Summer House with Swimming Pool (Koch)

Book Reviews
Failing the plausibility test is a black eye in commercial fiction. So is letting the pace become so slack that we don’t care who will eventually be revealed as the rapist. A good psychological thriller ought to end with a crisp, clean twist. This ending is mashed potatoes. Herman Koch does have a knack for generating narrative thrust, which Summer House with Swimming Pool manifests for its first two-thirds. Nevertheless, given how well his previous novel performed, this follow-up is inexplicably careless.
Lionel Shriver - New York Times Book Review


Bound to satisfy fans of The Dinner…A new psychological thriller about nasty people on an opulent vacation.
Boston Globe

(Starred review.) Although Koch, by his own admission, is not a mystery writer, he once again succeeds on that count without ever stinting on literary quality.... [V]ery few real-world events will distract readers from finishing this addictive book in one or two sittings.
Publishers Weekly


[In The Dinner] Koch’s wry wit and sardonic approach to marriage and children transformed a grisly act of violence into fodder for parental and ethical contemplation. Here, he once again probes the limits of parental protection…[and] continues to illuminate ways in which our Freudian unconscious takes dreadful revenge on the ego.
Library Journal


Just as he did in his bestseller, The Dinner, Dutch novelist Koch tells a sinister tale through the eyes of a questionable narrator.... Koch's deft and nuanced exploration of gender, guilt, and vengeance make his second novel to be translated into English an absorbing read.
Booklist


In this disquieting novel from Koch, sex, celebrity and medical ethics become inextricably tangled as a summer idyll goes nightmarishly wrong.... A sly psychological thriller lurks within this pitch-dark comedy of manners, yet its ending manages to raise far more questions than it solves.
Kirkus Reviews