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buttontapper 's review for:
Summer House with Swimming Pool
by Herman Koch
All summer I’ve been putting off writing my review of Herman Koch’s Summer House with Swimming Pool. It’s a technically proficient book, with many vividly drawn scenes and rather realistic (yet truly terrible) characters, but ultimately it is not the type of book I enjoy reading.
Perhaps I should explain some of my biases.
I wasn’t always a poolside reader, the type who only reads for escape. I’ve read plenty of big books and I cannot lie: I do enjoy tackling them during the summer months, taking pride in my ability to engage my brain when it seems the rest of the world is intent on turning theirs off. I’ve read “important” books and “good” books and “classic” books, as well as plenty of genre fiction, and even books that take me outside of my typical reading comfort zone – many of which I then grew to love.
But Summer House with Swimming Pool is something different.
I suppose part of the problem I have with this book is the marketing behind it. This is of course not the writer’s fault, particularly as it’s an American translation of a Dutch novel. So perhaps it is my mistake to have read into the description some relationship between Koch’s novel and the death of Michael Jackson. After all, his book is about the physician to a celebrity who lands in hot water after his famous patient dies under his care. It is difficult to avoid spoilers when discussing this book, but without giving too much away I can certainly say this book is not about similarly clear-cut circumstances, and that any attempt to view it as an incredibly dark satire of that case would be flawed.
If anything, it’s precisely that gray area surrounding the medical procedure and the doctor’s psychological state that is meant to leave the reader with more questions about the good doctor and his Hippocratic oath. Indeed, as per an Amazon interview with Koch, he notes that his inspiration for the book was actually the concept of a “‘passive’ murder” by a doctor, created by medical error. That is, indeed, an intriuging concept, though I don’t buy Koch’s take on it.
It would seem that New York Times reviewer Lionel Shriver agrees with me: she states in her review that Koch’s central conceit is actually thoroughly careless pseudoscience.
So once the fictional plot is revealed to have as many holes as Swiss cheese, what can one really say about the book?
Janet Maslin snarkily compares reading Koch's previous novel, The Dinner, to “being stabbed in the eyeball with a hot needle,” and then notes that Summer House “is a book in which someone actually does stick a hot needle in his own eyeball.” True story.
Many readers are simply turned off by the unlikable cast of characters, and I can sympathize with their view. Dr. Marc Schlosser is not only an awful doctor, but an awful human being. And, being an awful human being, it never crosses his mind that he is such a terrible person. Shriver describes him as an “unappealing misanthrope,” which is spot-on, though I did find some of Marc’s loathsome monologues rather absurdly humorous. His continuous rants against the human body’s ugliness, for instance, offered this gem: “Buttocks, depending on their shape or shapelessness, can summon up tenderness or blind rage.”
Can anyone take such a doctor seriously?
At bottom, I think it is the description of this novel as “darkly humorous” that bothers me the most. A few cruel jokes and an overall nihilistic view do not qualify as dark humor, in my book. After all, one must still find the humor in the darkness. Summer House with Swimming Pool is not a humorous book, even for those who daily peer into the abyss. Perhaps, as some readers have suggested, it is only humorous to sociopaths – hopefully not Koch’s intended audience.
Having read so many positive reviews of Koch’s first book, which is also told by an unlikeable and unreliable narrator, I was hoping that Summer House would offer a similar feast. It seems, however, that most readers feel that Herman Koch is a one-trick pony incapable of creating likeable characters, much less breaking out of his unpleasant narrative approach. Such typecasting is unforgiveable for actors; why should we tolerate it in writers?
I, for one, am hoping Koch’s next book is a frothy, lighthearted beach read – one I can actually enjoy reading poolside.
(This review was originaly posted at Black Heart Magazine.)
Perhaps I should explain some of my biases.
I wasn’t always a poolside reader, the type who only reads for escape. I’ve read plenty of big books and I cannot lie: I do enjoy tackling them during the summer months, taking pride in my ability to engage my brain when it seems the rest of the world is intent on turning theirs off. I’ve read “important” books and “good” books and “classic” books, as well as plenty of genre fiction, and even books that take me outside of my typical reading comfort zone – many of which I then grew to love.
But Summer House with Swimming Pool is something different.
I suppose part of the problem I have with this book is the marketing behind it. This is of course not the writer’s fault, particularly as it’s an American translation of a Dutch novel. So perhaps it is my mistake to have read into the description some relationship between Koch’s novel and the death of Michael Jackson. After all, his book is about the physician to a celebrity who lands in hot water after his famous patient dies under his care. It is difficult to avoid spoilers when discussing this book, but without giving too much away I can certainly say this book is not about similarly clear-cut circumstances, and that any attempt to view it as an incredibly dark satire of that case would be flawed.
If anything, it’s precisely that gray area surrounding the medical procedure and the doctor’s psychological state that is meant to leave the reader with more questions about the good doctor and his Hippocratic oath. Indeed, as per an Amazon interview with Koch, he notes that his inspiration for the book was actually the concept of a “‘passive’ murder” by a doctor, created by medical error. That is, indeed, an intriuging concept, though I don’t buy Koch’s take on it.
It would seem that New York Times reviewer Lionel Shriver agrees with me: she states in her review that Koch’s central conceit is actually thoroughly careless pseudoscience.
So once the fictional plot is revealed to have as many holes as Swiss cheese, what can one really say about the book?
Janet Maslin snarkily compares reading Koch's previous novel, The Dinner, to “being stabbed in the eyeball with a hot needle,” and then notes that Summer House “is a book in which someone actually does stick a hot needle in his own eyeball.” True story.
Many readers are simply turned off by the unlikable cast of characters, and I can sympathize with their view. Dr. Marc Schlosser is not only an awful doctor, but an awful human being. And, being an awful human being, it never crosses his mind that he is such a terrible person. Shriver describes him as an “unappealing misanthrope,” which is spot-on, though I did find some of Marc’s loathsome monologues rather absurdly humorous. His continuous rants against the human body’s ugliness, for instance, offered this gem: “Buttocks, depending on their shape or shapelessness, can summon up tenderness or blind rage.”
Can anyone take such a doctor seriously?
At bottom, I think it is the description of this novel as “darkly humorous” that bothers me the most. A few cruel jokes and an overall nihilistic view do not qualify as dark humor, in my book. After all, one must still find the humor in the darkness. Summer House with Swimming Pool is not a humorous book, even for those who daily peer into the abyss. Perhaps, as some readers have suggested, it is only humorous to sociopaths – hopefully not Koch’s intended audience.
Having read so many positive reviews of Koch’s first book, which is also told by an unlikeable and unreliable narrator, I was hoping that Summer House would offer a similar feast. It seems, however, that most readers feel that Herman Koch is a one-trick pony incapable of creating likeable characters, much less breaking out of his unpleasant narrative approach. Such typecasting is unforgiveable for actors; why should we tolerate it in writers?
I, for one, am hoping Koch’s next book is a frothy, lighthearted beach read – one I can actually enjoy reading poolside.
(This review was originaly posted at Black Heart Magazine.)