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jennyluwho's review against another edition
2.0
How disappointing...I’ve previously loved her other work, but this was extremely cerebral and I’m either too dumb to get it or it was actually boring. I couldn’t finish it. And BLAH to the main character with writer’s block...we all get it! Apple doesn’t fall far from the tree!
aligra77's review against another edition
4.0
This is a deeply complex novel and I will probably need to reread it to fully grasp all of it subtleties.The story is built around two central characters. Jules Epstein a 68 year old man of considerable wealth who after 35 years of marriage and retirement from a legal firm decides to shed the bulk of his wealth and disappear to a hotel in Tel Aviv. Nicole an author with writer’s block checks into the same hotel leaving a struggling marriage behind her. Both characters are searching for some meaning to their lives and Krauss beautifully captures the frailties of the mind.
Epstein meets a rabbi who is planning a project relating to King David and claims that Epstein is a direct descendant and Nicole meets a literary scholar who tries to convince her that Kafka didn't die but was smuggled into Israel. They are each presented with an adventure of which neither could have imagined and where they feel their true identities are rooted.
This is quite a cerebral book and I personally would have liked a bit more emotion however in saying that Krauss gives great insight into the human need for identity.
Thank you to NetGalley and Bloomsbury Publishing for giving me a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review
Epstein meets a rabbi who is planning a project relating to King David and claims that Epstein is a direct descendant and Nicole meets a literary scholar who tries to convince her that Kafka didn't die but was smuggled into Israel. They are each presented with an adventure of which neither could have imagined and where they feel their true identities are rooted.
This is quite a cerebral book and I personally would have liked a bit more emotion however in saying that Krauss gives great insight into the human need for identity.
Thank you to NetGalley and Bloomsbury Publishing for giving me a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review
bibliobrandie's review against another edition
I am halfway through this book and am throwing in the towel. I just am not that interested in either of the characters or with the way Krauss writes.
readin_robin19's review
Wanted to like this, but just could not get through. Lovely writing, just ponderous and took too long to get to the point- which I never did discover.
cheyenneisreading's review against another edition
adventurous
informative
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
4.0
carolyn0613's review against another edition
2.0
Started this book but couldn't finish it. It felt depressing and I had no connection to the characters.
sunrays118's review against another edition
2.0
A long winded, pretentious work about two people who spend time at the Hilton in Tel Aviv.
The book is slow, at best, and unorganized. The author draws *heavily* from Jonathan Safran Foer to create this grandiose mess of Kafka lore. The book is dry and boring without any real plot or point. It feels the sole purpose for the writing is for the author to hear herself talk and marvel at how she is the only one smart enough to understand Kafka.
As someone who has read and loved previous works by this author, I was extremely disappointed in this book.
Skip.
The book is slow, at best, and unorganized. The author draws *heavily* from Jonathan Safran Foer to create this grandiose mess of Kafka lore. The book is dry and boring without any real plot or point. It feels the sole purpose for the writing is for the author to hear herself talk and marvel at how she is the only one smart enough to understand Kafka.
As someone who has read and loved previous works by this author, I was extremely disappointed in this book.
Skip.
angelamichelle's review against another edition
3.0
I agree with the reviewers that call this book admirable but not beloved. Even more, I feel irritated with the author for assembling trappings of Impressive Writing but actually failing to achieve the essential components of good fiction, such as creating characters one cares about. So much exposition—although there’s lots of inner exposition in Marilynn Robinson’s books that I love so much—here it feels manipulative and maybe cheap, a cop-out.
felicitousenigma's review against another edition
4.0
A great book with some really wonderfully written segments. However, Forest Dark didn't touch me as much emotionally as I expected it to, based on Krauss' other work. It is very intellectual, and thus loses out on the exploration of feelings. Some of the most beautiful quotes stem from Nicole's (both Nicole's) discussion of marriage/divorce and children, and though I know that this might have been painful for Krauss, whose own divorce is still fresh, I wish this would have been explored more:
"[...] in the end the only true cure I ever found for it had also been physical: first intimacy with the bodies of men who'd loved me, and later with my children. Their bodies had always anchored me. When I hugged them and felt their weight against me, I knew that I was here and not there, a reminder renewed each day when they climbed into my bed in the morning"
"At night my husband would turn his back to me and go to sleep on his side of the bed, and I would turn my back to him and go to sleep on mine, and because we could find no way across to the other, because we had confused lack of desire to cross with fear of crossing with inability to cross, we went to sleep reaching for another place that was not here. And only in the morning, when one of our children slid into our bed, still warm from sleep, were we repaired to the place where we were and reminded of our strong attachment to it."
"Childhood is a process of slowly recomposing oneself out of the borrowed materials of the world. At an ordinary moment that passes without notice, a child loses the last atom given to him by his mother. He has exchanged himself completely, and then he is all and only the world. Which is to say: alone in himself."
"All that time we had been exchanging words, but at some point the words seem to have been stripped of their power and purpose, and now, like a ship without sails, they no longer seemed to take us anywhere: the words exchanged did not bring us closer, neither to each other nor to any understanding."
"Something had needed to break, and he felt it then, the fragile bones snapping one by one under his fingers. He hadn't guessed it would be like that. He had imagined it as a huge, nearly impossible labor, but it took almost nothing. So light, so delicate a thing was a marriage. Had he known, would he have been more careful all these years? Or would he have broken it long ago?"
The way he characterises her protagonist is just as wonderful:
"He wasn't large, only uncontainable. There was too much of him, he constantly overspilled himself. It all came pouring out: the passion, the anger, the enthusiasm, the contempt for people and the love for all mankind."
"Her favorite piece of jewelry was a double strand of pearls, and on occasion when they lay around her throat, Epstein could not help but feel that her attachment to them had something to do with the irritant at their core that had gone and produced such luster. She had brought him to a state of vibrancy by means of provocation"
I have always loved Nicole Krauss' writing style, and though this book didn't touch me as I hoped it would (and therefore won't stick with me as much), I admire her for her talent on the page.
"[...] in the end the only true cure I ever found for it had also been physical: first intimacy with the bodies of men who'd loved me, and later with my children. Their bodies had always anchored me. When I hugged them and felt their weight against me, I knew that I was here and not there, a reminder renewed each day when they climbed into my bed in the morning"
"At night my husband would turn his back to me and go to sleep on his side of the bed, and I would turn my back to him and go to sleep on mine, and because we could find no way across to the other, because we had confused lack of desire to cross with fear of crossing with inability to cross, we went to sleep reaching for another place that was not here. And only in the morning, when one of our children slid into our bed, still warm from sleep, were we repaired to the place where we were and reminded of our strong attachment to it."
"Childhood is a process of slowly recomposing oneself out of the borrowed materials of the world. At an ordinary moment that passes without notice, a child loses the last atom given to him by his mother. He has exchanged himself completely, and then he is all and only the world. Which is to say: alone in himself."
"All that time we had been exchanging words, but at some point the words seem to have been stripped of their power and purpose, and now, like a ship without sails, they no longer seemed to take us anywhere: the words exchanged did not bring us closer, neither to each other nor to any understanding."
"Something had needed to break, and he felt it then, the fragile bones snapping one by one under his fingers. He hadn't guessed it would be like that. He had imagined it as a huge, nearly impossible labor, but it took almost nothing. So light, so delicate a thing was a marriage. Had he known, would he have been more careful all these years? Or would he have broken it long ago?"
The way he characterises her protagonist is just as wonderful:
"He wasn't large, only uncontainable. There was too much of him, he constantly overspilled himself. It all came pouring out: the passion, the anger, the enthusiasm, the contempt for people and the love for all mankind."
"Her favorite piece of jewelry was a double strand of pearls, and on occasion when they lay around her throat, Epstein could not help but feel that her attachment to them had something to do with the irritant at their core that had gone and produced such luster. She had brought him to a state of vibrancy by means of provocation"
I have always loved Nicole Krauss' writing style, and though this book didn't touch me as I hoped it would (and therefore won't stick with me as much), I admire her for her talent on the page.