Blog12 – After finishing In the Lake of the Woods

I have just finished reading this novel. I don’t know why, but I feel upset. All they need is happiness, but in the end, they are tragic and far away from the happiness. I feel sad for this couple. They should be happy, but they aren’t all the time. Pretending hurts.

“More likely they drowned, or got lost, or lost themselves. But who will ever know? It’s all hypothesis, beginning to end.” In fact, I am not sure whether I understand the whole story or not. The chapters are choppy. But I am wondering the writer’s purpose of this novel.

Besides the war, besides loss, besides love, how people treat our secrets is what I think another purpose. “I have my own PFC Weatherby. My  own old man with a hoe. And yet  quality of abstraction makes reality unreal.” John Wade is an extreme person, or even unreal. But the way he use magic tricks to forget something sets everyone thinking. Sometimes we refuse to recall some memory unpleasant, just like John. However, memory is not a terrible thing that we cannot face, as long as we face them correctly. Hiding is the way.