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Alisha C, September 18, 2011 (view all comments by Alisha C)
Just like "The Things They Carried," "In the Lake of the Woods" will stay with you long after you turn the last page. A haunting story full of secrets and lies and how they eventually come to the surface.

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garvais, May 15, 2011 (view all comments by garvais)
Tim O’Brian’s In the Lake of the Woods is a thrilling novel that creates a mystery that keeps the reader guessing to the end. In the Lake of the Woods has a marital conflict filled with lies and deception coupled with a disappearance that has lots of speculation. Tim O’Brian includes tails from Vietnam that he uses to parallel the story line and characters in it. All these details add together to form an amazing novel that is intriguing from the beginning.
In the Lake of the Woods by Tim O’Brian takes place mainly in Minnesota’s Lake of the Woods and U of M campus. The third person point of view is told by a narrator of the story is nameless only there to present the facts and tells the story. John Wade and Kathy Wade are the main characters in the novel. John Wade is a lieutenant governor of Minnesota who is madly in love with Kathy. Kathy is his wife and goes missing while they are on vacation in the Lake of the Woods. The novel is broken up in chapters that each serves a different purpose in telling the story. There are chapters called evidence that bring clues to the mystery through quotes from books and people and there are the chapters that tell the stories of Vietnam and the past history of Kathy and John. Each of these aspects add up to create the mystery.
This novel has graphic tales of the Vietnam War that O’Brian takes from his own experience. Vietnam being one of the most grotesque conflicts in American history shows the human collateral that was taken during the raging wars in small villages. The story of John or Sorcerer, which is his nickname from his war buddies, shows the harsh realities and the memories that still haunt the men that served in the war. The main conflict that the novel is centered around is how a man and wife interact and how their relationship has lies and how they deal with that. The stories from Vietnam create the problems along with paralleling them.
In the Lake of the Woods starts off with John and Kathy escaping from the event of losing Johns senate election to a cottage in the woods. Tim O’Brian use great detail in his descriptions of setting and people to get the reader engaged with the story. “There were many trees, mostly pine and birch, and there was the dock and the boathouse and the narrow dirt road that came through the forest and ended in polished gray rocks at the shore below the cottage”(1). This cottage is where Kathy goes missing and the mystery begins. The narrator brings new information and flashbacks with every chapter that comes up. The first thing we learn about John is that is father commits suicide this impact John a lot. He thinks his father is still around and talks to him and when he thinks about it gets really violent thoughts. Kathy and John meet at school and fall head over heels in love. John is so in love that he follows her every where she goes and she doesn’t know. He like the felling of knowing everything about Kathy and also makes him feel magical that he can be so sneaky. Kathy goes on without noticing at all. The Vietnam War takes John to a mysterious place that he fights and kills innocent people that haunt him. “All night he’d been caught up in pink rivers and pink paddies; even now, squatting at the rear of the chopper, he couldn’t flush away the pink” (104). This quote show the way O’Brian saw Vietnam and the vivid imagery that he uses also depict the intensity. The novel continues to give hypothesis of where Kathy many have gone or what happened to her which the question the makes the mystery. The hypothesizes range from her running away because she can’t handle the stress of her husband’s lies and either decided never to come back or drowning in the lake to the extreme, that maybe her husband actually killed her. All these are hypothesis, and the reader is left to infer.
This book has themes and ideas that are great for anyone that has ever been in a serious relationship especially those who are relationships with someone who has been to war. This book is a quick read that is full of drama and mystery. This book gave great descriptions of characters and places. The setting makes it a fun read for anyone who lives in Minnesota or knows that mystery and majestic nature of the Lake of the Woods. The theme that in even the most passionate relationship there is always a lie makes anyone examine their relationships past or present. O’Brian uses his own experience to enhance the seriousness of the novel and show that even though the war ended that people still are haunted by the events that happened. The novel will have you questioning everything you ever thought you knew about someone and make you wondering what happens next.
Tim O’Brian’s In the Lake of the Woods creates a mystery that takes more then just one chapter to decide what the truth is. The reader is forces to examine the lives of John and Kathy wade to decide if they are capable of what is presented. This novel will leave its reader guessing even after the last page.

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megcampbell3, November 3, 2007 (view all comments by megcampbell3)
A quiet, violent story, like so many stories coming out of the Vietnam War and landing on the shores of America; fiction or non: a mystery of humanity and history tangled in the present. Perhaps "In the Lake of the Woods" is not Tim O’Brien's 'beyond compare' book of his life's work (Vietnam), but it is an engrossing facet nonetheless. "In the Lake of the Woods" is one story, the same story as all the stories in "The Things They Carried" made unrecognizable, and it's an absorbing read. Its narrative can’t help but point at what we might be facing in the aftermath of our wars in Iraq.

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Product Details

ISBN:

9780618709861

Author:

O'Brien, Tim

Publisher:

Mariner Books

Location:

Boston

Subject:

Political

Subject:

Psychological

Subject:

Married people

Subject:

Missing persons

Subject:

General Fiction

Subject:

Domestic fiction

Subject:

Minnesota

Subject:

Literature-A to Z

Copyright:

1994

Edition Description:

Trade Paper

Publication Date:

September 2006

Binding:

TRADE PAPER

Grade Level:

General/trade

Language:

English

Pages:

336

Dimensions:

8.26x5.58x.78 in. .73 lbs.

In the Lake of the Woods Sale Trade Paper Tim O'Brien Product details 336 pages Mariner Books - 2010-06-09 English 9780618709861 Reviews: