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In the Lake of the Woods Paperback – September 1, 1995

by Tim O'Brien (Author)

4.1 1,620 ratings

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Pursued by rumors of the atrocities he committed in Vietnam, a politician and his wife seek refuge in a cabin in Minnesota, where a mystery unfolds, in this widely acclaimed, best-selling novel. Reprint. National ad/promo.

Print length

320 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Penguin Books
Publication date

September 1, 1995
Dimensions

5.18 x 0.57 x 7.72 inches
ISBN-10

0140250948
ISBN-13

978-0140250947
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Popular Highlights in this book

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They wanted happiness without knowing what it was, or where to look, which made them want it all the more.
Highlighted by 365 Kindle readers
Sometimes he did bad things just to be loved, and sometimes he hated himself for needing love so badly.
Highlighted by 309 Kindle readers
What John felt that night, and for many nights afterward, was the desire to kill.
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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Tim O'Brien has been writing about Vietnam in one way or another ever since he served there as an infantryman in the late 1960s. His earliest work on the subject, If I Die in a Combat Zone, was an intensely personal memoir of his own tour of duty; his books since then have featured many of the same elements of fear, boredom, and moral ambiguity but in a fictional setting. In 1994 O'Brien wrote In the Lake of the Woods, a novel that, while imbued with the troubled spirit of Vietnam, takes place entirely after the war and in the United States. The main character, John Wade, is a man in crisis: after spending years building a successful political career, he finds his future derailed during a bid for the U.S. Senate by revelations about his past as a soldier in Vietnam. The election lost by a landslide, John and his wife, Kathy, retreat to a small cabin on the shores of a Minnesota lake--from which Kathy mysteriously disappears.

Was she murdered? Did she run away? Instead of answering these questions, O'Brien raises even more as he slowly reveals past lives and long-hidden secrets. Included in this third-person narrative are "interviews" with the couple's friends and family as well as footnoted excerpts from a mix of fictionalized newspaper reports on the case and real reports pertaining to historical events--a mélange that lends the novel an eerie sense of verisimilitude. If Kathy's disappearance is at the heart of this work, then John's involvement in a My Lai-type massacre in Vietnam is its core, and O'Brien uses it to demonstrate how wars don't necessarily end when governments say they do. In the Lake of the Woods may not be true, but it feels true--and for Tim O'Brien, that's true enough. --Alix Wilber

From Publishers Weekly

A politician's career is ruined overnight by revelations of his wartime participation in a village massacre in Vietnam while his personal life is undone by the sudden dissappearance of his wife.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Penguin Books (September 1, 1995)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 320 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0140250948
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0140250947
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 8 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.18 x 0.57 x 7.72 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #2,671,642 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #15,303 in Psychological Fiction (Books)
- #29,066 in Contemporary Literature & Fiction
- #101,605 in Literary Fiction (Books)

Customer Reviews:
4.1 1,620 ratings

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Tim O'Brien

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TIM O'BRIEN received the 1979 National Book Award in fiction for Going After Cacciato. His other works include the acclaimed novels The Things They Carried and July, July. In the Lake of the Woods received the James Fenimore Cooper Prize from the Society of American Historians and was named the best novel of 1994 by Time. O'Brien lives in Austin, Texas.

Customer reviews

1,620 global ratings

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Customers say

Customers find the book depressing and disturbing at times. They describe the plot as fascinating and compelling. However, opinions differ on the writing style - some find it well-written and poetic in a minimalist way, while others consider it tedious and full of contradictions. There are mixed views on character development - some find them appealing, while others find them unappealing or psychotic.

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Depth Plot complexity Writing style Character development Depression level

11 customers mention "Depth"11 positive0 negative

Customers find the book engaging and insightful. They appreciate the author's knowledge of humanity and skillful writing style. The book explores complex human psyche issues with depth and complexity. Readers find it heartbreaking, beautiful, and moving at times.

"...to like about O'Brien is here: his mastery of language and knowledge of humanity...." Read more

"...He writes with great control, sharp insight, and inventive story structures that exploit plot, character, pacing and subtext in innovative and..." Read more

"...The book deals with very important issues at many different levels, and the ending makes you think about and long about these issues throughout..." Read more

"...The first was, "The Things They Carried" which was heartbreaking...." Read more

52 customers mention "Plot complexity"35 positive17 negative

Customers have mixed opinions about the plot. Some find it fascinating and compelling, with interesting characters and a well-developed story. Others feel the plot meanders unnecessarily, the ending is ambiguous, and the subject matter is disturbing.

"...Intense, suspenseful, and thought-provoking, this is one book I'll likely remember longer than I wish." Read more

"...Overall, I found the book very enlightening and enjoyable, far better than The Nuclear Age, the last O'Brien book I read...." Read more

"...I couldn't put it down. The ending was a bit unsatisfying...." Read more

"...Tim O’Brien’s prose is always poetic in a minimalist way, and always hits me deeply. I wholeheartedly recommend this book!" Read more

32 customers mention "Writing style"22 positive10 negative

Customers have mixed opinions about the writing style. Some find it well-written and poetic in a minimalist way, making it easy to read. Others mention that the writing is full of contradictions, difficult to understand, and tedious to read.

"...Everything to like about O'Brien is here: his mastery of language and knowledge of humanity...." Read more

"...How well can you know anyone? Tim O’Brien’s prose is always poetic in a minimalist way, and always hits me deeply...." Read more

"...Even the Canadians help. No luck.Sometimes the book is confusing because of the narrator’s speculation about what happened or is..." Read more

"...The book is very well written. You won’t be able to put it down." Read more

11 customers mention "Character development"6 positive5 negative

Customers have different views on the character development in the book. Some find the characters well-developed and intriguing, while others consider them unappealing and the main character a psychopath with few redeeming qualities.

"...He’s guilty, he’s not guilty, he’s guilty. Great characters and more than a little glimpse into the terrors and atrocities of Vietnam. I enjoyed it." Read more

"...mystery in this novel...it was all character and it was hard to like the main character, though I did feel sympathy for him...." Read more

"...But you have to look beyond that.John Wade is a fascinating character with huge flaws. I'll say nothing else...." Read more

"I disliked this book. The main character is a psychopath, with few redeeming qualities. The plot meanders needlessly...." Read more

12 customers mention "Depression level"0 positive12 negative

Customers find the book depressing and disturbing. They describe it as dreary, creepy, and mysterious.

"...Depressing as the book is, distressing as the book is, Lake of the Woods gives us insights into the population of young men and women who have been..." Read more

"...it 20 times in the book, but it's really not shocking at all and feels forced. (And was never explained.)..." Read more

"...And then the wife, confused, unfaithful, moody...." Read more

"...There is no redemption in this story. It will not make you feel good, but you will not forget it." Read more

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Top reviews from the United States

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Dave Schwinghammer

Almost as good as THE THINGS THEY CARRIED!

Reviewed in the United States on April 24, 2023

Verified Purchase

John Wade is a Vietnam vet, probably suffering from PTS, who has managed to sublimate his experience enough to run for the state legislature and Lieutenant Governor and win. But then he decides to run for the U.S. senate, and his past catches up with him.

You see, John Wade was at the My Lai massacre, and his Republican opponent finds out about it and publishes it in the Minneapolis Star Tribune. Wade had been far ahead in the polls, but the bottom dropped out after the smear job.

It’s important for Wade to be liked. He thought his father never really liked him, making fun of his weight, even though he wasn’t that heavy. He even scorned Wade’s obsession with magic. Then he went and committed suicide.

Wade’s nickname in Vietnam was The Sorcerer. He did tricks for his fellow soldiers. It was beyond just tricks however. They actually thought he had special powers, and he showed it when he took out a sniper who had shot and killed one of his peers.

Lt. Calley gave the order to kill those civilians. There’s a quote from him where he insists they’re all Viet Cong. Calley was the only one charged and convicted of the murders, although most of the men obeyed orders. Wade and a native American soldier were the only two who were reluctant.

The Conflict isn’t just the election loss. Suddenly Wade’s wife Kathy, who says she loves her husband, even after she had an affair, suddenly takes a boat and heads out into the Lake of the Woods. Take a look at a map of Minnesota. The Lake of the Woods is huuuge! The sheriff sends out dozens of people looking for her. Even the Canadians help. No luck.

Sometimes the book is confusing because of the narrator’s speculation about what happened or is happening. We see Kathy get lost; we see her turn around and try to go back where she came from. She knows the sun rises in the East and she forms a line in her head she will follow until she runs into Minnesota mainland. But we don’t know if that’s what really happened. We also see John Wade boil a pot of tea and poor it on the plants in the living room, then go into the bedroom to watch his beautiful wife sleep. He’s thinking how much he loves her. Later we see the same scene, only this time he dumps the tea all over her face. So. . .which is it?

This is a very good book, almost as good as THE THINGS THEY CARRIED. I’m the type of reader who hates an ending where there’s no resolution. I majored in English in college, and that happened a lot with modern short stories. It was almost always up to the reader. In this case no resolution is the best resolution. Towards the end everybody gives up the search, and Wade goes out on his own looking for her or contemplating suicide because he knows she’s dead. For all we know they’re both still out there trying to find each other again.

2 people found this helpful

Helpful

Mindo'ermatter

Wartime Trauma Haunts Politician's Career and Family

Reviewed in the United States on February 23, 2021

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Context is critical when reading this metafictional novel because the author's skillfully weaves some true facts and places within his own creative storytelling by intentionally blurring factual and fictional elements. The dynamics are attention grabbing and troubling.

Wade and Kathy fall in love in college in the 1960s, but Wade's dysfunctional childhood brings baggage into their relationship neither fully understands. Adding difficulties and drama to their courtship is Wade's tour of duty in Vietnam, which he unexpectedly extends by another year. After the war, Wade was never the same, yet the two marry, as Wade completes law school and begins a successful political career. Then, everything changes.

Tim O'Brien's unique writing approach creates an imaginative tale detailing the horrific effects battlefield experiences have on surviving veterans decades later. Consistent with the author's previous works, this award-winning novel extends his retelling of the lasting devastation war has on all involved. However, this work emphasizes the lasting trauma on survivors and their families too often hidden and unexpressed until tragedies confront old and new victims with unimaginable consequences.

Because of multiple storylines told in pieces and not always in chronological order, this woeful tale is told mostly as reflective but disconnected story from Wade's unstable perspectives as he lives and relives several stages of of his life simultaneously. Hence, both structure and content make this compelling read difficult and unsettling.

Many might misunderstand or become offended by some graphic and sacrilegious language; however, those familiar with veterans suffering from PTSD trauma of battlefield experiences will be more accepting of these shocking dialogue and narrative elements. Those reading with Audible's supplemental narration will note significant deletions of many vulgarities to ease the listening experience but without distracting too much from the author's intentions.

The author's unusual plotline and story format includes multiple chapters on evidence and hypothetical explanations with contrasting depth and perspectives both corroborating and conflicting with Wade's disjointed and incomplete retellings. Lots to think about here.

You'll either love or hate this book, but you'll likely appreciate most the intensity this psychological drama creates with ambiguous and conflicting meanings. Great material for discussions and reading-group analysis!

I'm unsettled with my reading experience, while respecting the author's need to tell this fictional story, which feels more truthful than it should. Intense, suspenseful, and thought-provoking, this is one book I'll likely remember longer than I wish.

5 people found this helpful

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Adam D.

Virtuosic

Reviewed in the United States on February 28, 2005

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I wouldn't hesitate to put this book in O'Brien's top 3, along with The Things they Carried and Going After Cacciato. The story revolves around Minnesota Lieutenant Governor and Senate Candidate John Wade, who loses a brutal race in which it is divulged that he participated in the infamous My Lai massacre 30 years earlier. His political career over and future stalled, he decides to spend a little time with his wife in a small lodge in the wilderness. Before long, she goes missing, and a cloud of suspicion descends over him.

Everything to like about O'Brien is here: his mastery of language and knowledge of humanity. Here, he looks at how secrets can affect us and how devastating denial can be. We all have loose threads in the tapestry of our lives, but if we ignore them, the entire thing can unravel. Plus, this functions as a closer look at the kinds of people you find in government: hopelessly insecure, traumatized, power-hungry. This is not to say that Wade was a bad man, but he did have problems.

As for Wade himself, I found him pitiable. He certainly was not an angel--he spied on his wife, lied to her, lied to everyone, and hurt a lot of people. He didn't want to get into politics to help people, but rather to indulge his own tastes. However, the humiliation heaped upon him is more than anyone should have to bear. I am of the opinion that Wade did not have anything to do with the disappearance, although it is a trick worthy of his magician self--make the lady disappear.

Overall, I found the book very enlightening and enjoyable, far better than The Nuclear Age, the last O'Brien book I read. This marks a return to form for the incomparable Tim O'Brien.

14 people found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

Robert Alan Davidson

it is the quintessential American novel featuring a love story, deceit

Reviewed in Canada on November 16, 2017

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"In The Lake Of The Woods" by Tim O'Brien. This is a superb story. In many ways, it is the quintessential American novel featuring a love story, deceit, war, and the memories it imprints on the surivivors, cynical politics, and, of course, the great outdoors. It's actually a love story between two flawed people (John and Kathy) whose secrets gradually erode the powerful bond between them. His flaws are ever-present with his resort to secrecy in so much of his life - hers are less obvious and could be explained as her way of keeping the love alive. But things fall apart, big-time, and they retreat to a remote cabin to ponder where life goes next. I never thought I would look on Lake-of-the-Woods as a forbidding and menacing place. John's cynical campaign manager utters enough truth about modern politics that his words should be repeated every day in freshman poly sci courses (You can talk all you want about improving things for the people but, first, you have to win!). The sections dealing with Viet Nam are difficult to digest and reinforce the horror of war-memory for so many men.

In the end, the novel does not resolve the fates of John and Kathy, just as their love was left unresolved. And it's a fitting end to a thoughtful literary masterpiece and I sincerely hope the story gains a place in the pantheon of great American novels. Well done. Mr. O'Brien.

ANDY SUMMERS

Five Stars

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 6, 2017

Verified Purchase

A great work touching on our darkest fears!

Margaret M Doyle

A must read

Reviewed in Canada on October 13, 2017

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This was an interesting read almost immediately identifiable for older readers as founded on the My Lie incident. The formate was unusual, but certainly stimulated interest and forced the reader to really develop their own ideas as to just what happened. It left you with questions. Thoroughly enjoyable but also disturbing.

Lady Fancifull

Darkness unfathomable, Darkness inherent

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 23, 2014

Verified Purchase

I was steered to Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried (Flamingo) 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 were 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

Sheena Nesbitt

Real fiction

Reviewed in Canada on January 16, 2017

Verified Purchase

Tragic, heavy, sad, dark, awesome. I wanted to reach out to him and make sure he was okay after I read this book as he was clearly in a dark place when he wrote it.

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