This is a tragic, amazing, and far-reaching novel. It reminds me of Gone Girl with the disappearing wife and her suspected husband.

It also brings to mind The Shining with its obscenely tormented male protagonist. And there's The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, with the woman on her own in the wilderness, determined to survive.

Plus, there's the fantasy-like setting of the Vietnam War, with its unreality, horror, and emotional detachment, which is unique to Tim O’Brien.

Vietnam is just the backdrop to one man’s emotional anguish and mental breakdown. While the My Lai massacre is treated as the atrocity it was, the murdered boys and girls are only props to the more important side of the story: the effects it had on the American soldiers.

This surely isn't right. Well, it's not politically correct anyway. Tim O’Brien is a brilliant writer, but he’s turned the Vietnam War into a strange fantasy world. At least in this book and The Things They Carried.

He’s made it all artistic, and I’m both grateful for the beautiful, philosophical writing that’s come out of his experience and angered by his complete America-centrism. But I’m also grateful for that viewpoint because it’s what I know and what he knows, and so it’s honest and real.

He’s not trying to write what he doesn’t know just because it would be politically correct. It would be presumptuous, too, although I’m sure a writer like Tim O’Brien could go into the mind of the Other very well.

Garry Mulholland wrote that Vietnam references should be banned, unless they’re made by someone Vietnamese. I’m not sure I’d go that far, but I’d like to know more of the Vietnamese perspective on that utterly meaningless, destructive war. Even though it’ll be hard.

My dad told me that writers who have been in the Vietnam War can only write about that. I’m not sure that’s true—Tim O’Brien is the only one I’ve read so far. I have more reading to do.

Edit: My dad says he never said that.

This book is truly multifaceted.

It delves into various aspects such as politics, PTSD, the Vietnam War, and its lingering legacy of guilt and pain.

All of these elements are masterfully pulled together into a captivating mystery and romance.

I have read Tim O'Brien's Vietnam books. I began with The Things They Carried and Going After Cacciato.

Then I moved on to In The Lake of the Woods.

This particular book stands out as the best among the three. It encompasses everything - war, war crimes, guilt, and redemption.

Sometimes, as the author so vividly portrays, your past follows you so closely that it seems to be right on your heels.

In the Lake of the Woods may be an old book, but it remains extremely timely.

It is beautifully written by an author who has personal experience of the subject matter and who skillfully weaves history with fiction and emotion, creating a truly engaging and thought-provoking read.

As I reread this book for the third time in preparation for my upcoming IB exams, I am once again conflicted with my thoughts on it.

On one hand, I cannot deny that this is a work of art. It is an intricately crafted piece of literature that I could not fathom to even emulate. Every sentence is intentional, written with thought and a deceptive simplicity. The author has masterfully woven together a story that engages the reader's mind and makes them think deeply about the themes presented.

On the other hand, every fibre of my being is against liking this book. I can't seem to bring myself to be swept away by the characters nor the dilemma O'Brien proposes. There is something about the book that just doesn't resonate with me on an emotional level. Maybe it's the writing style or the subject matter.

Would I recommend this book? Yes and no. Yes, I would recommend it to those who appreciate literature as a work of art and want to study the techniques and craftsmanship that went into creating it. However, I would not recommend it for genuine enjoyment. It is not a book that I would pick up for pleasure or entertainment. It is a book that requires effort and concentration to fully understand and appreciate.

Politics was nothing but manipulation, much like a captivating magic show with its invisible wires and secret trapdoors. He envisioned holding a city in the palm of his hand, then clenching his fist, transforming the city into a more joyous place. Manipulation, that was where the excitement lay.

This was an in-depth and arduous character study of a truly terrifying man. However, it was extremely challenging and original in its structure, and the writing was simply outstanding. Not a single word was wasted, despite the fact that we heard dozens of voices and seemingly unconnected facts and statements scattered throughout. The overall effect was both chilling and horrifying, yet completely fascinating. For fans like me of Unravelling Oliver, who can relish a book without liking the main character in any way and who can manage without having their hand held and being provided with a definitive solution to the mystery.

One plus one equals zero.

The author either plays completely fair with the clues or completely manipulates us, and a careful reading will reveal precisely what we need to know and precisely nothing at all. Do we ever truly discover who the omniscient existential narrator/curator is, whose voice is heard in the footnotes? This is a book that merits a reread to find out.

Once again, Tim O'Brien has left me with a plethora of questions and a profound sense of awe at his literary prowess.

Richard Thinbill's ongoing trauma regarding the flies, which initially seems nonsensical but gradually makes more sense as the story unfolds and is supplemented with other information, reminds me of the horrifyingly hilarious conventions in Joseph Heller's Catch-22.

John Wade's detachment from the situation of his wife's disappearance, his lack of outward display of love or concern, his callous and distant approach, and his unreliability regarding the events surrounding her disappearance all make me wonder if Gillian Flynn might have read this book before penning Gone Girl.

Throughout reading this book, the most obvious parallel I wanted to draw was to The Things They Carried. However, curiously, I found this more difficult than expected, aside from the aspects of war and ruthless killing. What are we to make of the parallel between Wade's harrowing experiences with the Charlie Company at Thuan Yen and what the "Evidence" chapters present about the British slaughtering the Americans during the Revolution and the Americans slaughtering the Native Americans? Perhaps O'Brien is commenting on the cyclical brutality of wars, where all are culpable of rage, vengeance, and inhumanity. TTTC gave me a new level of empathy for those brutal killers and their state of mind. Now I wonder, is it fair or excusable for soldiers in such circumstances to say, "when you look back at things that transpired, things you did, you say: Why? Why did I do that? That is not me. Something happened to me" (262).

Another similarity I appreciate with TTTC is that it doesn't matter - and we can't know - if he actually did it, but he's guilty anyway and he grieved either way.

And of course, there's our (unreliable?) footnote/authorial narrator, who inserts himself and appears so truthful yet confesses to having secrets and knowledge of deception, not unlike the narrator Tim in TTTC.

I still need to process all the recurring ideas in the book and what they mean to me beyond the text. However, I'm not sure I'll ever have definitive answers. Here are some of my questions:

- Magic/disappearing/tricks/the mirror box/his Sorcerer title: Did John Wade use all these to hide from what happened to him, hide who he was? Or because he didn't know who he was? Or as the only way he knew of sharing who he was? Or a way of owning himself and her? Or maybe I should be wondering why O'Brien uses these devices more than why Wade does? (And don't we all present and start to believe these alternate versions of ourselves, these tricks and illusions, though perhaps not as literally?)

- The craving, the desire, the overwhelming need for love and adoration and acceptance as a result of low self-esteem or feelings of inadequacy, especially for public figures like politicians and war heroes (and, personally speaking, pseudo-semi-public figures like teachers to a lesser degree?)

- Why do the mostly-unwilling spouses support these public figures through all the politicking and scandals despite how they must be devastated by it? Or maybe occasionally they manage to recover with renewed determination. (HRC?)

- The frustrating impossibility of stopping the loop of death as a repeated act (because we keep replaying it?) and how people "were never quite dead, otherwise they would surely stop dying" (283).

- Does one plus one equal zero, like those strange snakes swallowing each other's tails? Is that happiness? Is it possible? What if "those two dumbass snakes had somehow managed to gobble each other up?" (300). But of course, we know "Love wasn't enough. Which was the truth. The saddest thing of all" (174).

Perhaps most importantly, with everything else in this book, what is O'Brien saying about memory and truth and how our minds betray us time and again and what it tricks us into believing or forgetting? Is that betrayal/repression a result of our guilt, or the only way to survive, or both?

I desperately want answers to all my questions, but at some point, I just need to "Give it up. Totally hopeless. Nobody will ever know" (266).

I'm hopeful that many of my questions will be answered when I see Tim O'Brien speak at Dominican University on Tuesday (7/19/16), but I'm fairly certain I will still be left with mystery, uncertainty, and eternal doubt. And would I have it any other way?

"If all is supposition, if ending is air, then why not happiness?" (299).

"But truth won't allow it. Because there is no end, happy or otherwise. Nothing is fixed, nothing is solved....All secrets lead to the dark, and beyond the dark, there is only the maybe" (301).

Tim O’Brien has a strange effect on me. He makes me want to be a writer, not because his writing is some sort of masterpiece that deeply inspires me. No, it’s because he makes me think that writing isn’t all that difficult. It seems as if clearly any asshole can do it. Now, that might sound harsh considering how much I actually enjoyed this book. I found myself both enjoying it and at the same time thinking it wasn’t very good.

So, what is the book about? Well, it’s about a kid with an alcoholic father who uses magic and illusion to cope with life. He then goes to Vietnam, witnesses a horrifying massacre, and falls back on the art of illusion to hide himself from the world. Twenty years later, as he bids for the Senate, his history comes to light. While hiding out in the lake of the woods, one day he wakes up and his wife is gone. Did he kill her? In the end, there are no definite answers, only various possibilities.

Tim O’Brien only spent one year in Vietnam. When I read that, I felt a strange sense of disappointment. My first thought was, ‘shit, that’s like me writing five books about that one year in high school when I worked at Radio Shack.’ There are probably a lot of similarities between Vietnam and Radio Shack, so many in fact that I don’t need to list them here.

So, again, what is the book about? It’s about the nature of memory, the secrets that we keep even from ourselves, and the possibility of truly knowing another human being or even our own minds. You know who would hate this book? Justin. Enough said.

This book has truly left me in a state of awe and shuddering at least six times. It is astoundingly good. Tim O'Brien's writing is characterized by such a subtle mastery that it can almost be frightening to read his work.

On page 10, he introduces a seemingly innocuous line that stands out just enough to make you wonder about its true relevance. Then, a hundred pages later, when he finally reveals it, the impact is devastating. Just as in The Things They Carried, O'Brien tells a riveting story that twists and turns back on itself multiple times.

Moreover, the story directly addresses the dilemma of storytelling and the blurred lines between fiction, non-fiction, and truth. How do we tell a true story? How can we be sure of what is true? Why do we feel the need to uncover secrets that may forever remain unknowable?

The story itself is not overly complex. A promising young politician named John Wade suffers a crushing defeat when a dark secret from his past in Vietnam is exposed. Shortly after, his wife disappears, and Wade becomes a suspect.

We witness the story in the present, and then it curls back to show Wade's experiences in the war, which are as chilling as any I've ever read. We also see his relationship with his wife, which initially seemed innocent and loving, and his painful childhood where he first began to keep secrets from his loved ones and himself.

Alternating chapters hypothesize how events may have unfolded, while others present pieces of evidence as decontextualized quotes, both from characters testifying about the events in the story and passages from real-world biographies of major political figures and other relevant non-fiction works.

In the footnotes that mostly appear in the Evidence chapters, the narrator becomes a character, desperately trying, just like the reader, to tease out a thread of meaning and truth from the darkness. The narrator's identity remains as ambiguous as what really happened to the wife.

This further complicates the fiction/non-fiction line, as the narrator seems to have much in common with the author, yet the other characters are supposedly creations of his imagination. This poses the question: How different is fiction from non-fiction? In both, the author and the reader struggle to find something true, something that is ultimately unknowable and unreachable.

The latter half of the book does tread water for a while and over-explains some ideas that are already clear, but the ending manages to pull every idea together beautifully.

I have a profound affection for the unconventional structure of this remarkable book.

Right from the very beginning, it commences with a captivating mystery that instantly grabs the reader's attention. Tim O'Brien skillfully presents a series of hypotheses, leaving us constantly wondering what might have actually occurred. However, we are never given a definite answer, which adds to the allure and intrigue of the story.

I most certainly have formulated my own theories regarding what probably took place and what I truly wish had happened, and interestingly, these two are quite different. The characterization in this book is nothing short of superb. Each character is brought to life with such vividness and depth that they seem to step right off the pages.

Moreover, the writing style is equally outstanding. O'Brien masterfully utilizes the mystery and the hypotheses as a framework through which he delves deep into the lives of the characters, exploring their emotions, desires, and conflicts. This book holds a special place in my heart as it is the first "literary" novel that I have truly loved and cherished.

It has opened my eyes to the beauty and power of literature and has left a lasting impression on me.

I first encountered this work nine years ago in the standard printed format. At that time, I was engrossed in a plethora of books related to Vietnam. Although Vietnam was a war that I did not participate in, it still had a profound impact on my life.

Now, here I am, listening to the audible version while following along with the Kindle edition. Perhaps by now, I have managed to escape the enigma of how Vietnam truly influenced my life. However, this book delves into the mystery surrounding another man and how it affected him, ultimately bringing him to his knees.

The story alternates between a man's experiences in Vietnam, which are connected to the infamous My Lai massacre, and the present-day setting of the Minnesota boundary waters. The events of 20 years ago continue to haunt our protagonist, just as they do the author of the book. The conclusion of the book is peculiarly constructed, lacking a traditional ending and with many crucial paragraphs oddly disclosed in footnotes where the author directly addresses the reader.

It's all encompassed within these pages: Alcoholism; Abortion; Secrets; Magic; Politics; Death; Gambling; Vietnam; Suicide; Infidelity; Mystery; Murder; the Northwest Angle and more.

For me, any book about Vietnam represents a mysterious and unknown aspect of my life. I narrowly avoided going there. So, all these books about Vietnam offer me a glimpse of the horror that I evaded. It would be simplistic to say "the horror that I fortunately missed," but should I dismiss the possibility of a happy ending? Can a war ever have a happy conclusion? I highly doubt it...

One of the most heartbreaking books I have ever perused is about a man who committed heinous acts. He is unable to forgive himself for those deeds, which ultimately leads to the destruction of his own life and that of his wife as well.

Perhaps it is about a sociopath who was always predisposed to do terrible things and simply required a war to bring them to the surface.

The book is a bit rough around the edges, not as polished as Tim O'Brien's finest work, 'The Things They Carried'. Nevertheless, it is still the creation of a master storyteller who is fixated on the themes of pain, grief, memory, and the desire to flee from all of it.

The author's exploration of these complex emotions and human nature is both captivating and deeply disturbing. It makes the reader question the very essence of morality and the consequences of our actions.

Despite its flaws, the book leaves a lasting impression and forces us to confront the darker aspects of the human psyche.

The ambiguity present in this story might be dissatisfying and even irritating to some. However, it is important to remember that this is a love story, and love is rarely tidy. We can blame it on the complex nature of the human heart.

Tim O'Brien has truly reached a special place in my heart that is beyond review. When it comes to his work, I can no longer be impartial. I am a die-hard fan. His prose is like gravy dripping off a squeaky cheese curd on a hot poutine, pure perfection. 'In the Lake of the Woods' only served to intensify my love for his writing.

The story is a complex patchwork quilt composed of memories, observations, interviews, and hypotheses, all revolving around a married couple on the verge of a breakdown. John Wade, a Vietnam war veteran, has just lost a major political campaign. Together with his wife Kathy, they escape the aftermath of his defeat by traveling to a remote cabin. In the tranquility of the natural landscape, the illusion they project of being the perfect couple quickly vanishes. Then, one of them disappears.

O'Brien has a unique talent for seamlessly weaving nature into his prose. No other author I have read can achieve what he does. It is immersive and gives his plots an almost ethereal quality. You are left feeling unsteady, precariously balanced between reality and make-believe. Memory, truth, and desire are constantly at war with each other. The water's current can pull you in any direction it desires, and although you can fight it, ultimately, you don't have a choice.

The malleability of memory is also a subject of great interest to O'Brien. In particular, he explores how we reshape bits of our pasts to make them seem cleaner and more presentable. Whether this is a conscious or subconscious act, everyone does it at some point. In this way, everyone is a stranger. As O'Brien so poignantly writes, "our fathers, our wives and husbands: Do we truly know them? How much is camouflage?"

Four plus stars.

It's truly amazing. I find it impossible to do this book full justice. I'm at a loss as to how to even begin to describe it. There is an abundance of things to think about, and I'm still in the process of processing it all.

The book is dark, and you probably won't have a great deal of affection for the main characters. There is a mystery at its core, but it's also delving into the themes of Vietnam, PTSD, and politics.

The author's utilization of magic is inspired, and the way the story is told, which might drive some readers crazy, I discovered to be a captivating literary device.

I've started writing this review three times already, and I'm just going to put an end to it for now. I adored The Things They Carried, and while this book isn't quite that, it's still very good.

It has its own unique charm and depth that makes it a worthwhile read.

Despite its flaws, it manages to engage the reader on multiple levels and leave a lasting impression.

I highly recommend it to those who are looking for something different and thought-provoking.