A powerful book. For once, the blurbs on the covers say it all--and I agree with them. The Wall Street Journal says it's "gracefully written." That it is. And that it's "gripping." Yes, it is. I'll be thinking about this one for a long time. For one thing, I was almost old enough to go to Vietnam. I don't know how I could have handled some of the situations that occurred over there....

“In every trick there are two carefully thought out lines—the way it looks and the way it is. The success of your work depends upon your understanding the relationship of these lines.”

—Robert Parrish (The Magician’s Handbook)

Well, what does failure look like, then?

Politicians, generals, a man who wants to be better than he is, a woman desperate to believe in the happiness of her marriage—all these are subject to the slight of hand. They make themselves victims of knowing there’s a trick but willing to believe anyway.

The greatest danger of an illusion is that we come to believe in it. The half-truth, the story becomes a vision of reality that shakily fits. With distorted vision we walk and grab for the object of our desire and wrestle with frustration as our hand comes up short or dips off to the side. We experience the pain of false belief confronting objective reality. With the stab of that pain something has to give: either we confront the ugly truth and adapt to its necessities or shrug off the lesson, diving deeper into the illusion, where no one may reach us. In the dark everyone is an enemy, and our failures are the result of a conspiracy, persecution—not our refusal to turn toward the light. (Or maybe we convince ourselves the hand isn’t empty, that body counts are the score we desire…)

John Wade keeps himself in the shadows. He erases his boyhood flab, blots out his wartime magic, ennobles his domestic spying. Fact and fiction blend in his mind, and for the reader the mysteries run deep.

Kennedy, LBJ, McNamara, Westmoreland—they wrapped the nation’s young men in chains and dropped them in the water tank, thinking they’d craft an escape plan before the air bubbles stopped rising to the surface.

War doesn’t care much for illusions.

Vietnam flashbacks are real. Very hard to read.

reading this after kristin hannah's "the women" is so jarring. the juxtaposition of the soldiers lining up to murder babies and rape women and then that white lady victimizing herself and asking why college protestors "hate the veterans"... like gee, i do wonder why.

This book is multifaceted. Politics. PTSD. Vietnam War and it’s legacy of guilt and pain. All pulled into a mystery and romance.
I read Tim O’Briens Vietnam books. I started with The Things They Carried, Going After Cacciato,
Then In The Lake of the Woods.
This is the best of the three. Has it all...war, war crimes. guilt and redemption. Sometimes your past follows so closely it runs up on your heels. In the Lake of the Woods is an old book but very timely.
And well written by an author who has been there and who weaves history with fiction and emotion.

I respect the idea here, that there are no answers to what is reality, there is mystery at the heart of existence. I am not a mystery fan disappointed by the lack of a solution. But the author explicitly announces early on that the mystery won't be solved, saying to read a different book if you want answers, and he clobbers you over the head with that message explicitly so many times (mostly in annoying footnotes that directly address the reader in the author's voice) that it becomes tedious. Circling endlessly through all the layers of flashbacks doesn't really reveal many new insights, making the rest of the book a pointless exercise.

The perfect book to take to the cottage, I loved the twists and turns that kept you guessing until the end. 3.75 stars

This book tells the story of politician John Wade, who was on a rapid rise up the political ladder when it came crashing down after it was discovered he participated in the My Lai catastrophe during the Vietnam War. He escapes to a remote cabin with his wife, Kathy, who suddenly disappears one day. It is never revealed what ultimately happened to Kathy.

I am torn about this book - I thought it was interesting how O'Brien detailed the events in Vietnam, especially since he himself was in Vietnam. I also liked how he wrote different scenarios for what happened to Kathy and made them all plausible possibilities. But I did not like John Wade at all, and actually felt little sympathy for Kathy - to me, John displayed very scary personality traits before they even married (including stalking her; it is later revealed that she knew about this the whole time). Yes, John had a difficult upbringing with an alcoholic father, and no doubt Vietnam and the atrocities of My Lai haunted him, but even before he went to Vietnam, he "creeped" me out. Several points in the book I contemplated not continuing, which is very unusual for me. Yet I still give it three stars for the parts I did like and for a unique story.

3.5. Summer reading with a group of kids...not as good as The Things They Carried but very much Tim O’Brien. The war and its lasting effects...themes of innocence, guilt, what is taken from us and how we go on. We’ll see what they think!

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 ugliness of self and history – these were the 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?

Dreamlike & menacing O'Brien takes a tired plot and sets it alight. His creation - John Wade: soldier, stalker, politician, husband, The Sorcerer.

Did he kill his wife?

It is the author trickery that is to be admired: his use of repetition and rhythm unsettles, his hypothesis and evidence persuades but in the end none of that matters. This is a study on hunger, war, the cost of wanting what was never given, stealing love with tricks, the burden of blood - blood shared and blood spilt.

A fascinating read by an exciting writer. Recommend.

4 ⭐️
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i read this book for my literature class and so i went into it with the view of writing an essay and picking the best pieces to write from. so i guess this isn’t really a rating?? only reason it wasn’t a 5 star was because i didn’t really like the writing style. just wasn’t for me but i still really enjoyed the plot and story. guess it’s time to write an essay

First of all, this book made me realize how much I generally like most books that I read. Because this was a screaming exception.

This is the basic summary of the story: 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 Minnesota's Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate after his involvement in the My Lai Massacre in Vietnam was revealed to the public.

I hated the structure of the book. It was divided into the story, pages of weird evidence (quotes from other trials, from literature, from interviews of the missing woman's case), and hypothetical imaginings of where the woman was. I didn't care if they found her. I didn't care what happened to John, either.

I hated John (the main character). I didn't care for his wife Kathy (the missing woman). I hated the story itself, I didn't care about anything that was happening to them. I just felt revulsion in how they portrayed John's obsession with his wife throughout college--he totally grossed me out. HATE.

People on Amazon's reviews mostly loved it. But I really appreciated this particular negative review, because it totally got how I felt about it: "This novel does not have enough thematic substance or emotional resonance to carry our interest. The symbolism is heavy handed and the protagonist lacks sympathy. His parents are caricatures, as are the other supporting characters. Kathy, the missing wife, is not developed as a character enough nor is their marriage compelling enough to induce our interest in their fate as a couple or as individuals. "

So glad it's OVER. Never have to read that one again.