In the Lake of the Woods - Softcover

O'Brien, Tim

Softcover

ISBN 10: 061870986X ISBN 13: 9780618709861

Publisher: Mariner Books, 2006

Synopsis

This riveting novel of love and mystery from the author of The Things They Carried examines the lasting impact of the twentieth century's legacy of violence and warfare, both at home and abroad. When long-hidden secrets about the atrocities he committed in Vietnam come to light, a candidate for the U.S. Senate retreats with his wife to a lakeside cabin in northern Minnesota. Within days of their arrival, his wife mysteriously vanishes into the watery wilderness.

About this title

Review:

‘Masterfully oblique, inventive and deeply unsettling...a riveting exploration of a tormented and wounded psyche’ Sunday Times

‘Calling Tim O’Brien a Vietnam War novelist is a bit like saying Joseph Conrad was a Polish guy who wrote some good sea tales’ Esquire

‘Striking, telling, deeply unsettling. A novel about the moral effects of suppressing a true war story, about the unforgiveable uses of history, about what happens when you try to pretend that history no longer exists’ New York Times Book Review

From the Back Cover:

This remarkable new novel from the National Book Award-winning author of 'Going After Cacciato' and 'The Things They Carried' combines the power of the finest Vietnam fiction with the tension of a many-layered mystery. It begins in a remote lakeside cabin deep in the Minnesota forests, where Kathy Wade is comforting her husband John, an ambitious politician, after a devastating electoral defeat. Then one night she vanishes, and gradually the search for Kathy becomes a voyage into the darkest corners of John Wade’s life, a life of deception and deceit – the life of a man able to escape everything but the chains of his darkest secret.

“A compelling mystery … Tim O’Brien, one of his generation’s most deservedly acclaimed authors, has written a perceptive, engaging and troubling novel, full of powerful prose … challenging and provocative.”
CHICAGO TRIBUNE

“Gracefully written and as gripping as a thriller … O’Brien makes the hunt a thrilling pursuit.”
WALL STREET JOURNAL

“Striking, telling, deeply unsettling. A novel about the moral effects of suppressing a true war story, about the unforgivable uses of history, about what happens when you try to pretend that history no longer exists.”
NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW

“Perhaps the best writer of fiction about Vietnam. O’Brien’s clean, incantatory prose always hovers on the edge of dream, and his speciality is that twilight zone of chimeras and fears and fantasies where nobody knows what’s true and what is not.”
TIME

“Hauntingly poignant … sheer brilliance. Only a master can navigate as compellingly as O’Brien.”
MIAMI HERALD

About this edition

• Publisher: Mariner Books
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 061870986X
• ISBN 13: 9780618709861
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 336