SOURCE: "Memories of War," in Times Literary Supplement, No. 4803, April 21, 1995, p. 20.

In the following review, Kerrigan suggests that In the Lake of the Woods reveals "a people at ease but never at peace," referring to the impact of Vietnam on the American psyche.

For Wilfred Owen, apparently, the poetry was in the pity; for America's Vietnam literature it is in the irony. The tone of swaggering cynicism we recognize from so many novels and films is that of men who feel utterly confused as to where—and ultimately who—they are. "What's the name of this goddamn place?" asks one man in O'Brien's memoir If I Die in a Combat Zone (1973). "I don't know. I never thought of that", replies his comrade: "Nobody thinks of the names for these places." The military institution, non-combatant readers know from Catch-22, is absurd enough without having to function in the context...