspense into a novel written like a tightly coiled spring.
The first conventions O'Brien plays with are narrative and character conventions. There seem to be multiple voices speaking in this novel. The reader has to fight the urge to believe that there really are three different "narrators" and assign one the name "narrator" (the voice that speaks in the normal prose chapters) and another the name "unknown writer" (the voice of the chapters labeled evidence) and yet another the name "Tim O'Brien" (the voice that enters in the footnotes.) By the time the question of what is narrative voice as opposed to character voice gets sorted out and the reader is prepared to expect the unexpected, O'Brien goes and does something more or less by the book in creating his main character. Still, the reader is reluctant to believe it. John Wade is clearly the main character here... or is he? Thereby, suddenly the reader is in the book too, heartbeat elevated by the realization that he doesn't know whom he can trust, if he cannot even trust his own instincts.
This is not a novel wherein the reader can afford to let any detail pass by unnoticed, though within what seems like (but is not, upon a careful reading) a cacophony of narrative voices, the temptation is real. Even the chapter headings play a role, much to the delight and at the same time chagrin of this reader who is used to skimming over such details. Furthermore, just when you thought it was safe to ignore all preliminary commentary inside the cover of the novel and approach that vicarious world from within, O'Brien comes across with a novel that, by its very structure suggests that it would behoove the serious reader to go back and check out what comes between the two title pages.
Much as it is like a suspense novel in the fact that the reader spends serious time wondering who to trust, In the Lake of the Woods is much more. If it has been done before, I have not seen a suspense novel where even the narrative voice was suspect. I have definitely never seen one where 30 pages in the novel essentially tells its audience what to expect from the ending. Has O'Brien made a mistake, ruining the suspense of a suspense novel before it has barely begun? Hardly. With this subversion, Tim O'Brien has intent as well. Some prior acquaintance with O'Brien's work can offer extremely minimal help in cracking his code, if the reader has understood that part of the self-consciousness of Tim O'Brien's fiction is itself questioning the nature of truth and of story-telling. Still, the reader must not rely too heavily on knowledge of the self-consciousness of O'Brien's body of fiction. This is not just another story about telling stories. This is a world of voyeurism, mystery, the darkness that people are capable of, and more. As always, though, the intense psychology of O'Brien's writing is not exclusive of a tantalizing read. I almost guarantee that you will be intrigued. Just beware that if closure is what you seek, you will not be satisfied.

I finished this book only a few days ago and I am still haunted by it. Tim O'Brien's novels are absolutely incredible and In the Lake of the Woods is certainly no exception to that rule.
In the Lake of the Woods is a story about John Wade and the disappearance of his wife Kathy. John is a Vietnam veteran and a failed politician. Through these several facts, O'Brien spells out a tale of an unsteady marriage and its two participants.
John Wade's tour in Vietnam led him through the jungles of My Lai, where he partook in a horribly difficult series of events under the command of William Calley. These events, which O'Brien paints through flashbacks, gives the reader a good grasp of Wade's unsteady character. The flashbacks of Vietnam pop up for us in much the same way they do for John Wade. They suddenly divert our attention from Kathy's disappearance and drag us into the jungle; these flashbacks reveal more about John Wade and his own uncertainty.
Tim O'Brien's style in In the Lake of the Woods may turn off some readers. The story is not a simple narrative, progressing in linear fashion from point A to point B. Instead it moves around, almost haphazardly, dishing out information as it goes. O'Brien does not stick in one place for very long and even at its conclusion, In the Lake of the Woods leaves a number of questions unanswered. Although it could be construed as unattractive for a novel, O'Brien does a wonderful job of it. He does not stick to simple storytelling and his narrator even manages to poke his head in at particular instances. O'Brien uses interviews, articles and quotations to add to the depth and dimensions of John and Kathy's life together. This should not disappoint traditional readers; there is plenty of "typical" prose throughout the work.
In many ways, In the Lake of the Woods appears as a suspenseful piece of fiction. Kathy Wade disappears in the middle of the night. A boat is found missing. O'Brien's characters are well rounded and manage to convey the thoughts of the reader. Some of the characters point their fingers at John Wade, citing his recent loss in a Senatorial Election as stress-inducing situation. Others simply suggest that Kathy has left John. Readers are warned: O'Brien's resolution might seem disappointing to some, but I must refuse to say any more on that issue! Despite that cautionary note, In the Lake of the Woods is definately worth your time.
O'Brien's writing style is easily read. The book has a definite rhythm to it, despite the intrusion of flashbacks and "hypothesis" chapters. They add to the complexity of the novel and satisfy some of the questions the reader might pose. The characters grow throughout the novel; we learn more about them as the pages turn. They are not simple cardboard cutouts; there are contradictions and mixtures of good and bad, likability and distrust, understanding and unthinkable.
Fans of The Things They Carried will not be disappointed with In the Lake of the Woods. O'Brien's storytelling is just as magnificent here as in his previous works. In the Lake of the Woods may leave some questions unanswered, but the book as a whole is exceptional and well worth reading.

On the surface, In the Lake of the Woods sketches an infectious tale of loss, frustration, and confusion, recounting the events surrounding Kathy Wade's peculiar disappearance in northern Minnesota's harrowing wilderness. Kathy's husband, John, becomes the focal point of the narrative, and we come to learn his story as the mystery is explored. John's story, of course, serves only to deepen and expand the mystery, as we uncover details from his past, regarding his obsession with magic and secrecy, his involvement in one of the Vietnam War's more disturbing incidents, and an embarrassing landslide defeat in a recent Senate primary.
In the midst of this suspense, O'Brien paints also a portrait of honest, disturbing love, inspiring in its idealism and tragic in its convoluted zealotry. John Wade's personal and political motives are continually traced to his bizarre designs on others' affection, be it his abusive father, his callous wartime companions, or his increasingly distant wife. As we delve deeper into Wade's psyche and past, we begin to realize the magnitude of a scarred heart's crippling capabilities.
O'Brien weaves an even more compelling mystery into the book by introducing a third-party narrator, ostensibly a journalist or scholar who's spent four years of his life investigating Kathy's disappearance, John's life and career, and the thousands of peripheries and tangential stories involved. The narrator must come to terms not only with the varying degrees of conjecture and truth in his reconstruction of Wade's story, but also with his maddening obsession for a resolution to the case.
In this sense, the narrator reflects much of the frustration O'Brien likely intended to evoke in his captive audience. Readers looking for a handily packaged mystery - a suspense whose complex intrigue is dissolved brilliantly (or conveniently) in some fantastic whirlwind climax - will very likely leave this book with an angry headful of disenchantment and virulent critique. But O'Brien recognizes this potential turn-off, and his narrator gives an early warning that readers who seek answers had best look elsewhere.
After all, how appropriate would it be for a story that explores the merits of conjecture and "diligent but imaginative reconstruction" to be resolved and cheapened by a dose of absolute truth?
Most effective in O'Brien's presentation of truth as an abysmally subjective construction is his employment of the narrator, who interjects the story with his own hypotheses and conjecture, as well as scads of evidence that point toward certain factors and possibilities in Kathy's disappearance as more evident than others. Through these welcome departures from the narrative, we are drawn inexorably into an undying quest for comfort in the absence of truth.

"To know is to be disappointed. To understand is to be betrayed. All the petty hows and whys, the unseemly motives, the abscesses of character, the sordid little uglinesses of self and history - these were gimmicks you kept under wraps to the end. Better to leave your audience wailing in the dark, shaking their fists, some crying How?, others Why?" (242). Such is Tim O'Brien's In the Lake of the Woods. Early in the book, the narrator tells the reader directly that there is no definite outcome or ending given. The reader must come up with any answers to any questions by him or herself.
This is the story of John and Kathy Wade and Kathy's disappearance. John Wade was a successful politician until his past, which he was trying to cover up with lies and illusions, came back to ruin his political career and Kathy was his loving and supportive wife who hated it.
John grew up an insecure boy, who would hide in a box of mirrors in his mind whenever he grew afraid. He performed magic tricks and like the attention his performances of illusions brought him. He served in Vietnam and was involved in the Massacre at My Lai. John covered up his participation with lies.
The novel starts immediately after John Wade's humiliating election loss and he and Kathy go off to a secluded cabin In the Lake of the Woods to rekindle their love. One night, Kathy disappears and a boat is missing. Thus, the search for Kathy begins. The narrator of the novel constructs many hypotheses as to what happens to Kathy. It is up to the reader to decide what they think happened to her. The hypothesis chapters are separated by chapters of evidence to keep the reader on the thematic track of the novel.
As mentioned before, there are no answers inside of the novel. All the questions that are brought up in the novel can only be answered by the reader. And just like how John Wade looks into mirrors to find comfort and answers, this novel is like a mirror, because it asks what the answers that you give say about you? This novel says as much about the reader if not more than it does John Wade.
I encourage anyone looking for a certain amount of introspection to read this novel. It asks the reader if you can cover up the past, do illusions last, and can you reconstruct the truth? Tim O'Brien has written a wonderful novel.

Beautiful, ambiguous, scary, thought-provoking, so sad. Vietnam and the massacre at My Lai are at the core of this book about secrets one hides even from oneself, post-traumatic stress syndrome, a marriage of love that's based on deceit.
O'Brien is working through his own Vietman demons in all of his writing, and one feels the essential truth behind this fictional account of a rising political star brought down by incidents from his past. The writing coils back on itself, revisiting common threads that keep recurring but each time are viewed either from a slightly different angle or with just a little more recovered memory or self-knowledge.
A tour de force of writing.
Highest recommendation, along with all of his other books.

Tim Obrien's novel In The Lake Of The Woods is an eye opening thriller that explores the affects of the Vietnam War on American soldiers. In particular, a man by the name of John Wade is put under the microscope and the reader see how he struggles with Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome (PTSD) after the war. John Wade was initially affected by the death of his father in which it gave him the want to "kill everything". Shortly after this he began doing magic, a way he found he could escape the troubles of everyday life. When he got older he joined the Army, and was sent to Vietnam. While he was over there he was a part of a horrible massacre in the village of My Lai, where hundreds of innocent Vietnamese citizens were killed. This affected Wade greatly. He could never get over the fact that he killed an innocent old man. This took a toll on Wade when he returned. He learns his wife had an affair, and it does not take long for her to go missing, the novel ending with her unable to be found. There is never an answer for this, one can only speculate what happened, she could have gotten loss in the woods, drowned in the river, or Wade could have killed her.
Personally I loved reading Tim Obrien's novel. Although, it was upsetting that the reader never knows what actually happens to Wade's wife Kathy. This novel was a lot similar to a book I read earlier in the year, Heart of Darkness. The protagonist in that book, Marlow, is a lot like John Wade. He is affected by the atrocities of the Congo river during colonization, much like Wade is affected by the Vietnam War. Overall I would give this book a four out of five on the store's book review.

The novel In the Lake of the Woods is about a Vietnam veteran John Wade who runs for the U.S. Senate but ends up losing in a landslide as the media uncovers his war record that he was involved in a massacre during the Vietnam War. After his defeat, he and his wife Kathy take a vacation in a cottage in the Lake of the Woods, but one morning she and their rental boat disappear. The author O'Brien explains several hypotheses regarding her disappearance and lists quotes from their parents, friends, and acquaintances, but keeps his novel inconclusive, leaving the mystery up to readers' imagination.
O'Brien's purpose in writing this novel is to foster antiwar movement. Although it seems to be a mystery story on the surface, it actually conveys an important message to readers; war is absolutely inhumane and thus all countries should maintain peace. While taking part in the Vietnam War, O'Brien was horrified that people were trying to kill one another, without any personal hatred, merely because they regarded one another as enemies. Participating in antiwar protests and writing novels about his war experience, including In the Lake of Woods, he has played his role as a passionate pacifist. Although this novel does not mention the brutality of war in detail, it indirectly reveals that war is undesirable; John's war record leads to his defeat in his election in a landslide and both John and Kathy end up disappearing.
I enjoyed reading O'Brien's inconclusive depiction of the disappearance of John and Kathy. John does not even fully remember what he did the day before Kathy left, and Kathy's inner thoughts are never fully revealed before she disappears. I particularly like this unclear nature of character development and description in that the mystery of their disappearance is open to readers' imagination.
The only part that I am not satisfied with the novel is its structure. Chapters titled "Hypothesis" and "Evidence" are interspersed rather than organized in a clear order. It is my strong belief that O'Brien chose to write in this particular structure to depict Johns' fragmented state of mind, but as a reader I had a hard time connecting pieces of information and recognizing the course of events leading to the disappearance of John and Kathy.
In the Lake of the Woods by O'Brien and the Reader by Bernhard Schlink are similar to each other in that both deal with feelings of guilt after massacre. In the Lake of the Woods depicts John's defeat in his election in a landslide as punishment for his involvement in a massacre during the Vietnam War. Similarly, Schlink's purpose in writing the Reader is to delve into Germans' feelings of guilt after the Holocaust and World War II. One third of the entire novel deals with Hanna's trial where other prison guards incriminate her and eventually she is sentenced to life in prison. The central conflict in the novel is the collective guilt of the Holocaust. Germans believe that someone should be punished for the Nazi's cruel acts, and in the trial Hanna is accused of not acting to free prisoners staying in the church. The conflict is resolved when Hanna accepts that she wrote the SS report, which elucidates the details of the event.
I would give four stars to In the Lake of the Woods. This novel is entertaining and educational in that it can be read as a mystery story and simultaneously it conveys to readers a crucial message that war is immoral. If O'Brien had written the novel in a more orderly manner, I would have given it five stars. I truly enjoyed reading it except the slightly puzzling structure.

I love Tim O'Brien. A friend of mine brought me two books to read and when I started reading the first page of this one I couldn't put it down. This is a superbly written tale about the mysterious disappearance of a politician's wife, the politician being a Vietnam Vet who has managed to suppress his horrific memories for years. When the events of his past go public, the mystery begins. The book had me spellbound and also broke my heart. I've read two other Vietnam-themed books of Tim O'Brien's (Going After Cacciato & The Things They Carried) and this one touched me the most. Be forewarned: the author does not solve the mystery, but that makes it even better. A great book for discussion.

There are a number of things I loved about this novel. I liked the format of the book with alternating chapters of story, evidence, and hypothesis. I also enjoy a book that does not give a clear ending, but leaves it to the reader to fill in the blanks. In "In the Lake of the Woods", "O'Brien revisits the familiar theme of Vietnam using it as a metaphor for politics. Both of these themes took an evident toll on the lives on the main character, John Wade and his wife.

When the wife of Minnesota Senatorial race looser John Wade disappears, the world turned their attention toward the former candidate. Tortured by his memories of Vietnam, it seems possible that Wade disposed of his wife. The evidence presented throughout the book adds to that suggestion. In reality, there is so much more to the picture. Unlike the searchers, Wade holds a keen sense that his wife is alive and well among the lakes. When Wade himself disappears at the end of the book, we are left to wonder whether he found his wife or suffered a misfortunate event as was suspected of his wife.

O'Brien's storytelling is impressive throughout this book as he walks the line of evidence for and against Wade causing his wife's disappearance. It is a compelling read for anybody who has dreamed of running away and starting over.

What a wonderful novel!
Tim O'Brien creatively delivers his insightful themes through a suspenseful dramatization which directly involves the reader. I wonder how many readers of this novel know how they are being manipulated and used as an example of what O'Brien is proving? O'Brien is a genius!
O'Brien uses a first person narrator as a tool for portraying the self-referential nature of truth. O'Brien shows the obsession with mystery and real-life drama and how these events are analyzed based upon individuals' own ideas and experiences.
Senator John Wade is suspected of killing his wife Kathy. Did he do it or not? This is the dramatic focus of the novel. Or is it?
The first person narrator is providing us with his version of the story. He gives us chapters that merely list pieces of evidence that we, as readers, are deeming either relevant and important or irrelevant and unimportant. The narrator is deciding which pieces of evidence are important to tell us; the narrator presents this information having already formed an opinion of what really happened as a result of self-referencing his own knowledge base - his own ideas, experiences and emotions. Then, we as readers, are doing the same thing without even noticing!
In this way, O'Brien is asserting a mirror theme that pervades throughout the entire book; in fact, the mirror is the structure of the novel. The relationship of projection and reflection tie together to develop his themes. The narrator is projecting all of this evidence onto us as readers; thus, we as readers, project our own reflection of what we believe really happens back onto the novel.
FOr example, perhaps we come up with the conclusion that John Wade did kill his wife. We would have come to this conclusion based upon our reflection of what the narrator is projecting toward us. The mirror is the tool of our analysis, rather than thoroughly and objectively collecting and analyzing the evidence systematically.
O'Brien is not interested in whether or not John Wade killed his wife. This is not his point. O'Brien is exploring the way in which history is perceived and the way events in the present are perceived. History and truth are manipulated by the illusion of the mirror theme. History is not the mere reflection of what actually happened. The image of history is distorted through the reflection of whoever is looking at it.
O'Brien dramatizes these themes brilliantly. One way this novel demonstrates these themes is through the author's portrayal of the Vietnam War; he has mastered the documentation of the Vietnam War experience in In the Lake of the Woods. The memories of the survivors are only reflections of what they wish had happened. Through interviews with the soldiers, countless contradictions are revealed based upon different accounts of the same event. History is so easily manipulated and in these cases, buried in the psyches of the surviving soldiers.
The narrator builds suspense on a dramatic level, while O'Brien is showing how the theme of self-referntial truth complicates the cyclical force of history. Our perceptions of history are based upon self-referential deductions of other people's self-referential deductions; thus originating and perpetuating the manipulated cycle of history.
Enjoy!

in the lake of the woods is beyond the sphere of whether americans belonged in the vietnam war. itgoes further to explore a more personal aspect - the human heart and mind. tim o'brien has effectively explored these themes through wade, the anti-hero of this novel. the book was not only entertaining and intellectually stimulating, it also made me stop and reflect on how much i know about myself. the flashbacks and the juxtapose of wade's thoughts with the continuing storyline was a fine example of post-modernist style of literature. o'brien, i eagerly look forward to reading you other work.

Towards the end of this book, I kept noticing that nothing had happened since the beginning--and yet I was still sitting on the edge of my chair. The mystery's told in circles, all in flashbacks, so it fills in background each time through.
I particularly liked how the author structured the novel. He focuses on just a few themes--love, mirrors, magic, politics--and works them through, slipping the images back into the story. Then, every two or three chapters comes one consisting entirely of quotes. They're either by characters in the book or from outside sources: magicians' handbooks, politicians' biographies, war accounts. These give perspective, develop the plot in offhand remarks, and also provide a nice rhythmic change--short quote, footnote, short quote, footnote--from the smoother, often lyrical passages in the rest.
The plot you can read about elsewhere--a marriage breaking down, a disappearance, a career ending when old secrets surface. It delves into the psychology of deception and repression, of control, of disappointment and searching for approval . . . bobs around, and comes up revealing a few more pieces of the puzzle. An engaging, well-crafted book.

I'd like my first comment to be an overall five stars, you've got to read this book type of comment. Reading this book for a class, I had to stop at a certain page, which was one of the hardest things for me to do; it's a page-turner, but not like trashy books. This is literature at its best, in unconventional form.
Tim O'Brien captures in this book the moral dilemmas of the Vietnam War as well as the moral dilemmas as a modern human, as a politician, as a lover, as a husband, and as a possible murderer. This worldview is on the nature of our humanity and our motivations, and some people think it's pretty glum.
I read a "warning" from a teacher's community of reviewers and they described the book as "vulgar" and "gruesome." This is not a horror story. It's more the account of what maybe took place at one time in our history in Vietnam. Although the placement of our character John Wade was in "My Lai" which is an actual part of Vietnam, but perhaps a more symbolic motion to remind the reader that this is fiction, we can't forget that our author was a part of Vietnam and probably has a good notion of the type of violence that went on there; after all who could be more accurate then somebody who has actually been there? Though the novel has been blamed for confusing fact and fiction, there is a disclaimer in the front of the novel affirming that it is a work of fiction and must be read that way. If the reader does not do what the reader is told, the there will be disappointment from the ambiguous ending of what really happened. Tim O'Brien was asked about the truth of this novel and responded, "The literal truth is ultimately to me irrelevant . . . what matter is what happens in our hearts." When reading this book it's evident, this work is from his heart, and the ultimate truth, or lack of it in this novel, is completely irrelevant because it's not what the book is about. He didn't sit down to write about a murderer, or an escaped wife, he was writing people, and if they fascinate you, then this book will too.
The tone of the book could be taken as rage and the themes could be explained as the lack of truth and hope and meaning in life. There does seem to be a distorted view of marriage and sex and love since John Wade does stalk his girlfriend-turned-wife and perhaps kills her? But the question isn't answered, so no reader can assume, and Tim O'Brien sets the reader up to know that this book will never have a clear-cut ending very early on in the novel. Th\e reader has a choice then, he offers to set it down if that's not good enough for the reader.
The biggest strength in my opinion is the sheer artistry in which O'Brien paints the dramatic line of the novel. The unconventional prose form really added to the unconventionality of the story. The ambiguity of the narrator and his connection to John Wade just made you think even more. The chapters with only the evidence listed gave such a tremendous strength to the exposition provided. The mystery of the Northern Minnesota setting on the water made a perfect escape route for concrete answers to the mystery. And the love that was spoken between husband and wife was enough for a reader to want to find what that feels like. This is not the first work I've read by O'Brien; in fact it's one of the many. This so far was my favorite and with my high recommendation.

This is an interesting book.

"In the Lake of the Woods" is the first Tim O'Brien book I've read. What impressed me the most was the craft he shows as a writer. He's a real stylist. It is no easy thing, I think, to manipulate time the way he does in shaping narrative, or to reveal events and character by implication rather than declaration. That said, to the minor extent that one can separate form and content, I was not much moved by the story itself. That seems to be a minor consideration in context, however. I felt like I was reading a book by a genuine artist and I recommend it heartily.

I will definitely read more by O'Brien.

Tim O'Brien hit upon myth and the sublime with this achingly sad and compelling parable. The main character, in pain from his father's suicide and the Vietnam war, and life in general, tragically hides behind masks and magic. This is not an easy read , nor to describe, but is also nearly impossible to put down. It is one of the best things I have read, and everyone I've lent it too has been haunted by it, even so far as dreaming about it (how often has that happened in one's life, to dream of a book?). If art is the maintaining of multiple levels and ambiguity, then this may well be a masterpierce. A beautifully written novel by a serious artist.

In his poignant novel, In the Lake of the Woods, Tim O'Brien captures the essence of pain, regret, healing, deception, and much more. The novel reads like a thrilling TV mystery similar to CSI or NCIS and the readable yet beautiful writing demands the reader's attention from the first sentence to the last.
Main characters, John and Kathy Wade, are two unforgettable people. John is a Vietnam vet who is still struggling with his past which makes his future questionable while Kathy is a doting wife who has stuck by John's side through the good and bad--a testament to their relationship and her loyalty. The novel leads us through past, present, and future through a series of John's perspectives and the people who know him well in the "evidence" chapters. As the novel progresses, we see into John's future and begin to question his morality and sanity. O'Brien sets us up with enough information and insight to make inferences of our own as to how and why Kathy disappeared. The options include drowning, running away, abduction, murdered by John, and whatever else the reader can think up. Surprisingly, O'Brien never shares what exactly happened to Kathy, which makes the novel either a cliffhanger or let down depending on each person's opinion.
This eloquently written novel puts the mystery back into mystery novels. If you are looking for a quick, easy, and suspenseful read then this is your book! You will want to shut the crime show off you are watching on TV and read chapter after chapter of In the Lake of the Woods.

In the Lake of the Woods by Tim O'Brien is about a US senator candidate, John Wade, who looses after his involvement with the My Lai massacre in Vietnam is unveiled. He goes to a remote cabin with his wife Kathy to get away from all the politics and media. But while there, he is stricken with grief over the massacre and is led to "sleep walking insanity" one night. He wakes up the next morning only to discover that his wife, the motorboat, and a portion of his memory are missing.
This book is uniquely written by integrating both "evidence" and "hypothesis" chapters. These additions added a lot to the story, and they made me feel like I was a detective myself working on the case and trying to discover what happened to the missing Kathy. It is a book that definitely kept me engaged and on the edge of my seat while reading. In the end, O'Brien never comes out and tells you what happened to Kathy or John, rather he leaves it up to the reader to decide what happened.
This book is not dissimilar to the Reader by Bernard Schlink. In the Reader, one of the main characters is Hanna; a middle-aged woman who is put on trial when her involvement as a prison guard at a concentration camp is revealed. The group that she was apart of left a large number of prisoners in a burning building. Both Hanna and Wade are faced with a sense of guilt after their involvement with a massacre.
I very much enjoyed reading this novel and am looking forward to reading other works by Tim O'Brien in the future.

Tim O'Brien writes a carefully crafted book about perspective, evidence, and possibilities. This book is based on a concept that there are things in the world that are certain, but much more of the world is open to interpretation. It is clear from the start of this novel that the conflict will not be resolved with any clarity or sincerity. In which case this book is almost more about the journey than it is about the destination.
The plot. Plot! This story isn't about plot. O'Brien gives only a basic outline of events as they transpire in the story. The only certainties are the facts given in the "evidence" chapters, where character's opinions are given and random information is offered up in a rather dogmatic way.
The thematic implications of this novel are given paramount importance. The whole structure of the novel is based on O'Brien's worldview that nothing is certain. The book appears as a mirror to its readers. A choose you're own ending book. The adventure is chosen and you ride along with the characters seeing what they see, feeling what they feel, but you get the opportunity, when all is said and done, to make up your mind as too what happened to the characters. O'Brien rewards you for this journey by having the supporting characters that you barely even see give you interpretations, each interpretation points a different way. The character you are most like in the novel is the character that you will most likely agree with. Or is he/she?
O'Brien does a good job with character, for a more "literary" author. The depths that he goes to too explain John and Kathy Wade is impressive. John Wade is a political looser. His career was going great, but during the primaries for United States Senator he was completely destroyed because of his war record. His war record is the one thing that this entire story is about. It is really suspenseful so I'll shut up before I ruin anything. John is a mentally muffed up individual, one you can sympathize with too a certain extent (because all of us have had problems), however, there was a point in the story where it became hard for me to sympathize with him.
Kathy Wade, the lover of a man who is disturbed. In her own way she is very disturbed, much like John. She is not a sympathetic character to me, so I will refrain from judgements. However, she is well thought out, and explained in a convincing manner. I just wouldn't want to be around her.
O'Brien's true strength of this novel is the tone. A sort of misty, hazy, or surreal tone, much like the environment and the characters themselves. Everything in this story seems somehow on the verge of the supernatural, though you never see anything "hardcore". I think this tone is important to take into consideration if you read this book for thematic concerns.
Overall, I would recommend this book. Although, I enjoyed much of the story, it did not inspire me. The characters were well done, but they lacked something, they seemed hollow and shallow to me. Tim O'Brien did many cool things in this novel, but one thing he failed to do was transcend the shallowness of literature in general. It is interesting to take a look at from a philosophical standpoint, but from a narrative standpoint I think it could have been done better.

The main character is nuts. How else to explain the relentless churning and re-churning of early childhood, past behavior, past relationships, Vietnam insanity, early childhood, past behavior, past relationships, Vietnam insanity, ear…

Excruciating. Wait, maybe the author is nuts. How else to explain the relentless churn…

The main character’s mental state seems real to me. But pathetic.

If the goal in this book is elucidate insanity, well done. But I found the author’s skill put to poor use. “John Wade had lost himself in the tangle.” (Last Page 203) And no movement out of that tangle was in evidence – just an endless ‘look at my pain’. If you are not put off by wallowing/herky-jerky release of details in the intersection of a man’s struggle to live the life given to him and the hell of Vietnam, this is the book for you.

Tim O'Brien's In the Lake of the Woods is the riveting tale of Vietnam War veteran John Wade who fails in his bid for a seat in the US senate in the 1980s. After the election, he and his wife Kathy retreat to a cottage in northern Minnesota to have some much needed downtime and to plan their next move. After barely a week at the cottage, Kathy mysteriously goes missing and John, who cannot imagine a life without Kathy, must do everything in his power to try and find her.
I haven't read any of O'Brien's other work, but I'll definitely consider doing so after reading this book. Although the plot of the story was rather predictable after Kathy's disappearance, much effort went into the development of John Wade's character, and his relationships with those around him and with his past. His character is very mysterious. We can tell from the beginning of the book that his mind does not function normally. The roots of his problems are revealed gradually throughout the book; he practiced magic when he was a kid, his father committed suicide, he killed a civilian and a fellow soldier in Vietnam, the list goes on and on. There is always a new twist as to why he is the way he is.
Only about half of the book actually follows John in his efforts to find his wife; the other half of the book consists of chapters titled "Evidence", where testimonials of fiends and loved ones of John and Kathy as well as philosophical quotes and lines from psychology textbooks try to aid in the piecing together of what happened to Kathy, and "Hypothesis", where John creates the illusion of an intimate mental connection to Kathy and where she is and how she is surviving. I found that the "Hypothesis" chapters added to the story, while the "Evidence" chapters took away from it. Every time I got to an "Evidence" chapter I felt it disrupted the flow of the story because everything in it lacked cohesion, but I felt obligated to read through it, feeling that I might miss something, only to discover at the end that there was nothing to miss. The "Hypothesis" chapters however, I found, excellently conveyed John's love and appreciation for Kathy through the connections he makes to her and her mind.
This is a book of vast circumstances which would never replicate themselves in real life, but nonetheless O'Brien successfully portrays real human love and emotions. The last chapter, a "Hypothesis" chapter from the reader's point of view looking at John, is a long string of philosophical questions. All of them relate to what has happened throughout the book, and also tie in to real life. The last two paragraphs in the book summarize what the reader has doubted all along: "Can we believe that [John] was not a monster but a man? That he was innocent of everything except his life? Could the truth be so simple? So terrible?"(303). These questions, of course, do not tie up the loose ends of the story, but loosen them farther apart to leave the readers space to ponder and draw their own conclusions.
This book is intense and should not be read by those looking for answers. It would be more to the liking of those who have a lot of time and energy to think through tough questions and find their own answers to those questions themselves.

To be honest, I can't believe this hasn't been turned into a movie yet.

Very rarely does a book cause envy in a reader. While reading this book, I constantly thought to myself, "Wow. Why couldn't I come up with something so clever and thought-provoking?" O'Brien's writing is flawless; it's hilarious, moving, shocking, and beautiful. Not only that, but the style in which the story is told, morsel of information here, a tiny hint there, leading suggestions that rival the best mystery novels of all time. After reading the book twice, I still haven't convinced myself of the ending. It's simply incredible.

Tim O'Brien creates a realistic interpretation of life and the secrets of life, by using language devices such as repitition, detail, and motiffs. By using these techniques, O'Brien creates a novel that will leave a life-long impression in your mind.
Troughout the novel, O'Brien uses repitition to establish the importance of the information and the realism of the situation. Often when describing the character's personal thoughts or when describing the scenery, because he uses repitition so frequently, the sentences jump out of page, embedding within the reader's mind, creating this sureal impression that nothing we believe is really is true, and that what we believe happened, never happened at all, for it all lies in the eyes of the beholder. In addition, O'Brien's use of detail establishes a personal relationship between the reader and the character. The fact that O'Brien goes so far into the minds of the characters, every reader can identify with some part of each character. Whether it is the insecurities of John Wade, the faithfulness of Kathy Wade, or the idealistic love the two characters have for each other, not one feeling or thought is gone unsaid throughout this book. All except the answers that is. Which is why O'Brien's use of motifs are so important. Mirrors, probably the most important one, are used to portray the many different interpretations different people have on the present, past, and future. O'Brien uses mirrors to explain or to demonstrate, that different conclusions will be made depending on who is looking at the situation. The fact that people can look in a mirror at the exact same thing, but see completely different things is the way the world works. It is the way history is looked at, it is the way the present-day is looked at, and it is the way the future is looked at. Not one person sees the exact same thing. O'Brien realizes this and plays on the fact that every person has their own opinion of what really happens in the end, so, he leaves all the questions without answers.
This novel was absolutly wonderful. From the very begining to the very end O'Brien creates a captivating story, however, he leaves the resolution up to the own imagination of each reader.

The book is really nicely written and the passages on the cabin, lake, and Canadian wilderness are fantastic. I also appreciate the authors ability to transform our feelings of disgust for John Wade to pity, empathy, and forgiveness. After all, he was a product of his mean father and the war.
But in the end, I would have to say I did not enjoy the book because it was such a downer. All of the characters were so unlikeable, except the owner of the cabin. John Wade's life was so bizarre and sad and his wifes love for him made no sense whatsoever. The graphic passages on the massacre were exhausting. I prefer a more upbeat book with a happy ending. Sorry. So sue me. :)

Tim O'Brien is best known for his fantastic short story called
(approx) 'What they carried' (sorry for mangling that, I can't quite recall the exact name). It's often given as an example of great descriptive craft in writing programs and is a great story.
He again tackles what he knows: Vietnam, and the effects that combat there had on the narrator. The imagery he gives of the time spent in Vietnam are gripping to say the least.
I'm not certain whether I liked the ending or not. Can't say too much about that though, can I?
As with some books I review, I'd say don't pay full price for this one, but read it if you get the chance!

This book certainly desreves a 10: it's far better than at least 97% of other literature. However, it can't hold a candle to such moving works as O'Brien's own The things they Carried or Doyle's Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha (my reviews of which see), both of which I wanted to rate higher. This book would be the pinnacle of any other author's career (and, if not for TTTC, might be considered the best work ever on Vietnam), but for O'Brien it is only a great book among Greater books. I eagerly anticipate his next, and hope his Nobel comes soon!

This book absolutely took my breath away! From page one I was completely captivated until the very end. The book has a very dreamlike, surreal, stream-of-consciousness feel to it....the way you feel in the middle of the night when you can't discern reality from your comatose imaginings. The book made my blood run cold at times by making me consider the realm of horrors a so-called 'normal' human being is capable of. The descriptions were just plain hard to read at times and even as I did, I didn't know for sure whether they had occurred or not...you never do. The storyteller doesn't even know. No book has EVER affected me like this one. I highly recommend it, but schedule a block of hours to finish it because you won't be able to put it down. Way beyond chilling!!!

Damon Medic

Tim O'Brien rips apart the standard form and content of the mystery novel, the recollections-of-war novel, and the psychological probe to find at the heart of them all a brand new form. Sadly, each of those genres has suffered from overuse to the point of making them into modern cliches, often at the hands of writers who a story to tell but no reason for telling it. O'Brien recues us from this by weaving together the separate threads of his story into one elegant tapestry of a tale. Centered around the mysterious disappearance of Kathy Wade, wife of politician John Wade, In The Lake Of The Woods questions possibility itself. Not any one possibility in particular, but the role of the what-if in human existence. At first all we see is what the world sees, a married couple on vacation lying in each others arms. Then slowly enough for the reader to savor it all, O'brien peels back one layer after another of the games, the hidden agendas, the deceit of others, and the deciet of the self that lie beneath the exterior. Juxtaposed with the internal mystery is the very present search for the missing Mrs. Wade. And as we wonder what could have happened to her, we wonder also what has happened to her in the past, and to John, and to a host of other charcters who dance in and out of the narrative like fireflies in the night sky. Until soon the various half-truths and possible- thruths and outright lies blend into a question of faith in the unknown, into a question of what we would like to be true. Of what we need to be true. A master with the language, O'brien guides us through the flashbacks, flashforwards, and flashsideways with such convincing clarity of detail, both emotional and physical, that each possibility holds shades of the truth within it. As the story spirals in toward its resolution the issues of hope's reliance on the unknown, history's reliance on what might have been, and man's ability only to be sure of what is possible not what is actual collide and leave the reader with a newfound appreciation for the beauty of "maybe." The book is dotted with a smattering of styles including some straight from the author's conscience footnotes that will blow you away. I couldn't put it down

it's not often that I find a book that I can't put down.Living in NY, there are always things to do! Yet, when I beganIn the Lake of the Woods, I truely HAD to finish it. The style is unique; you are never sure which account to believe. It draws you and puts you into the story, because only you can decide what actually happened. The plot is both disturbing and highly interesting, and I recommend this book to everyone I know! Take the time to buy it, because you'll definitely take the time to read it!

Tim Obrien's, In the lake of the woods, is the most exceptionally crafted work of fictin/ historical fiction that I have ever had the pleasure of reading. The mechanics Obrien employes by telling a narrative in the third person, then using a direct address to the reader in the first by making a footnote a literary device in the chapters titled, "Evidence," is an uncanny leap in redefining contemporary fiction. In the lake of the woods is a burning page-turner, and a must read.

If nothing else, Tim O'Brien is unique. As an individual, his views differ from most others in that he finds lies something to be praised. As a writer he differs even greater from his contemporaries in that he finds the need only to explore certain issues, not actually solve them. In his book, In the Lake of the Woods, O'Brien uses symbolism of a mirror and personification of nature to describe gruesome scenes while entangling these among the technique of bringing in outside information in order to explore the reasons behind deception and create a surreal, mysterious world in which his characters seem to dissolve. In an effort to explore the human capacity for deception, Tim O'Brien uses the symbols of a wall of mirrors in order to describe John Wade's haunting issues. Most of the deception in this book centers around the first plot line of this book, the disappearance of John's wife, Kathy. In stating that " he felt calm and safe with the mirror behind his eyes...where he could turn bad things into good things and just be happy," O'Brien is implementing the mirrors as a symbol of universal self-deception. Wade, just like anyone, cannot face all of the awful world all at once so he must hide from the things he does not have the will to confront. The mirrors here stand for anything people retreat behind, be it money or power. However, O'Brien still realizes that the mirrors stand for "a colossal case of self-deception." Never does O'Brien decisively conclude what this deception can cause. Rather, he uses the mirrors as a universal symbol of all our masks. John Wade and the mirrors in his head simply serve as an exaggerated example of common people. On the other side of this diverging plot, O'Brien skillfully uses personification of nature to describe Thaun Yen (historically known as May Lai) and provide a mystical atmosphere. O'Brien describes Wade's initial arrival in Thaun Yen as if " the wind seemed to pick him up and blow him from place to place." By personifying the wind, it makes the environment seem like a powerful force capable of pushing people into the unknown. Soon after that, O'Brien quotes that " the sunlight sucked him down a trail towards the center of the village." Again, by personifying the sun it becomes a active participant in this gruesome world, capable of becoming somewhat of a black hole into which people fall. The real, substantial John Wade, placed in a world in which he has no control, creates an active nightmare for his character and for the reader. It also contributes to O'Brien's dream-like, mysterious atmosphere and, in effect, contributes to the mysterious, dim and haunting tone. These two interweaving plots- Kathy's disappearance and the Thaun Yen massacre- come together to form a wide range of theories in chapters called "Evidence" including outside sources. Here, O'Brien uses other books, fake interviews, and actual testimonies as real life basis for his theories. To explore his mysterious side, O'Brien himself comments in a footnote that he likes exploring "eternal doubt, which but frustrates and facinates." In effect, O'Brein wanted to create a haunting place where reality and fantasy blurr. He never wished to reveal the actuality of this world and this story, but rather just to explore the possibilities it creates in people's minds. On the subject of deception, O'Brien uses the book, B.Traven: The Life Behind the Legends, and the quote " The life of a pseudonym is the life of a dead man." Hence, Wade is trying to recreate a life seperate from that of Thaun Yen to deceive others is pointless. The world of his past and present cannot be seperated, and if they are neither one can be real without the other. Finally, in order to tie the two together O'Brien quotes Cervantes, "Love and War are the same thing, and strategems and policy are as allowable in one as in the other." Simply put, deception grows out of frustration of one's present life and mystery leads to frustration. The mystery behind Thaun Yen is what plagued John Wade and his life and led to his frustration with hiding it. His deception towards Kathy led her to frustration over their marraige. Different stories with the same result. This, of course, is O'Brien's exploration into love, betrayal, and mystery - not his answer for it. Possibly because of its unresolved ending, I did not like the conclusion of the book. However, between the "Evidence" chapters and the "Hypothesis" chapters the element of "What if?" continues to draw the reader through the book. O'Brien untilizes his skill as a master of mystery in an attempt to merely lay out the facts while allowing what few writers do - the chance to construct your own ending. Ending with a very objectionable air, O'Brien's book proves that possibly the mystery and questions in themselves are what people desire, not the resolution that lies behind it.

Tim O'brien utilizes symbolism, personification, and the exploration of unsolved issues to venture into the nature of human deception and ambiguity. O'brien's symbolism of a mirror and personification of nature to describe devastating scenes while encompassing unsolved issues explore deception and ambiguity. Tim O'brien utilizes the symbol of a mirror of walls to explore human deception and describe the terror of John Wade's personal issues. Within the statement, "he felt calm and safe with the mirror behind his eyes...where he could turn bad things into good things and just be happy," O'brien suggests the mirror as a symbol of general human deception. The mirrors seem to serve as a shelter that shields John Wade from interaction with reality. O'brien avoids conclusion of the causes of this deception, rather he uses it as a representation of a universal mask worn by many to hid themselves. O'brien goes on to skillfully personify elements within Thuan Yen, thus providing the reader with an ambiguous atmosphere to journey into. O'brien's description of Wade's initial arrival to Vietnam was majestic and ambiguous as "the wind seemed to pick him up and blow him from place to place". In this personification the wind seems to hold the force of lifting Wade and placing him were it sees fit. The wind seems to take away Wade's strength and inhibitions to do as he pleases. Soon after O'brien quotes, "the sunlight sucked him down a trail towards the center of the village". Once more nature is brilliantly personified. By personifying the sun O'brien gives nature the surreal power of controlling Wade's actions. This world, in which Wade feels he has no control, creates a living nightmare for his character and the reader. It also is a contribution to the ambiguous atmosphere and haunting tone. These two entanglements of rhetorical strategy are bind to create what O'brien calls chapter of "Evidence". Chapter's of evidence are filled with excerpts from false books, interviews of characters, and testimonials from Wade's war buddies. Here O'brien creates more ambiguity by addressing issues, but giving no resolution for the reader to rely upon. In doing this O'brien seems to bind reality and fantasy. This haunts the reader because there is no clear line between what is there and what may just seem to there. O'brien gives no set stop and go points , thus the reader wonders abroad without guide and direction. O'brien goes on to comment, "Love and War are the same thing," which suggests that deception is a manifestation of frustration. This is seen in Wade's fight to rid himself from the horrifying truths of Thaun Yen. This analysis serves as a clear exploration of betrayal, deceit and ambiguity, but not as a solution. O'brien's venture towards just laying down the facts and letting the reader rely on themselves to draw conclusions intensifies the suspense and ambiguous nature of the book. The Chapters of "Evidence" and "Hypothesis" further thoughts of "Is this real?" Thus, revealing to the reader why O'brien is considered the master of wartime deception and mystery.

I loved this book, as I have all of O'Brien's works. While this book was not as shockingly powerful as The Things They Carried, it was, nonetheless, an extremely moving portrayal of a person scarred by his childhood and war(which are often not much different). Perhaps it was just where I was at the time I read it, having just been through my first major political campaign with a friend, but it helped me to understand people who go to into politics. It was a very important book for me.

This is the story of John Wade and his wife, Kathy Wade. John is a Vietnam veteran with a terrible secret. His campaign for public political ambition destroyed by the revelation of it. With a series of flashbacks, it becomes evident that he was involved with Mai Lai massacre. Kathy disappears and it is never made clear if she is dead or lost or something else. After I finished the book, I passed it around to family and friends, highly recommending and praising it. It was the source of many serious discussions about a time I remember personally with the Lt Cally and Mai Lai massacre. Tim O'Brien is a great writer and this book well deserves a 5-star rating.

The use of flashback and fictionalized quotes is weaved seamlessly into this mystery novel. It is a mystery of character as much as of plot as the sequences defined above serve to slowly reveal the personal history of a middle aged couple who are recovering from a recent political setback. As the history unfolds their lakeside retreat takes on more significance as each are struggling with facing the truth about their pasts. A well written and thought provoking work that is difficult to put down. O'Brien's writing on Vietnam is absolutely searing.

Did she run away? Was she murdered? Tim O'Brien's In the Lake of the Woods is about a couple with broken dreams and goals. John Wade is on the road to the White House when he suffers a devastating loss that ends his political career. The only way he can live with this despair is in the arms of his loving wife, Kathy. John and Kathy are living in a Minnesota cottage, and one day Kathy disappears after a minor quarrel. The reader questions whether she ran away and became lost or is dead. The novel explores many of John's past Vietnam War secrets as well as some possible hypotheses on Kathy's fate.

Tim O'Brien served as an infantryman in Vietnam. Since returning in the late 1960's, many of his novels deal with the war. Even though this novel takes place in the U.S., the reader gains much insight into O'Brien's experiences and thoughts about the war.

The book left a bittersweet taste in my mouth. This was a quick and enjoyable read, but the ending left something to be desired. The ending may work for some readers, but I felt it was too open. Otherwise, the style in which it was written is simply brilliant. From chapters of flashbacks, to different hypotheses, to foreshadowing, the book cleverly explores all possibilities of these characters' lives and personalities. Tim O'Brien did an excellent job with this work, and I will be checking out his other works.

Tim O'Brien has created a modern-day masterpiece with, "In the Lake of the Woods". John Wade and his wife Kathy Wade are escaping the headlines that plague the Minnesota news. After running for US Senate and losing by a landslide nothing seems like it used to. Their relationship is on the rocks they're deep in debt and after such a loss it will be near impossible for John to get back into politics. So they figure the lake air can't do any harm, at the very least it's a place to regroup and start over.
After a few days at the cabin something seems terribly wrong when Kathy is gone all day... then all night. John finally calls his neighbors who loaned him the cabin. Then he calls the local police who consist of one full time officer and a dairy farmer who works for a little extra income. Thoughts quickly turn against John and he is suspected of foul play.
John Wade grew up in a home where an alcoholic father, who loved him but always showed the opposite, always tormented him. Young John was an aspiring magician. He loved going down to the magic store to just look. He would practice in his basement for hours. When his father committed suicide John was devastated. He still played in the basement but would talk to his father as if he were still alive, sometimes yelling at him.
All this pain never left John he took it wherever he went, never talking about it. He even took it to the University of Minnesota where he met Kathy. He and Kathy dated and fell in love, except he would follow her around when she didn't know it. Kathy and John are married soon after college. But John is called to duty for the Vietnam conflict. Right away it seems that war is too much for this man already carrying emotional baggage but he carries on. During his tour of duty he encounters something no man should ever see, hear, smell, feel or experience. His entire platoon of men can't take the fear and killing any longer. Like many people already know the Viet Cong could never really stood out from ordinary people in their villages. These soldiers were fighting against ghosts. They finally snapped and started to massacre an entire village. John Wade, who was known by his war buddies as "Sorcerer" for all his magic tricks, was right in the thick of it.
This is what killed his soul and his political career. Although only one man was ever charged with war crimes for the My-Lai massacre the rest will carry the pain to their graves. Did John Wade kill Kathy, the woman he loved so much, the only friend he had left in this world. Soon after the investigation began John Wade ran off in the Lake of the Woods. A lake in Minnesota that is surrounded on three sides by Canada. Did they run away together? To start anew? They had always talked about running away to Verona, Italy.
This book is one of the better books by Tim O'Brien. He is so masterful in the art of suspense. This is not the conventional style of writing by many authors. It does not follow a linear story line. It jumps around from past to present and even to hypothesis's. This was a National BestSeller in 1994 and proclaimed "One of the best books of 1994" by "Booklist Magazine" Editor's Choice.
On a closing note I would like to point out how many ironies there are in this book. For instance Tim O'Brien leads you to think they may have run away together to Canada. It's ironic that the main characters may have ran away to Canada to escape the burden of war placed upon them, and how draft dodgers escaped to Canada to escape the burden of war all together. All in all this book is very intelligent and captivating, I highly recommend it.

In The Lake of the Woods written by Tim O'Brien the story is about John and his wife Kathy. Tim O'Brien tells of what may or may not have happened to them at a summer cottage in Minnesota. All we know for certain by the end of the book is that Kathy has disappeared but we don't know if she is dead, lost, or ran away. Ideas are brought out giving different situations that Kathy could be in, and why she could have left. John takes the action and has driven off into the lake to find her. The layout of this book made the book more interesting. The author wrote the book in a multi-genre format using different genres such as interviews, stories, and flashbacks. John is a Vietnam vet, a failed politician, a practitioner of magic. Through evidence and flashbacks, O'Brien unveils John to be a complex man, with many dark secrets in his past. O'Brien uses his techniques well, and make every hypothesis he presents seem realistic. Also the author brought a great sense of human actions into the story and how people act as being part of the human race without certain intentions. This book was a fun read, but will keep me guessing every time I come across it on a library or bookstore shelf. I recommend anyone looking for something different to read, and wanting a book that will give their mind a little thinking to do about a story to read In The Lake of the Woods. Any reader of this book wants to know what happens making it a hard book to put down the entire time.

Where is she? What is his state of mind? Has he gone crazy? Would he really do it? Is she dead or alive...these are questions that go through your mind when reading this novel written by Tim O'Brien.

On a lake deep in the woods, John and Kathy Wade are trying to rekindle their marriage. After a downfall election that John had lost for U.S. Senate, John's life has not been the best. Kathy suffers with him. She always tries to alleviate him or to make him feel confident about himself. He just seems to ignore her. When going more into the story, you find out there is something horribly wrong between them. One night, John got up, somewhat in a sleepwalk, and does various things...he says "Kill Jesus" and he boils water and scorches plants with the water and gets back in his bed, like if nothing happened.

The next morning, he gets up and finds Kathy to be gone, thinking that she has gone for a walk, and he ignores the fact for a few hours. After hours, he gets worried and starts looking for her, not finding her, he goes to his boarders and reports her missing. They find out that the boat is gone. Questions start to arise... did she drown? Is she lost? A massive search starts for Kathy and possibilities get higher and higher. Throughout the book, the reader uncovers many things about John Wade's past. We progressively see that the life of John Wade, " The Sorcerer", has many secrets, and that he is lost inside his own magic.

This book is very suspenseful and it just makes you want to read it more and more. This book has various chapters called Evidence and Hypothesis, which makes this book very unique, compared to other books. Evidence is various chapters which have interviews, articles, and items explained. They go deep into John's life and his past. They talk about how he got into politics, his childhood, his father, and how he met and fell in love with Kathy. Hypothesis is various chapters that go into what could have happened to Kathy. They bring out the different situations that she could be in, why she could have left, and her memories involving John.

I recommend this book to anyone! This is a great book for a mystery lover or someone who likes suspense. Tim O'Brien is a great writer and I would also like to recommend "The Things They Carried" by him.

Tim O'Brien's In the Lake of the Woods is written in a similar style to the rest of his fiction books. He uses scattered information to get the reader in a similar mindset as the main character. In the Lake of the Woods deals with John Wade, a failed senator dealing with problems in his marrige. A war veteran, John Wade owed his unhappy childhood to his father's suicide. Instead of dealing with these pains openly, he tended to brood and harm less lively beings, such as plants. His wife, Kathy, had dealt with his absense during the war, the constant stalking when she returned, however once John's political career seemed to finish, problems between them increased.Kathy then dissapears, and at this point O'Brien branches off with two different choices for the reader to decide on. Was Kathy's dissapearence her own choice, or did John decide her future? Reading through friend and family interviews, you must decide for yourself. This book is an excellent example of the emotional damage war veterans must deal with, and reading John's solutions may aid the reader in their final descision, as well as dealing with war veterans in their own life.

I regard this book with awe and reverance, like a book of sorcerer spells. Engaging in it is like falling asleep in the midst of a 103 degree fever.
In the Lake of the Woods could be considered both a mystery and a horror novel, but not for the usual reasons; the literary modes which make it an enigmatic, mind-boggling nightmare are its imagery and themes. This book tied my mind in magical knots which kalidescopically changed shape, leaving my brain fried and soul nourished.
Fan's of O'Brien won't be surprised to find that he is up to his old tricks. In the Lake of the Woods begins with a title which states that Tim O'Brien is the author. Immediately before the first chapter, there is a curious second title without O'Brien's name attached to it. By the commentary provided in footnotes, the reader soon learns that O'Brien wants to make it clear that someone else wrote this story in an attempt to figure out the mystery of John and Kathy Wade. This fact confounds an easy understanding of the novel; the narrator's position must be always be taken into account.
In the Lake of the Woods is O'Brien's portrayal of a historian or biographer's attempt at piecing together the mystery of the disappearance of Kathy Wade. Kathy's husband, John, recently lost a primary election to become Minnessota's Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate after his involvement in the My Lai Massacre in Vietnam was revealed to the public. In an attempt to relax and leave the limelight, the Wade's hole up in a cottage in a remote region of Minnesota lake country. One morning, after a temporary lapse of judgement and memory the night before, John Wade wakes to find his wife missing. It is here that the mystery begins. The narrator compiles evidence, the history of the Wades, and hypotheses in an attempt to find the truth behind why this happened. However, an even greater mystery is presented within the first couple of pages when the narrator, in a footnote, states that he still doesn't know what happened to Kathy Wade. This suggests that the book is about more than just Kathy Wade's disappearance.
This novel could be read as a thriller, except that as soon as the dramatized scenes get moving, a new chapter filled with exposition, "evidence", or a "Hypothesis" begins. Tripping up the action serves to get the reader on the thematic track that O'Brien intended and to make it clear that the plot is not the major concern of the novel.
When the pieces of the puzzle begin to come together, this is a novel about human nature, what we consider love, how we seek out love, how we fall in love or become obsessed, comparisons between love and obsession, how we fall in love or become obsessed with people by projecting our dreams onto them in an attempt to solve their mystery, how we are mysteries to ourselves, and how our secret selves can be destructive. It is also a story within a story about the morality of attempting to discover truth by recreating a story.
Engage this novel with the intensity that it deserves. After your fever drops and the nightmares end, you may see your own reflection in the lake of the woods.

If you thought you knew "Tim O'Brien" after reading his
last novel, "The Things They Carried," now he tells you that it could all be illusion. The hero
of this novel, John Wade, thinks he has erased his presence at the My
Lai massacre. It isn't part of the stories he tells his wife or a part
of his senate campaign. When the truth comes out, his wife finds out
she doesn't know the man she married.

Tim O'Brien's chilling tale involves the deconstruction of John and Kathy Wade's rocky relationship. Through his telling, O'Brien discloses the differences between appeareance and reality, creating a mysterious platform for the "novel". In this sense, the story seems to act more like a mystery than an actual novel. O'Brien enforces the notion of illusion verses fact by offering several different hypotheses for the ending. After my first reading this was frustrating because I wanted a definite answer or "solution" to the book. After reviewing the endings again , however, and considering the different scenarios I realized that "In the Lake of the Woods" is more challenging than it seems. O'Brien forces the reader to question everything and reassess the characters. This interaction with the author adds a dynamic dimension to an already suspenseful book. The non-linear construction of the book emphasizes this interaction in that the reader must pay close attention to the shifting time frame. I recommend this book because in forcing the reader to distinguish reality from appearance, O'Brien also seems to make the reader evalutate themself in the process.

In his novel In the Lake of the Woods, Tim O'Brien uses motifs, imagery, and foreshadowing to show how John Wade's attempt to erase his past bring him to realize that your past never dies, no matter how skillfully you cover it up. In the novel, O'Brien uses Wade's childhood to foreshadow events that will take place later in his life. One example of this would be Wade's special talent of practicing magic. O'Brien uses Wade's practicing of magic to foreshadow the tricks that Wade will try to play later in life, such as his cover up of his participation in the massacre at My Lai, as well as the ultimate disappearing trick he performs at the end by fleeing the police investigation of his wife's disappearance. Also, when Wade's father commits suicide, he uses mind tricks such as conversations with his dead father to help him cope with the grief he is feeling. This foreshadows that later in life, such as after the massacre, he will be forced to use those tricks again in order to help him forget the things he did in My Lai, as well as the things he saw others do. Another example of this would be Wade's meeting of his wife in college. He spies on her constantly because he does not trust her faithfulness. This secret activity that he keeps from his wife foreshadows that there will be other secret events that he will keep from his wife later on. Later in the novel, Wade is drafted into the Army during Vietnam. O'Brien uses intense visual imagery to describe Wade's experiences in the war. One example of O'Brien's use of imagery is this passage: In the second week of February a sergeant named Reinhart was shot dead by sniper fire. He was eating a Mars bar. He took a bite and laughed and started to say something and then dropped in the grass under a straggly old palm tree, his lips dark with chocolate, his brains smooth and liquid. (39) This passage shows what kind of things the soldiers in Vietnam saw, and why Wade had to use his mind tricks to help him forget the things he saw. Another example of imagery is when Wade describes his accidental shooting of a Vietnamese civilian: He would not remember raising his weapon, nor rolling away from the bamboo fence, but he would remember forever how he turned and shot down an old man with a wispy beard and wire glasses and what looked to be a rifle. It was not a rifle. It was a small wooden hoe. The hoe he would always remember...he would look up sometimes to see the wooden hoe spinning like a baton in the morning sunlight...see the old man shuffling past the bamboo fence, the skinny legs, the erect posture and the wire glasses, the hoe suddenly sailing high and doing its quick twinkling spin and coming down uncaught. (109) Besides his use of imagery during the war he also begins to establish motifs of Wade's childhood during the war. One of these motifs is the forgetting trick that Wade is once again forced to use after he shoots the old man in My Lai. Another motif would be the "mirrors in his head" that O'Brien eludes to when explaining how Wade hides behind the mirrors in his head to get away from his past. After the war, Wade extends his tour a year and becomes an office clerk. During this time he destroys all evidence of his involvement in the massacre, and creates a whole new military history for himself, another disappearing trick. When he returns from Vietnam, Wade enters politics and is soon elected as the lieutenant governor of St. Paul, Minnesota. He likes politics because he likes the manipulation that goes along with being a political figure. This manipulation is a motif of his manipulation of objects as a magician and his mind and history as a soldier. He then decides to run for Senate, but is crushed by his opponent when it is uncovered that he was a participant in the massacre at My Lai. He and his wife retreat to a cabin where, one day, she is found to be missing. The police step in and find nothing to tell them where she is. All that they know is that the boat is missing and they suspect she is either stranded or drowned in the lake . One cannot help but wonder however, if this was just a disappearing trick on her part to escape the man she no longer feels she can trust. In the end it is found that Wade murdered his wife in a fit of rage, by pouring boiling water on her face while she is sleeping. The reader uncovers this by O'Briens repetition of the "puffs of steam " rising from Kathy's eye sockets during her campaigning with Wade. Finally, Wade realizes that the police are getting closer to uncovering him and he decides to split using the neighbors boat. His departure is another example of a disappearing trick.
In conclusion, O' Brien's use of motifs, foreshadowing, and imagery make this book the ultimate mystery wrapped in a love story. He explains to the reader that the past will always come back to haunt you. In this case, the past came back and ruined John Wade's life. One would like to think of Wade as a completely innocent man who was torn apart by the war and destroyed by its aftermath. But, with his perfection of magic and manipulation, O'Brien asks, "Could the truth really be so simple? So terrible?"

Whose character is assassinated? Is it Mr. Wades (the main character scarred by events in Vietnam and a recently failed political campaign)? Or is his wife's character assassinated by her husband in the story? Or could it be the narrator's character because we begin to question his veracity toward the end of the novel when we are never told outright what happened.

Throughout this novel I continually asked questions in my head. It's a very interactive read, asking much thought and intent from the reader. I loved it and could not put it down for this reason. I don't usually go for the mystery novel, but this one is steeped in a tangible history surrounding believable, human characters. It's thought-provoking and doesn't easily leave your mind once you've finished and replaced it to the shelf. I think this book would be a great book club novel because it insights much visceral feeling and wonder. It's a quick, spicy read with a subtle, lingering finish.

I believe that this book, contrary to popular vote is not weird it is very unique. Tim O'Brien created a real to life mystery about a senator hopeful named John Wade who mysteriously lost his wife one morning after his hopes to be a senator were smashed due to some things that had happened in Vietnam several years earlier. This book had me captivated throughout the entire book. There were moments that even had me guessing if this story really happened. It is extremely addicting to read because Tim O'Brien hypothesis chapters that led you to want to get to the end of the book to see which one was the correct hypothesis.
The only thing that had some people not liking this book, was the way Tim O'Brien wrote this book. He had numerous chapters entitled Hypothesis. These chapters tell of what may have happened to John Wade's wife and left the reader wondering if some of these things written in these chapters really happened. There are also several chapters entitled evidence. These chapters dig into John psyche through an interview type format. Although these chapters seem redundant and a little boring, if read carefully they really foreshadow what happens at the end of the book. However redundant these chapters seemed, they were extremely important to the book because they added to the suspense and mystery of John's wife's disappearance.
I really enjoyed reading this book. I rated it 5 stars out of 5 because I couldn't put this book down.

While I agree with the reviewers who didn't like the characters, I didn't see that as a flaw. I didn't feel I was expected to like them. It might have been a problem in a longer book, but this is rather short. As it was, I couldn't put this one down, and I thought the ending was perfectly satisfying. I intend to read all his books now!

This book was first published three years ago! Not only is it still in print (!), but large numbers of people are still being profoundly affected by it. Look over the comments here. Most of them were written within the past six months--ample testament, should anyone need it, to the staying power of this superb novel about a period which permanently scarred a whole generation of young men!

If you are the slightest bit intrigued by this book or the author, put your mouse to work and order. It is a portrait of the secrecy within marriage, It is also a sort of parallel history of the American experience in Viet Nam and war in general. You will think about this novel for years to come. Did he or didn't he do it? Did IT even happen? These are gripping but ultimately secondary issues. Buy it NOW!

In the Lake of the Woods is an amazing journey into memory ands madness - the madness of war, the madness of past sins, the madness of staying with someone you are scared of. This book is not easy. It takes you into various levels of uncertainty and mystery. We all live with our pasts. Some are more fraught with pain than others, but all shape who we are today. The main characters of In the Lake of the Woods, John and Kathy, both have many layers of hurt and pain to deal with. There are many options presented, but none are settled on. There is mystery and depth here.

The most unique work of fiction I have ever read, this book is a must read. The style is unlike anything I have ever read, seen, or heard about as there are three different chapter styles: evidence, hypothesis, and story (flashbacks and present). The point of view is O'Brien's own voice which makes the book more personal. Everyone will love this book.

In the Lake of the Woods by Tim O'brien is a great book. The way he writes the story and the style he writes it in lends to a truly unique book that I would recommend to anyone to read.
O'Brien doesn't write the book like an ordinary book. Instead of just writing the story in a linear format he divides the book into four different story lines. One a bout how John's wife might have disappeared, one about what is currently going on, one about John's past, and one about the evidence. With the author switching between these plots it kept me on my toes, and not sure what to expect next.
These plots lead to a book where the reader doesn't know what was going to happen. This made it hard for me to put the book down. He even ends the book without the reader knowing what has happened. This makes the reader want to read on but there's nothing there to read. I would recommend this book to anyone because it is such a unique book.

Tim O'Brien is an author credited with writing several books dealing with the Vietnam War. O'Brien also was a veteran of the Vietnam War. In this particular novel, O'Brien concentrates his attention on the main character, John Wade, a Vietnam War veteran, who battles with his conscience about acts committed during the war. He has kept this guilt about his actions a secret for many years and yearns to purge his soul of this guilt. John has had a very successful career as a politician, but his past soon catches up with him. While running for the U.S. Senate, the disturbing facts about the acts committed in Vietnam begin to surface and threaten to destroy both his career and him. John loses the election. John and his wife escape to a cabin on a Minnesota lake for seclusion. A short time later, John's wife Kathy disappears after she learns his horrible secret and that he is not the man he appeared to be.

While a search for Kathy is taking place, John struggles to keep his sanity as O'Brien reveals bits and pieces of his past and dark secrets. O'Brien uses the repetition of these events and secrets, which support one another, and build upon each other and lead to the final climax. Woven together with these scenes are allegories representing simple symbols throughout the book. One example occurs when John was a kid. He didn't have any friends. He had an obsession with magic and would practice by himself. This action simply represents John escaping reality and bringing peace to his troubled mind. John doesn't have to worry about anyone judging or making fun of him. In his solitude, John is free.

Tim O'Brien took a grave risk writing "In the Lake of the Woods." He chose to fictionalize an historical event. Such an effort may not seem at all unique; however, the historical event he fictionalizes had so great an effect on the Vietnam War and on perceptions of it, that dealing with the subject matter alone had the potential to disturb, to frighten, even to enrage. Despite possible pitfalls, O'Brien masterfully transforms "In the Lake of the Woods" into a solid and fluid work.
Playing heavily on magic and proffering ideas about people's fascination with it, O'Brien toys with readers, leading them on with his "Hypothesis" chapters. Readers are suspended in a continual tug-of-war until the end of the novel. At the end, readers are finally realize why magic is loved and hated, but so often enjoyed.

Tim O'Brien's novel "In the Lake of the Woods" is a terrific read. The plot is gripping and the characters well defined. O'Brien gracefully moves you throughout the entire story. From the first sentence all the way down to the very last word O'Brien had my attention. As a reader you actually participate while reading. O'Brien asks a lot from you, but that's what I enjoyed most about the book. "In the Lake of the Woods" cannot be classified as Vietnam story, a mystery, or a love story. The novel attempts to be more than that, and it succeeds brilliantly. He doesn't offer answers, but poses questions about some of the grayer issues in life. O'Brien dares you to make up your own mind. This is the first book I have read of Tim O'Brien's, but it will not be the last.

This book now completes my reading all of his novels. I cannot remember the last time a book touched me so. Only someone that experienced the horrors of war could tell this story of fiction. Over the years we have seen what Vietnam did to the minds of some of our finest. No one could survive that war without some mental duress. We are all approaching our elder years now but every man that served in the crevasses of his mind knows what the Author has said in this novel. God bless them all.

John Wade compensates for a sad childhood by developing an obsession with black magics. When his wife disappears, her disappearance opens up the many doors in his mysterious past. One of the most intriguing, bizaare and thought-provoking novels of recent times. A mystery that will constantly leave you guessing. For God's sake, read it!

Typically when I read contemporary fiction, satisfaction in the novel is gained in its conclusion and resolution. This novel has no conslusion and certainly no resolution, however, I came away as satisfied as I ever have. The sadness surrounding the story does not hinge on exactly what happened to Kathy at the lake, but rather with the loss of innocence in war and the disintegration of a once beautiful, albeit disfunctional, relationship. I must admit, as a 24-year old male with very little emotions when it comes to reading novels, I was surprised at myself as the tears openly flowed while reading the final ten pages. I highly recommend this book to anyone in my generation, as it provides insight to the horrors of war beyond the battlefield.

I "stumbled" upon Tim Obrien and his work when I read "Lake" for a literature class. I have never been so pleasantly surprised by a required reading. I could have kissed my professor for introducing me to a writer who's work I would consume voraciously through the years. Once again, Obrien uses his Vietnam experience as a wallpaper to outstanding fiction. I must say "Lake" is quite different than his other pieces.This book is bold in it's language and subtle in its message. Do not read if you enjoy being spoonfed a moral or message. This book leads you to make decisions for yourself and may truly give insight into how you think and view the world and other people. Would YOU drag the lake for bodies or go searching on nearby islands for reunited lovers? I just love this book.

Tim O'Brien has written a absolutly compelling tale of what War can do to a human spirit. It also is a love story, mystery, or fictional fantasy. Through out the book I found myself reaching for the unknown mystery that O'Brien in the end leaves up in the air. With a twisted plot and a laboring toil between styles of writting seen through out the book, I found, In the Lake of the Woods, a most read, two thumbs up book. O'Briens form of writting consistently shows parralles with many other contemporary writters of our time. There is no perfectly layed out endings. There are unknown answers. Also there are jumps between the plot, or breaks. These leave the reader in suspense for the unknown answer. Over all O'Briens style of writting left me deeply intriqued. I would recommend this book to anyone.

We live in a media-driven society. Political conventions are Oprahfied. In the Lake of the Woods uses that background and does so very effectively. What happened here? Is perception different from reality? Whose perception? Whose reality? The reader is given access to a vast number of perceptions and left to discover their own reality. What DID happen here?

Brooding, enigmatic, disturbing.

If nothing else, you know it's not a good sign when he waters the plants with boiling water.

This book has a unique structure, not least because the author tells you early on that the mystery won't be solved. Nonetheless, I was completely drawn in. It is the story of a marriage on the brink of collapse as a result of the husband's Vietnam experiences and his subsequent repression and cover-up.

I really like this book. I haven't even finished the book and in fact I'm not even half-way through. The suspense of John and Kathy is great. I was suppose to read this book during school and now I regret that I didn't...but now I am glad that I decided to pick it up again. I will make another review when I am done with the book.

I chose to read this book for my English class. I may have procrastinated the reading, but when I picked this book up I couldn't put it down. O'Brien manipulates you on the outlook of every aspect of this novel; this keeps you guessing and yearning for answers. He kept the characteristics of the individuals in this story very vague; I suppose it is our job as readers to draw conclusions. What I found most disappointing about this novel is the ending. After going through an emotional roller coaster O'Brien leaves you stranded and confused in the end. O'Brien doesn't give enough information in the conclusion of the story to make any type of closure in your understanding of the novel.

In the Lake of the Woods is easy to read, but is filled with concepts that point torward complexity of the human soul. In this outstanding novel, Tim O'Brien explores a love that consumes itself, the terrible simplicity of truth, and human's ineffective desire and attempt to change reality.

An amazing thought provoking novel that leaves the reader shocked an ashamed to be human. Brilliantly brings to surface the atrocities that man has commited and just scratches the surface of how deep humanity can sink. A wonderful read that any breathing, thinking human should read.

In the lake of the woods is a great book The way Tim O'Brien arranged the chapters was very unique and the evidence chapters really added a little something extra. There are flashbacks to Vietnam, John Wade's Childhood, His Campaign, and then there is the present in which there is a lot of suspense. In some ways the way the chapters went back and forth kind of annoyed me but I think it was necessary in order to get the full effect and if it hadn't been set up that way it would be harder to understand the characters. I've never read a book like this before and I can't say that I've ever read a mystery or suspense book. It was truly an experience for me- I found myself skipping pages to get to the end more quickly and find out what happened, hopeing for a happy ending. It was a very sad book, and somewhat disturbing but it was well written and I enjoyed it. I would recommend it to anyone.

This book dances around the idea of "What is the Truth?" "What is Illusion?" And "What happens when you can no longer fool people or yourself?"
It dances from guesses to quotes to "objective" facts to narrative in an attempt to find this truth.
I had no trouble with the lack of a conclusive ending. I think that the author wanted us to take a journey with a man who had a certain history........and by being on the journey, know the man and what he had done.
The point being: It is hard to believe the atrosities that were committed in Vietnam (but they happened)........and even harder to believe the atrosities committed in the Lake of the Woods.

As a student in an advanced literature class, I was required to pull up background info on O'Brien, as well as delve deeper into his writing. I found that his style, although it is provocative and note worthy, is the same method over and over again. And sadly, "In the Lake of the Woods" does not deviate for the same trap. Much like a number of his novels, it has the war veteran on the edge of insanity, and the same veteran trying to cope with the real world. For said character, he is better off trying to fit a square through a circle. But does this character take away from the story as a whole?

Knowing what I know of O'Brien's style of writing, I actually found the story very enjoyable. The moments of pure insanity seemed a little less crazy, and the frequent, once random flashbacks (an O'Brien favorite), seemed to find their place within the inner plot of the story. This is not to say that my knowing how to approach the novel put the book to shame, for who could fully understand as to why Jon repeated "Kill Jesus," but it certainly didn't hurt in the reading process as a whole.

The novel seemed rushed, but good in the end. By "rushed," I mean Jon's crazy should have developed slower. This lack of planning comes across as O'Brien simply going through the motions to write another novel. Readers who have read Tim's novels before, will see recurring instances in the plot. For instance, due to the amount of stress put on the men from the war, Jon shoots his fellow soldier, which is awfully similar to the soldiers in The Things We Carried, who mangle a water buffalo to relieve stress.

Does Tim O'Brien writing this novel as if he is going through the motions, take away from the writing as a whole? No. But it doesn't help it either.

In the lake of the woods was a very mysterious book. It kept me guessing till the very end. Not knowing what happened to Kathy in the end made me a little angry but it is a perfect ending for this book because it strange. The main character John Wade is a crazy, stalker who I think is messed up because of the death of his father. Even though his father made fun of him as a child he was his bestfriend and his death did considerable damage to him. Saying John is crazy is almost an understatement. Using the phrase "Kill Jesus" because that was the worst thing he could think of would probably be a starting point for it. This book is a great read and i would recommend this book to anyone who is looking for a story about the effects a war can have on someone or just looking for a mysterious book.

I read this book for my english class my senior year of high school. And no book had ever sparked as much debate and discussion as this one. There were about 6 different theories about what happened between the 30 of us that read this book, and each was very passionate about their ideas. Over a year later we still argue about what happened in this book.
The book itself is absolutely gripping. It sucks you in and doesn't let go for a long time. John Wade is arguably the creepiest literary character I've ever run into. And the way that O'Brien uses the evidence and hypothesis chapters to keep you guessing. Everytime you think you figured it out the book changes. Just awesome.

My daughter studied this novel for a high school English class, and I decided to read it. Excellent novel. I found its structure fascinating, and was completely drawn into its world. But I found it ultimately frustrating. That's me, however. I like certainty. I have bought a copy of "The Things They Carried" to read; my daughter recommends it highly.

Let me preface this by saying I'm a huge fan of Tim O'Brien's "The Things They Carried," which is a brilliant portrayal of the Vietnam experience.

"In the Lake of the Woods," however, came as a disappointment. O'Brien uses language beautifully but the plot of this one is thin. I knew from the first chapter what was going to happen, but continued reading in the hopes that somehow I'd been mistaken. No such luck. The ambiguity (did he kill his wife or not?) praised by other readers held no appeal for me.

This books displays just how talented a writer O'Brien is. O'Brien uses styles and tactics in his writing that I have rarely seen before. While not quite on a level with his "The Things they Carried," (very few books are) it is still a must-read. One side note: O'Brien is NOT a "war-writer." OH! How infuriated I become at the mention of this! O'Brien writes about what all human beings feel in their lives; NOT just for Vietnam Vets.

This well crafted novel has all of the ambiguity of Akutagawa Ryonosuke's RASHOMON. The novel poses one moral question after another to the reader, frames the events of the novel beside historical excerpts, psychological studies, and fictional premise. It is the reader's responsibility to draw conclusions, if that's possible. This book is not for the squeamish or the reader who wants to be spoon-fed plot. It is a deeply disturbing and challenging read. The Kirkus reviewer's careless and shallow reading of the novel does disservice to what is usually a reliable source for literary criticism.

This book stayed in my mind long after I finished reading it. It was disturbing, creatively written, and very engaging. It read like something straight out of the headlines, and I had trouble putting it down. I can't wait for O'Brien's next work

Wow...From page one, I was taken by O'Brien's skilled handling of prose and imaging. His blending of reality and fantasy works to show us the complexities of the human heart and mind. On page 280, I finally broke down and cried

This is one of the most powerful novels I've ever read, but it's not powerful in the usual overt way. Just like in the real world, truth and reality lie just below the surface; O'Brien captures this superbly. Some may call this book slow, which it is in the sense that the plot doesn't carry the drama but instead the characters do. Some may be frustrated that the tension is never really resolved (O'Brien states this up front). There is no Hollywood ending, just an excellent portrayal of the past corrupting the present and the present corrupting itself. A true portrait of the human situation.

In the Lake of the Woods is a very well written classic. It does manage to keep your interest alive and your fingers turning the pages; however, after reading the book, one is left with an incomplete feeling becuase the author leaves the reader no actual ending. The reader is left up to decide in his/her own head what happened. For me, reading a book is a process you go through. The author gives you some background information, sets up his climax, and then ends it with a bang. If one step of the process is cut short or completely left out, the book feels empty. Although O'Brien did an excellent job writing the book, after the time I put into reading it, i wish he would have just gone ahead and ended it for me.

There are two recipes for a Molotov cocktail: (1) Take one empty whisky bottle, place some coal, sulphur and saltpetre into the bottle and make a wick with a plaster or creeper; and (2) Combine 2 parts Champagne and 1 part each Cherry Brandy, Curacao, Vodka, or Gin. Likewise, this book will knock your socks off on (at least) two different levels: (1) war is hell; and (2) so is denial.

I don't know what to say... maybe... This book is outstanding! Great! One of a kind!

It's a mix of a war themed book and a mystery book.
Throughout the book the reader is given little bits of the main charactor's life's story in order to try and figure out if he (John) really did killed his wife Kathy or if she just ran away.

There are chapters that tell about John's life in the Vietnam war, His life before the war, and there are also evidence chapters which really add to the plot of the book.

This is really a one-of-a-kind book and a great read.

This book is great! It has emotion, mystery, love, hate, the whole package. I really enjoy it and plan on reading more and more O'Brien books. I just read his new "Tomcat in Love" which is wickedly funny, and it's nothing like this, but both are really great. Keep it up, Mr. O'Brien, I'll keep reading.

This book was selected for my book group as this month's choice. I have Tim O'Brien's "The Things They Carried" several times and was really looking forward to this book. I can't say that I am disappointed, but that I am perplexed. While I found the chapters recalling John Wade's experience in Vietnam compelling, the Hypothesis chapters and the Evidence chapters left me wanting something more conclusive.
In part, the chapters labeled "Evidence" made me think that Wade was actually on trial -- literally, though he was figuratively. As a result, I went through a large part of the book thinking that the truth would emerge.
All told, I'm still putting the pieces together. I would recommend it, if only because it does make you think. Is it a book I would read again? Probably not.

This was a wonderful book by one of my favorite writers. Tim O'Brien always has a great approach on a story, and he immediately attaches you to the characters. The character development is phenominal. I read this book in one day. I don't know if it was the fact that I was crazy from reading for hours, or because the book was so good, but I was crying at the end of it. This is a must read of O'Brien's work, but pick up any of his books and you will be pleased.

I am a senior in high school and read this book as a choosen reading assignment. Our class had previosly read O'brian's "The Things They Carried". Having liked his style I decided to try "In the Lake of the Woods". Although it was different I still liked it. If you are the type of person that likes everything fed to you then you may not like this book. It leaves lots to the reader which I found to be a strong point. This book is all in all worth reading.

I was deeply moved by this novel. The descriptions of Vietnamese village massacres, the testimony of American soldiers at My Lai, and quotations from parallel historical events and historical figures made this book 3-dimensional. It was also in the genre of a who-done-it and what-really-happened. The historical tragedy compliments the personal tragedies (child abuse, nightmares, betrayal). To put it bluntly, I highly recommend the book.

I thought that this book was a good and interesting book. It good beacuse it deals with a real event in history,the Vietnam War. It does a good gob of discribing what war is like through the eyes of the character John Wade. It is also interesting because it shows the way war effects John Wade even long after the war. It also deals with his relationship with his wife and how he deals with being defeated in the political elections. This book is also a mistery novel and does a good job of switching from past to present times.

SPOILERS.

This is the only O'Brien book I have read so far (though I hope to read "The Things They Carried" soon). And while I initially enjoyed the first half of the book, the second half was somewhat of a chore to get through.

For me, the constant hammering on John Wade's two possible motivations (dear old Dad and Vietnam) was numbing at first but then crossed the line into insulting.

The analogy (or is it metaphor - I *always* forget) of the Sorcerer/magician crap was both lame and laughable.

A number of the characters - for example Tony and Claude and Myra Shaw (the waitress) - hit me as being caricatures and stereotypes.

Also, especially towards the end of the book, the philosophical mumbo-jumbo got very old very quick ("Could the truth be so simple? So terrible?" or "The mathematics are always null; water swallows sky, which swallows earth"). C'mon!

Finally, Mr. O'Brien seems to have resorted to what I call the Dustin Hoffman School Of Writing. I like Dustin Hoffman. I think he's a very, very good actor. But there are a number of times when I see him in a film and he may as well be wearing a flashing neon sign that screams "LOOK AT ME! I'M ACTING!"

I feel the same way about Mr. O'Brien's writing. A lot of it is good. Very, very good. But there are whole passages where Mr. O'Brien seems to be wearing a flashing neon sign that screams "LOOK AT ME! I'M WRITING!"

Anywho, just one man's (me!) opinion.

In my english class we had a choice between a few books and i randomly chose this one. when i started reading i actually found myself getting interested in the storyline. i dont remember the last book before this one that i read in a class and actually liked it.

the whole book is one giant question: what happened to the main character's wife? at first it just seems like an entertaining horror/mystery novel but as you read on it gets much more complex. it talks about his experiences in vietnam (and what terrible things he did there), about his abused childhood, and about his odd behavior in college. the story even makes you feel sad when you see how much the main character and his wife used to love eachother.

long story short, this is a great book that will keep you guessing even after you finish it. if you like interesting, thought provoking books, read this one. tim o' brien truely is a great writer.

I am really surprised by the negative reviews of the book--they seems to want too easy an answer from their fiction. John and his wife are incredibly complex characters, well-developed and you care deeply about what might have happened. The fact that the book has such an open-ended approach only adds to its appeal. An excellent read, and re-read!

This book is extremely well written. The story is fascinating. It jumps from the main character's childhood to his life in Viet Nam to his career frequently continuously and in no particular sequence. This is usually this is difficult for me to follow, but in this case it wasn't.

"In the Lake of the Woods" is a cool book. John Wade is a complex character that in more ways than one embodies the personalities of our people todays. Because the book doesn't reveal the truth behind the missing Kathy the fun is in the information about the married couple. I especially liked the part about the evidence and footnotes because it was so different.

This was a tough book to stick through. I found it confusing and repetitous...and upon finishing the book I was left feeling empty because the story never resolved itself. The book looked at the raise and detremental fall of a Politician in Minnesota and how this lead to the disappearence of his wife. It leads the reader through many confusing hypothesis and court depositions to really come up with nothing in the end. I found myself quite disappointed with this book.

O'Brien has succeeded with something that very few serious writers have ever come close to achieving. He has written a book which experiments both with time & perspective (literary cubism of sorts) yet is never ponderous and maintains a very lean and quick prose. An important book!

On reading this book I kept going back to my understanding of the Vietnam War, and my reading of books by both historians and journalists.

What I kept waiting for, and never got, was any honest reassessment by the author, either via the lead character (John Wade) or any commentary by the author, was any honest acknowledgement of what the US really got up to in Vietnam, and specifically in the book’s presentation of the Son My massacre and the lead character’s role in this atrocity.

The only aspect of the book that rings true is Wade’s enthusiasm to attempt to delete himself from the record, something replicated in the attitude and action taken at the time, and perpetuated since, by successive US administrations.

There is the perception that the massacre at My Lai (1968) was unusual, that it was a rare occurrence; this falsehood has been perpetrated ever since 1969 when articles by Seymour Hersh were first published in the mainstream media. US troops in Vietnam committed other comparable atrocities on such a regular basis that they ceased to be regarded as news.

Whilst not explicitly stated in the novel, I read this book as a metaphor for America’s sand-in-the-head attitude to specifically Son My and more generally the entire Vietnam War.

In my opinion “Lake In The Woods” does nothing to dispel the commonly accepted myths surrounding US atrocities during the Vietnam war, to some degree the author continues to perpetrate the one-sided and misinformation that is accepted currency. Certainly his main character shows no sympathy for the Vietnamese victims and not guilt over his participation.

Taking into account what I have stated, is this book contributing to the continuing propaganda surrounding both Son My and Vietnam? If so, from my point of view this book fails to attain its potential full impact.

This is a fascinating fast-read. The mystery throughout the book is never resolved; the reader can decide what really happened. It's the story of a marriage, described from both sides. Makes you wonder how much good there needs to be in a marriage to justify keeping it and vice versa.

In the Lake of the Woods, is the best book I have ever read! O'Brien, lets his readers into the world of a man who has been through so much trauma from his childhood history to his history in the Vietnam war. The novel is spell-binding and leaves the reader craving for more!

I read "In the Lake of the Woods" in my English class. I think it was chosen for the curriculum because it is very well written and it really makes you think about moral issues and about what really happened to Kathy Wade. I wouldn't recommend this book to most people because much of the book is very disturbing, the coarse language that is used, and the ending that leaves you with all questions and no answers. ~~Amy from Walla Walla

Tim O'Brien's book is an amzing page-turner that leaves you gasping for breath. He mixes mystery, suspense, and murder with the plunge into the characters' lives. In The Lake of The Woods is a superb read that any avid reader of suspense and mystery novels will love.

One would think, perchance, that John Wade was falling from grace. From wence he came, he shall return. Perhaps an excursion back to the root of his problematic episodes, Vietnam, would cleanse him of his ever-present emotional instability.

I found In the Lake of the Woods brilliantly written in spots but absolutely wrongheaded in two of its fundamental assumptions: 1)mental illness is caused by trauma, evil parents, and evil deeds, and repression. This is the scientific and moral equivalent of hunting witches. 2) humans are psycologically incapable of committing mass murder, then living successful lives. We have been wiping out our enemies for many tens of millennia, and most of us are doubtless capable in the wrong circumstances of continuing the practice. Wallowing in gothic fancy is not dealing with this dark truth.
In the last several decades this is the book I am most sorry to have read. Doubtless a Nobel awaits O'Brien.

Tim O'brien caught my attention in his book "the things they carried" and again did not disappoint me with "in the lake of the woods".. the complex, unique style of O'brien really gets the mind working and keeps the pages turning.

This book was definitely gripping and still leaves you to wonder...What happened to Kathy??? I had to read this book for my lit class and absolutely enjoyed it! Suspenseful and smart...I give this book 5 stars!

This book has no plot. It is a list of possibilities of plots, but one is never decided upon. In the end the author lets you decide the conclusion you desire. I might as well of just written the book myself. If you want to waste your time reading in circles and having several unanswered questions...go ahead. If you are the kind of person who enjoys a precisely structured book, this book is not for you.

I REALLY didn't like this book. I don't know if it was the ambiguity (I usually like a good mystery), but I think it was more that it was the characters. I didn't like her and I didn't like him. I loved Tim O'Brien's writing, and will give the author another chance, but this story just didn't hold any appeal for me.

This book is the story and the aftermath of the My-Lai massacre of the Vietnam War told through the eyes of a soldier involved in it. Makes for easy reading because of the romance story aspect of it. Made my History class much easier!

In The Lake of The Woods is terrible. It is without a doubt one of the worst books I have ever read. The characters are annoying and I can't bring myself to like them. The book has absolutly no climax or ending. I would rather read Tale of Two Cities 1353151515135 times then read this piece of garbage again. But, if your into really boring books that think they are smart and funny then you should read this. Why the author ever wrote this book is beyond me, he should retire.

Horrible. Simply and utterly horrible.
Note: My class mates and I were forced to study this atrocious book and subsequently fould it to clumsy in its attempt to be ambiguous and different. Not a novel that one would want to read for sheer entertainment.

... I felt the author hide his writing and storyline behind his continuous use of profanity and religious blasphemy. Did it add to the novel to constantly have the character chant "Kill Jesus". I mean really, was it necessary? ...