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A review by felicitousenigma
Forest Dark by Nicole Krauss
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.