Tim O’Brien’s In the Lake of the Woods: A Novel, walks a fine tightrope throughout. The reader is given hints, here and there, that a crime may have been committed, but the novel ends on a very uncertain note. We are left to wonder what happened the night John Wade walked around the bungalow frying plants with steaming water. Did he boil Kathy to death? Or did she disappear with the boat? He stalks her since the early days of their relationship, so why should she/we trust him? Yet she has a habit of disappearing, probably in response to the stalking. Did she take the boat, get lost and die? In the end, who is missing, and who is alive? O’Brien deftly leaves us in the dark.
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