<![CDATA[In the Lake of the Woods]]>

false <![CDATA[In the Lake of the Woods]]> http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1163788679m/3447.jpg 3447 14 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 1144054 1994 In the Lake of the Woods total:2845|5:665|4:1049|3:822|2:234|1:74| 2845 10530 3571 324 3 3 false false Sun May 20 18:37:04 -0700 2007 Fri Sep 28 13:50:41 -0700 2007 more...]]> 4 1 false true Mon Jul 07 09:29:01 -0700 2008 Mon Jul 07 09:49:18 -0700 2008 I was intrigued with the mystery in the first third of the book. When the narrator tells the reader that we will never know what happened, I became impatient & apathetic about the plot. I didn’t care for any of the characters except maybe Claude & Ruth. I kept reading becaus...more...]]> 4 1 false false Fri Jun 06 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Tue May 06 10:23:21 -0700 2008 Fri Jun 06 17:31:27 -0700 2008
In the Lake of the Woods is in a way a mystery that serves as a metaphor for post traumatic stress disorder. John Wade, a veteran, and his wife ...more...]]> 4 1 false false Wed Feb 01 00:00:00 -0800 2006 Mon Nov 26 11:58:34 -0800 2007 Mon Nov 26 12:18:42 -0800 2007
Just as he did in The Things They Carried, Author Tim O’Brien illustrates in this work an obsession with the things people carry. Only this time, it’s not the material things his characters carry around on them, but the spiritual things they carry around wi...more...]]> 3 1 false false Thu Nov 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Fri Sep 14 23:13:07 -0700 2007 Sun Nov 25 20:49:03 -0800 2007 more...]]> 4 1 false false Thu Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 1998 Thu Aug 30 20:10:14 -0700 2007 Tue May 06 11:53:49 -0700 2008 more...]]> 4 1 false false Sat Apr 01 00:00:00 -0800 2000 Wed Jul 18 06:29:27 -0700 2007 Wed Jul 18 06:33:08 -0700 2007 more...]]> 4 0 false false Sun Oct 25 14:12:55 -0700 2009 Sun Oct 25 14:13:11 -0700 2009 more...]]> 5 0 false false Tue Sep 01 12:54:53 -0700 2009 Tue Sep 01 12:55:35 -0700 2009
John Wade, is a 41 year old Viet Nam veteran whose recently failed Minnesota senatorial bid shatters his facade of success. As...more...]]> 4 0 false false Wed Jul 01 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Thu Jul 09 13:19:21 -0700 2009 Thu Jul 09 13:30:37 -0700 2009
Seriously. I wa...more...]]> 5 0 false false Mon May 18 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Mon May 18 07:31:54 -0700 2009 Thu May 21 19:33:38 -0700 2009 more...]]> 5 1 false false Tue Jun 01 00:00:00 -0700 2004 Mon Mar 10 21:27:30 -0700 2008 Mon Mar 10 21:32:07 -0700 2008 more...]]> 4 0 false false Mon Mar 23 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Wed Mar 25 07:30:59 -0700 2009 Wed Mar 25 07:35:09 -0700 2009 more...]]> 5 0 false false Fri Feb 01 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Sat Jan 24 21:55:02 -0800 2009 Sat Jan 24 22:08:55 -0800 2009
In the Lake of the Woods was hard going at times, b...more...]]> 2 1 false false Fri Jun 26 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Mon May 25 17:50:07 -0700 2009 Sat Jun 27 06:57:56 -0700 2009
I read The Things They Carried, and loved it. I think it handled the war and all of the surrounding problems perfectly, and the way that the narrative circled back on itself over and over again was inventive and interesting.

Here, it looks...more...]]> 5 0 false false Wed Apr 01 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Fri May 15 11:44:08 -0700 2009 Fri May 15 11:47:48 -0700 2009
But I think O'Brien could write about flowing growing in a yard and it would ...more...]]> 3 0 false false Thu Oct 01 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Mon Nov 16 11:41:39 -0800 2009 Mon Nov 16 11:47:58 -0800 2009
In addition to those thing...more...]]> 5 0 false false Mon Jun 01 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Fri Jul 03 18:57:05 -0700 2009 Fri Jul 03 19:00:24 -0700 2009 1 Tim O'Brien book which I've read, The Things They Carried, so I didn't like it. About 2/3 through, I felt like I really understood (as much as possible, given the way it's written) what was going on. And I feel for Sorcerer, I really do. I went back and for...more...]]> 3 0 false false Fri Oct 30 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Mon Nov 09 08:45:53 -0800 2009 Mon Nov 09 10:32:04 -0800 2009 more...]]> 4 0 true false Thu Sep 10 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Sat Jul 04 08:16:26 -0700 2009 Thu Sep 10 15:26:17 -0700 2009 more...]]> http://www.goodreads.com/book_link/follow/8?book_id=3447