Book Review: Summer House with Swimming Pool

Marc Schlosser is a doctor whose patients number among celebrities and politicians, none of whom he likes very well. But does he just have a poor sense of medical ethics - or is there something more sinister to his character? Because one of his patients, the famous actor Ralph Meier, has died after a sudden illness, an assisted suicide administered by Dr. Schlosser. The medical board thinks Schlosser's actions were questionable. Meier's widow calls him a murderer outright. But what really happened?

Summer House with Swimming Pool unfolds the story by revisiting Schlosser's relationship with Meier, culminating in a vacation the doctor and his family spent at Meier's summer house and the mystery of what happened there. The novel is the second one by Dutch author Herman Koch to be translated into English, after the bestseller The Dinner. As in the earlier novel, Koch shows himself to be a master at creating characters who are both completely despicable and somehow compelling, motivated by selfish instincts in one moment and desperation to protect their loved ones in the next. Summer House with Swimming Pool is horrifying, fascinating, and hard to put down. - Michelle (Sunset)