Synopsis
John and Kathy Wade, whose marriage has been built on mutual deception, visit a Minnesota lake to try to sort things out, a difficult process made more difficult by Kathy's sudden disappearance. Major ad/promo. BOMC. First serials, Atlantic Monthly & Esquire. Tour.
Reviews
O'Brien ( Going After Cacciato ; The Things They Carried ) is trying desperately to escape from Vietnam--and failing. In this beautifully written, often haunting, but ultimately disappointing book, that conflict continues to drag at the life of John Wade, an upwardly mobile politician and senatorial candidate. The revelation that he was present at a Vietnamese village massacre (read My Lai) and had artfully buried that fact derails his political career overnight, and he flees with his much-loved wife, Kathy, to a remote hideaway in Minnesota's north woods. One morning he awakes, after a night of terrible visions, to find her gone. A huge search fails to locate her, and police suspicion turns on Wade. Then he too disappears. Ever a man who loved tricks and mystery, known to his Army buddies as Sorcerer, has Wade always lived a lie? Did he kill Kathy and put her body in the lake? Did they escape their problems together? O'Brien openly asks the reader such questions, in a series of rhetorical footnotes that amount to an uncomfortable authorial intrusion. An ongoing series of chapters with quotes from My Lai testimony, books on magic, General Custer, military violence and opinions of people in the book about what really happened with John and Kathy goes seriously astray. These faults distract from, but cannot completely offset, the power of O'Brien's narrative, his affinity for abnormal psychological states, his remarkable painting of the hostile autumn solitudes. It seems like a book that needed more work to live up to its best, and perhaps editor Seymour Lawrence's death last winter deprived it of that. If so, a stark pity; but O'Brien remains a terrific writer. 75,000 first printing; author tour.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
O'Brien proves to be the Oliver Stone of literature, reiterating the same Vietnam stories endlessly without adding any insight. Politician John Wade has just lost an election, and he and his wife, Kathy, have retired to a lakeside cabin to plan their future when she suddenly disappears. O'Brien manages to stretch out this simple premise by sticking in chapters consisting of quotes from various sources (both actual and fictional) that relate to John and Kathy. An unnamed author--an irritating device that recalls the better-handled but still imperfect ``Tim O'Brien'' narrator of The Things They Carried (1990)--also includes lengthy footnotes about his own experiences in Vietnam. While the sections covering John in the third person are dry, these first-person footnotes are unbearable. O'Brien uses a coy tone (it's as though he's constantly whispering ``Ooooh, spooky!''), but there is no suspense: The reader is acquainted with Kathy for only a few pages before her disappearance, so it's impossible to work up any interest in her fate. The same could be said of John, even though he is the focus of the book. Flashbacks and quotes reveal that John was present at the infamous Thuan Yen massacre (for those too thick-headed to understand the connection to My Lai, O'Brien includes numerous real-life references). The symbolism here is beyond cloying. As a child John liked to perform magic tricks, and he was subsequently nicknamed ``Sorcerer'' by his fellow soldiers--he could make things disappear, get it? John has been troubled for some time. He used to spy on Kathy when they were in college, and his father's habit of calling the chubby boy ``Jiggling John'' apparently wounded him. All of this is awkwardly uncovered through a pretentious structure that cannot disguise the fact that there is no story here. Sinks like a stone. (First printing of 75,000; first serial to the Atlantic Monthly and Esquire; author tour) -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
O'Brien, winner of a National Book Award for Going After Cacciato (1978), has written his most accessible novel to date. John and Kathy Wade are a young, idealistic couple living the American Dream until John's bid for the U.S. Senate is trashed by media reports of his involvement in the infamous massacre at My Lai during the Vietnam War. Still very much in love but without direction for the first time in their marriage, John and Kathy flee to a remote cabin. When Kathy disappears without a trace, a massive but fruitless search ensues. Did John murder her or did she simply flee? O'Brien develops several maddeningly plausible explanations, allowing readers to draw their own conclusions in this dark but wonderful novel that should gain him a host of new fans. For fiction collections both large and small.
--Mark Annichiarico, "Library Journal"
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
John Wade was a lonely boy who taught himself magic tricks to bring some praise upon himself, to be loved. And in Vietnam, too, he proclaimed himself a "sorcerer"--he wasn't much of a soldier, and perhaps his magic powers would earn him the respect of the other men. Later, he tries to make his involvement at My Lai disappear--first, by falsifying his army records, then by denying, deep inside himself, that he was ever there. He builds his entire life upon deceit. A bright and appealing politician, he climbs steadily through the party ranks until he runs for the U.S. Senate; then his My Lai secret is unearthed and destroys his career. O'Brien's novel opens upon John and his wife, Kathy, in the aftermath of the defeat, trying to make sense of their lives, trying to salvage their marriage. And the novel unfolds as a sort of philosophical mystery--occasioned by Kathy's disappearance and the subsequent search for her in the lake wilderness of northern Minnesota. O'Brien never solves the mystery, instead offering hypotheses of what may have happened, what may yet happen--an ambitious, inventive technique that may prove unsettling to literal-minded readers. But the mystery of Kathy, while it provides suspense, is almost irrelevant, or it's as unknowable as where we go when we die. What O'Brien really offers is a portrait of one man and woman at the most critical juncture of their relationship. It's a dark portrait, taking issue with a stock notion of commercial fiction: that after suffering comes redemption. Maybe not. Maybe there's only oblivion. A beautifully written, haunting novel that evokes lives in deep crisis. John Mort
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