Summer House with Swimming Pool

by Herman Koch

[Lianne]

I was approved of an ARC copy of this novel in exchange for an honest review. This review in its entirety was originally posted at caffeinatedlife.net: http://www.caffeinatedlife.net/blog/2014/06/02/review-summer-house-with-swimming-pool/

My initial reaction about this novel was that the narrative was oddly reminiscent of The Dinner. Maybe it was a translation thing, but the tone felt a little similar to Paul’s narrative. But it’s evident after a few chapters that Marc, the narrator of this novel, is a different character from Paul. Simply put, I found him arrogant, with no respect for his profession or his patients. He can also be quite a hypocrite, which okay, fine, but then there wasn’t much in the narrative to balance those aspects of his personality out with some more positive aspects and make him somewhat sympathetic despite of everything. His observations are also often quite gross, lewd and unnecessary to the story, except to perhaps reinforce my growing dislike for the character.

I remember reading from someone’s review of The Dinner of how, after reading the novel, the reviewer wanted to take a shower because of the ickiness of the story and the narrative. That wasn’t my reaction from that novel but it certainly was for this book. There was some serious ickiness in this novel, which coincides with some serious themes that this novel tackles, in particular the treatment of women and creepers preying on young girls. The blatant sexism that some of the characters in this novel exhibited was just nauseating, and their actions equally disgusting. What made it especially appalling was how Marc spent most of his time standing there, watching the train wreck happening, but not really doing anything until much, much later.

Overall, I was left unsettled by this novel–I admit, I did skim a bit through some of the scenes because it was just so uncomfortable to read–which I suppose is what the author wanted you to feel. Like his previous novel, Herman Koch does a wonderful job in slowly deconstructing the story, the characters, and the mystery behind the course of events, and a lot of the themes are important to discuss. If you liked the author’s previous book The Dinner, then I would recommend this book to you. If you were okay with the book or you didn’t like it, you may want to skip this title.