In the Lake of the Woods
By: Tim O'Brien / Narrated By: LJ Ganser
Length: 8 hrs and 50 mins
When I read this, I felt it ended one way; when I listened to it? Wow—I’m pretty sure it ended another way!
And that, I do believe, is due to the narration.
I’m a big ol’ Tim O’Brien fan, having read his stuff in print. And because I’d loved those things so much, I was TOTALLY wary of getting the audiobook forms. But actor Bryan Cranston didn’t completely butcher The Things They Carried, and I’d been so stunned by the story told in In the Lake of the Woods that I thought I’d revisit that book with LJ Ganser as narrator.
Oh. My holy. Crud.
Now, I am terribly fond of Mr. Ganser; he’s definitely competent and when it all hits the fan in the story, his pacing and delivery and intonations are flawless. But there’s a sour note when he delivers our main character, John Wade, to us and that, I felt, was enough for me to hear him as an enTIREly different sort of character than I’d previously read him. Wade is an inCREDibly complex character and I dunno, maybe Ganser was portraying him in the way O’Brien reeeeeally intended? But I kinda sorta think not…
It’s cuz of this see: The book has a huuuuuge mystery within it, and I’m pretty sure we’re supposed to be scratching our heads when we finish it as it’s never resolved. Both my husband and I read it at the same time, and each of us believed something entirely different by the ending. It made for a great and (Somewhat) heated discussion, which is an AWEsome thing for a story to do! So I’m pretty sure Mr. O’Brien was going for an in-your-face dunno what happened (in)conclusion.
But lemme get to the story. John and Kathy Wade retreat to a cabin in Lake of the Woods, Minnesota after John suffers a humiliating defeat in his bid for the US Senate. There’d been a scandal, and it came out that John’s two tours in Vietnam may not have been honorably served; as a matter of fact, he was involved in a My Lai-style massacre (Which, with the information we’re given WAS THE My Lai Massacre with the date and the Lieutenant heading Pinkville’s slaughter).
John has always had emotional issues stemming from a verbally abusive alcoholic father who wound up blowing his brains out. As a youngster, he’d coped by studying magic and by creating a room full of mirrors in his head where he could hide. Throughout their relationship, John has been obsessed with his one true love, Kathy, following her, spying on her, throughout their college years, feeling himself invisible. She’d loved him in return, enough to go through his career in politics, tho’ she haaaated it, but now when his career has been shattered, she’s feeling light and joyous, and they spend the days telling each other what they’ll name the children they can now have, what countries and cities they’ll visit now there’s not an office to run for.
But their nights? John is out of control, suffering the sting of defeat, feeling the control he thought he once had come to nothing, fearing he’ll lose Kathy at any minute, reliving the nightmare of his days in Vietnam. And some of THE most powerful writing I’ve ever read re: Vietnam and slaughter and terror and shame and regret is executed oh so deftly here. We see WHY John, tho’ he’s referred to now as Wade, as though he’s a soldier again, struggling to survive, one thin thread away from total insanity, is delusional overnight. And it’s after one such night of stalking the cabin naked, of ranting and rambling, or boiling potted plants alive, that the unthinkable happens: Kathy goes missing.
The book then alternates between chapters on the search for her with Wade’s crumbling sanity and withdrawn demeanor, and Hypotheses from Kathy’s viewpoint on the many, many things which cooooould have happened to her, and ending with chapters called Evidence which is tagged evidence, yes, but is mostly quotes from people chiming in on Wade’s guilt/innocence, sanity/insanity, and his involvement in war crimes. O’Brien creates a mesmerizing tale of ghosts and magic and terror and adoration and finally, the straw that broke the camel’s back.
And in the book, I’d felt soooo much for Wade, his unholy fright during the massacre which occurred after a few too many dead and wounded bodies were packed yet again into yet another chopper, after the ambushes, after the nights of terror and helplessness, just got me. But here? I dunno: LJ Ganser just kinda sorta delivered a guy going psycho, so I really wound up, after listening to Wade’s devolving mental state and to his evolving emotional numbness, thinking, Yup: It ended THIS way, and THIS is what happened to Kathy.
Which took a whole heckuva lot of the fun out of the audiobook cuz I’d been looking forward to listening to my favorite Hypothesis, feeeeeling just why THAT one was true, but nope. I couldn’t connect on that one.
So a disappointment for me in that regard, but it’s still most CERtainly an audiobook worth a listen. Strong, strong, STRONG writing that’ll leave you breathless at times or will leave you with the hair rising on your arms, looking over your shoulder like you think you’re being watched. And the narration was good, tho’ I did have to listen to it at its x1 speed instead of my usual x1.3-x1.5 speeds lest I lose track of some of the clues.
It’s just that I was looking forward to that oh so rare occurrence in literature: The Iffy Ending that’s aaaaall up to you. Nope, we’re pretty much stuck on only one thing to have occurred.
Still, Vietnam’s wounds ran deep, and In the Lake of the Woods provides one of the most searing and frightening looks at the ghosts who came back from the war.
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