If there were any doubts as to whether Nicole Krauss should be considered among the first rank of American novelists, and there really shouldn’t have been after her stunning sophomore effort, The History of Love, and its mesmerizing followup, Great House, her fourth, the beguiling, brilliant and at times very funny Forest Dark should lay them firmly to rest. Like those earlier novels, Forest Dark focuses its gaze on seemingly disparate individuals. In this case, Jules Epstein, a very successful and recently retired New York lawyer who, in an apparent crisis of conscience, divorces his wife of thirty-odd years and, to the chagrin of his children, gives away his considerable fortune before travelling to Israel with no clearer purpose than a vague notion of somehow honouring his recently deceased parents. As well as Jules, there is Nicole, a successful but blocked novelist who is experiencing her own emotional crisis, which has her feeling as if she “might possibly be inhabiting two separate planes of existence.” With her marriage crumbling and her writing stalled, she, like Jules, feels almost inexplicably drawn to Israel.

Source: thestar December 08, 2017 11:26 UTC