In the Lake of the Woods

Thank you to the anonymous person who left this book in a little free library for me to discover. Truly one of the most serendipitous book happenings I’ve ever experienced. Tim O'Brien’s name was familiar to me, as I’ve heard of his other, more famous book quite often in recent years—The Things They Carried. O'Brien himself was a Vietnam War veteran, so his personal experiences have indubitably shaped his fiction; this book is no different.

Our protagonist, John Wade, is a likeness for the author in some ways—he is also a Vietnam War veteran, middle-aged, and living a respectable middle-class American life; however, he also has high ambitions—he is campaigning for the United States Senate. At the center of the novel is his missing wife, Kathy, who is the love of his life. Lake of the Woods is a real county in Minnesota—quite remote and near the Canadian border; not only is it a fantastic place to set a sleepy mystery, but we also get to meet charming ‘locals’ who come to Wade’s assistance. The characters are all well-developed, and we even get chapters shifting in perspective—including a few from his wife, Kathy, as well as locals who report on events from their perspective.

The conceit of the novel is that it isn’t a standard narrative—rather, it is like a collection of records, documents, and ‘evidence’ that help the reader piece together what may or may not have happened to Kathy. However, for those who like solid ground—be well-warned: there is no definitive answer or solution. I enjoyed O'Brien’s ability to weave together disparate things like eyewitness accounts, random lists of police evidence, and interviews, among many others. Not only did it move the plot along, it also enriched the depth of all of the characters—no matter if they only appeared for a few pages. It reminded me somewhat of Janice Hallett’s The Appeal, except here it was somewhat more cohesive. Moreover, O'Brien manages to set the scene well and make the reader yearn for the beautiful landscape of forests and lakes—though, of course, such beauty can often hide disturbing secrets.

This is the sort of book that makes you want to embody its world for a little bit—in this case, exploring all of the different avenues of possibility. The writing style is almost overly simplistic, but it works well and doesn’t feel sparse. As the author hints, the “solution” to the question of what happened to Kathy is truly a vehicle to explore certain issues in greater detail, not least of all the experience of Vietnam War veterans and the price (and perhaps aspirations?) of politics, among other things. Being able to inhabit the minds of the characters, especially Wade, is not an easy task in this kind of novel—but he manages to do it so effortlessly. I am looking forward to reading more O'Brien!

Favorite quotes:
※ ‘We are fascinated, all of us, by the implacable otherness of others. And we wish to penetrate by hypothesis, by daydream, by scientific investigation those leaden walls that encase the human spirit, that define it and guard it and hold it forever inaccessible.’
※ ‘If time and space were in fact entwined along the loop of relativity, how then could anyone ever reach a point of no return? Were not all such points contrivance? Therefore meaningless? So, again, what was the point?
Not to return.’
※ ‘I cannot remember much, I cannot feel much. Maybe erasure is necessary. Maybe the human spirit defends itself as the body does, attacking infection, enveloping and destroying those malignancies that would otherwise consume us.’