book was really hard to read, I really respect the writing, and also the character work, The people seemed so real, that they could bleed on you, And this is both the strength and the challenge of this novel, The people came to life and they were incredibly difficult to be around,
Someone said that she felt the book was really sexist, I couldn't tell if the book itself hated women, or if it was a book about how much women are hated by the world, I am leaning toward the latter interpretation,
But that said, it was a hard read,
I feel very uncomfortable giving a book a low rating because it isn't pleasant, Literature isn't about being pleasing, But that said, I will have trouble sleeping tonight,
This is a book you won't forget, The blistering, compulsively readable new novel from Herman Koch, author of the instant New York Times bestseller The Dinner,
When a medical procedure goes horribly wrong and famous actor Ralph Meier winds up dead, Dr, Marc Schlosser needs to come up with some answers, After all, reputation is everything in this business, Personally, hes not exactly upset that Ralph is gone, but as a high profile doctor to the, Marc can't hide from the truth forever,
It all started the previous summer, Marc, his wife, and their two beautiful teenage daughters agreed to spend a week at the Meiers extravagant summer home on the Mediterranean, Joined by Ralph and his striking wife Judith, her mother, and film director Stanley Forbes and his much younger girlfriend, the large group settles in for days of sunshine, wine tasting, and trips to the beach.
But when a violent incident disrupts the idyll, darker motivations are revealed, and suddenly no one can be trusted, As the ultimate holiday soon turns into a nightmare, the circumstances surrounding Ralphs later death begin to reveal the disturbing reality behind that summers tragedy,
Featuring the razorsharp humor and acute psychological insight that made The Dinner an international phenomenon, Summer House with Swimming Pool is a controversial, thoughtprovoking novel that showcases Herman Koch at his finest.
My sincere thanks to Hogarth Publishing amp Netgalley for providing the egalley of this book to be published June,
In Koch's hands Summer House with Swimming Pool is like a sculpture, Koch, the sculptor, forms a piece of art, his words used like a hunk of clay that he carves in intricate layers before our eyes, He is a master at presenting characters that are not only unlikeable but are disturbing,
We are sucked in slowly, introduced to general practitioner, Dr, Marc Schlosser. Before long, we wonder just what kind of doctor is he, this man who views his patients with contempt and has utter disregard for the human body, He examines his patients using tactics to avoid any contact with human flesh, rarely having them disrobe for a complete exam, never taking seriously the medical treatment or advice they may need.
This doctor truly nauseates me but the thoughts that go through his mind fascinate me nonetheless,
Then one of Dr, Schlosser's patients, if not a good friend, at least an acquaintance, dies, Is this medical euthanasia , malpractice, or something far more sinister
As he did so well in The Dinner, Koch manages to weave a complicated, tangled psychological story with just a handful of skillfully developed characters.
Highly recommended. I havent had a checkup with my family doctor since reading this disturbing book, but I know Im going to be pretty paranoid when I do,
Herman Kochs antihero, Dr, Marc Schlosser, is a nasty piece of work, A doctor to members of the “creative class” movie/TV, writers, producers, some professionals, very few “totypes” he is ruthless in his assessment of their vanities and their sagging, aging bodies.
These celebrities have come to him because hes less judgmental in their drinking and drugging habits, and hes liberal in handing out prescriptions, But unbeknownst to them Schlosser seethes with hatred, boredom and a disgust that borders on the
sociopathic,
Here he is describing what he sees during a typical day:
I see and hear things all day long, Things you need to get off your mind at night, The fungal growths. The bleeding warts. The folds of skin between which things have gotten much, much too warm, The threehundredpound woman you have to examine in a place you hoped youd never have to go again,
I wont go on, There are descriptions that verge on misogyny, Patrick Bateman territory, but of course Marc is a character, not the author,
Koch is at his funniest when hes sending up theatre, which, given my job, was a hoot to read about, One of the perks of his profession Marc hates most is attending book readings and movie premieres and theatre openings that his patients are involved in, Hell often duck out of a movie premiere to hang out in the washroom or lobby, You cant do that at plays, Heres Marc describing some of the outlandish productions hes had to sit through:
It wasnt the first time Id been invited to a Shakespeare, Id already seen about ten of his plays, A version of The Taming of the Shrew in which all the male roles were played by women, The Merchant of Venice with the actors in diapers and the actresses wearing garbage bags for dresses and shopping bags on their heads, Hamlet with an allDownsyndrome cast, wind machines, and a dead goose that was decapitated onstage, King Lear with Zimbabwean orphans and exjunkies, Romeo and Juliet in the nevercompleted tunnel of a subway line, with concentration camp photos projected on the sewagestreaked walls.
A Macbeth in which all the female roles were played by naked men the only clothing they were was a thong btween their buttocks, and they had handcuffs and weights hanging from their nipples and performed to a soundtrack consisting of artillery barrages, Radiohead tunes, and poems by Radovan Karadzic.
Besides the fact that you didnt dare to look at how the handcuffs and weights were attached to or through the nipples, the problem once again was a matter of how slowly the time passed.
I can remember delays at airports that must have lasted half a day, easily, but which were over ten times as quickly as any of those plays,
This is Koch at his best: brutally, savagely satirical, skewering the glitterati with diabolical glee,
Unfortunately, the books story about Schlossers part in the death of a famous actor named Ralph Maier isnt as fine as Kochs prose,
Its told in a circuitous fashion, and the plot hinges on a tragedy that happened on the beach near Maiers summer home, I wont spoil the details, But some sections are overwritten, and the characters are so unlikeable that in a way you dont care what happens to anyone,
Koch has an annoying habit of beginning chapters with weighty, ponderous statements:
I often wondered later on whether things would have turned out differently if the Latvian girl had remained on her feet.
There are times when you run back through your life, to see whether you can locate the point at which it could still have taken a different turn.
That evening, the rest of our lives began, Let me say right now that Im not a big fan of melodrama, I also have a natural aversion to dramatic statements, The rest of our lives Id heard people say that often enough, People who had lost someone or something, Whod had something happen to them that you wouldnt wish on anyway something you would never get over, Still, it had always sounded fake to me, Its only when it happens to you that you know its not fake, There is simply no better description for it than “the rest of your life, ” Everything gets heavier. Especially time. Something happens to time. It doesnt really stand still, but theres no denying that it slows down,
This is fine writing, a tad selfindulgent, but at times I wanted to prod Koch/Schlosser and say, OKAY! GET ON WITH IT!
Dont get me wrong, I liked this book. Its sharply written. Nobody knows how to analyze the little details of human behaviour especially among strutting, cocky uppermiddleclass men than Koch,
As in The Dinner, I had problems with this books resolution, It just didnt have the force that I think the author intended,
But Ill read whatever he writes, knowing beforehand that if I dont like his characters, I at least will find it interesting getting under their slimy skin for a few days.
En principio, la novela nos vuelve a traer al mismo Koch de “La cena”, Una narración que consigue atraparte y que te enfrenta a problemas éticos interesantes, temas y comportamientos controvertidos de la sociedad actual y, nuevamente, con algunos de esos instintos naturales de los que tanto nos avergonzamos, con razón no hay que olvidar que nuestro desarrollo como especie se dio en unas condiciones muy distintas a las que disfrutamos hoy en día y sin ella tampoco debemos olvidar que nuestra esencia es la que es y que no es fácil y posiblemente no siempre conveniente actuar en contra de esos instintos.
La forma de abordar estos temas por parte de Koch es sensacionalista, provocativa aunque en mi opinión mucho menos que en La Cena y de lectura menos adictiva también, sin intentos de disculpa pero tampoco haciendo un juicio sumario a los culpables: nadie es del todo inocente o todos podemos llegar a ser culpables.
El autor tiene oficio para crear un ambiente escabroso, inmoral si queréis, con comentarios y lucubraciones cínicas, crueles, de una total falta de empatía con el débil opiniones y situaciones que consiguen que te incomodes, que te rebullas en la butaca, incluso que adoptes una posición defensiva, bien porque te escandalices, bien porque te reconozcas, bien porque te escandalices al reconocerte.
Hasta aquí todo más o menos bien, El problema viene cuando llegamos a la conclusión, cuando se trata de cerrar la trama, Ya en La cena mostró lo que parece ser un problema del autor para abordar esta última fase del libro, En aquella dio la impresión de que se asustó de sí mismo y metió por medio una justificación cobarde del asunto, En esta, el problema estriba en la existencia de contradicciones insalvables en la resolución del conflicto, Y en este tipo de novelas esa falta de coherencia es imperdonable, I don't know what to say that hasn't already been said, good or bad about this book, There are twisted characters, vile, repulsive, . . etc. But hey, I love to read about characters unlike myself as a checklist to remind me that I'm still somewhat normal, I think it's very impressive that a book can be translated from Dutch to English and still have so many layers to it that unfold slowly as the book goes along.
From the beginning it is foretold what the ending is about so I enjoy reading bit by bit what lead to such chaos and I can confidently say that I am a big fan of Herman Koch and look forward to reading more from him in the future.
Find all of my reviews at: sitelink blogspot. com/
This is the story of Dr, Marc Schlosser and one very memorable vacation he and his family spent at the summer house with swimming pool, natch of one of his patients a middleaged, loudmouthed, boor of an actor who was so repugnant that I was routing for Marc to either murder him or to have sex with his wife as soon as he was introduced.
I requested an ARC and was promptly denied of Summer House With Swimming Pool since I enjoyed The Dinner, last years big hit by the same author.
When I came over to Goodreads and saw this was designated as another literary/book clubby type of thriller I decided I probably needed to check it out.
I briefly glanced at a handful of reviews and noticed several people saying how “deeply disturbing” they found this story, I like deeply disturbing, so that that sealed the deal and I rushed down to the local bibliotheek that's library in Dutch see NetGalley, I'm freaking BRILLIANT, Stop declining my requests!!!!.
Now that Ive finished the book I realize that my deeply disturbing is apparently a lot and I mean A LOT more disturbing than the average person.
What does it say about me that I really enjoyed Dr, Marc Dont answer that I know exactly what it says:
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While Marc is a revolting main character an overt chauvinist and homophobe who can take any situation and warp it into something sexual Im telling you, Dr.
Freud would have had a heyday with this guy or violent, I didnt find him to be nearly as disturbing as some of my other favorites, . .
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Whooops, wrong Dexter
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Generally I would lower my rating for an advertised thriller that turned out to be notsothrilling.
The saving grace for Summer House is Kochs writing, The man is brilliant. He puts the pedal to the metal on page one and never eases up, he can turn a phrase like nobodys business, and he writes the most despicable characters that I simply cant get enough of.
Im not usually a huge fan of the firstperson narrator, but Kochs Dr, Schlosser executed his story with damn near perfection,
Thats not to say I found this to be a perfect novel thus theStars rather thanduh, right, It does a little of the bouncybouncy with regard to timeline at both the beginning which I found to be necessary and at around themark which I did not Marc goes from enjoyably vile to criminally negligent and not in the way the synopsis might lead you to believe that made me unable to keep defending his horribleness and there was maybe one too many “ripped from the headlines” type of recognizable plot points meant to perplex the reader.
All that being said, at the end of it all I found this to be a superb followup to last years blockbuster, Ill anxiously await Kochs and Sam Garrett's Koch would not rank so high on the enjoyability scale if he did not have such a spectacular translator next creation.
Recommended to: Anyone who likes to hate everyone in a book and doesnt mind feeling like they need a good scrub down with some lyesoap and a wire brush after they are finished reading.
Although I was denied an ARC most likely because I write supergify reviews and the publisher was terrified what kind of crap I would spew out on this one, I still read/reviewed it anyway.
Nananabooboo, stick your head in doodoo,
.