FICTION

Summer House with Swimming Pool

Hogarth: Crown. Jun. 2014. 304p. tr. from Dutch by Sam Garrett. ISBN 9780804138819. $24; ebk. ISBN 9780804138826. F
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OrangeReviewStarEnglish-language readers were first exposed to Dutch author Koch's work last year with the release of The Dinner, a best seller currently being adapted into a film. Koch's wry wit and sardonic approach to marriage and children transformed a grisly act of violence into fodder for parental and ethical contemplation. Here, he once again probes the limits of parental protection. Dr. Marc Schlosser is a general physician with a client list of celebrities. When the opportunity arises, Marc takes his family on vacation with a patient and his group of friends. However, the holiday ends abruptly when tragedy befalls one of Marc's children. Exploring a number of radical hypothetical possibilities—and imagined revenge plots—Marc and his wife are ultimately left with more questions than answers. At the heart of the novel's darkness is Marc's ethical dubiousness, infidelity, and misunderstanding of fatherhood.
VERDICT As in The Dinner, Koch continues to illuminate ways in which our Freudian unconscious takes dreadful revenge on the ego, often disproportionate to the perceived slight. [See Prepub Alert, 12/16/13.]
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