Summer House with Swimming Pool is
told from the point of view of Dr. Marc Schlosser. Marc, his wife, Caroline, and their two
teenage daughters, actor Ralph Meier and his family at their rental summer
house.
This story is fraught with innuendo
and winks and nudges that Marc interprets and extrapolates upon, in his inner
dialogue. His view of the workings of
his family and of the people with whom they come in contact, is often
hysterically funny.
Some of the best and oddest parts of
the book are sections of lectures that Marc sat in on during med school days,
lectures by Professor Aaron Herzel.
Herzel may even be loonier than Marc.
A tragedy occurs during the summer at
the rental house and it sets into motion Marc’s downward spiral. This is a fast read, often laugh out loud
funny. Herman Koch’s protagonists are
the closest to Patricia Highsmith’s Tom Ripley, one of my favorites of all
time, that I have had the pleasure to discover in a long time. Who doesn’t love a good nut-case?
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