Forest Dark is a book of two halves. There are alternating narratives that never cross (or do they – the end is ambiguous). Jules Epstein, a wealthy and influential Jewish lawyer who has spent his life acquiring stuff, suddenly decides he wants to give it all away. He takes a trip to Israel with this in mind.
The other narrator is also headed to Tel Aviv. She is an author (who happens to be called Nicole). She is struggling to write and is contemplating the end of her marriage.
The book opens with Epstein and I enjoyed the book at this point. It has a dry humour while also asking some interesting questions. I loved the prose. I don’t normally highlight fiction while I’m reading, but there were sentences that were so beautifully crafted and nuanced that I wanted to return and reflect on them (although I haven’t, yet).
When I got to the author narration I stalled. She just wasn’t very interesting. The realist elements felt too banal and the absurdist elements too ridiculous. It felt like the author (Nicole Krauss, not the ‘fictional’ Nicole) had some issues she wanted to work through (creativity, marriage, kids) and was still too close to them to make them into art. (I understand, her ex, Jonathan Safran Foer, has also written a novel about marital breakdown, Here I Am, so maybe she felt she had to put her side.)
There is an odd Kafka storyline. I’ve noted an apologetic tone in some reviews, words to the effect of, ‘I don’t really like this book but I’m probably just not clever enough.’ Just because a novel references Kafka it does not mean it’s good!
The privilege of the narrator grates. She lives in a world where relatives keep spare apartments in world cities which you can drop into any time, where the Hilton is like a second home and the manager knows your name. She never appears to notice that not everyone lives like this. Given that this world is satirised in the Epstein story, I assume the ‘real’ Nicole has more sensitivity in this than the ‘fictional’ Nicole but I couldn’t find any sense of irony or self-deprecation in the narration which might have made her more bearable.
It’s taken me a few weeks to get through Forest Dark. I kept hoping it would get better (it didn’t). Then I reached that point where I felt I was too far in to stop. I focused on the Epstein bits (there were some nice set pieces, though it didn’t quite hang together for me) and I gritted my teeth and skimmed the author story.
I’ve heard that Nicole Krauss has written some great books and the quality of the prose made me want to try another one, but this was, for me, was something of an ordeal.
I received a copy of Forest Dark from the publisher via Netgalley.
View Forest Dark on Goodreads
Want to know more? This interview with Nicole Krauss from The Guardian is interesting. She talks about the nature of the self and why she included Kafka in Forest Dark.
Kate Vane 
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