Advanced Reader copy - Enjoyed this book, really opened my eyes and made me seek out other similar books to read.

Forest dark by Nicole Krauss.
Jules Epstein has vanished from the world. He leaves no trace but a rundown flat patrolled by a solitary cockroach, and a monogrammed briefcase abandoned in the desert.
A good read with good characters. Slow but readable. 3*.

It did take me a while to get into this book and i have to admit I almost gave up. I’m glad I pursued as it’s a compelling and multi layered book. It definitely has a lot of great things going for it and once I got into it, it had my rapt attention.
Thanks to NetGalley and Bloomsbury Publishing (UK & ANZ) for the opportunity to read this book in return for an honest and unbiased review.

After the magnificent The History of Love I had high hopes for this. Krauss is clearly a very accomplished author. This is a very slow burner but the payoff of reaching the end is immense.

I liked the idea of this novel and I thought it was well written - it just wasn't for me. Interesting concept but it didn't hold my attention.

“We gave ourselves a past and inscribed ourselves into the future.” - Eliezer Friedman, ‘Forest Dark’.

First my thanks to Bloomsbury Publishing UK for the ebook edition of this novel and my apologies for the late feedback. This was due to health issues last year.

It was always clear to me that Nicole Krauss is a highly acclaimed writer though I admit that I found her Orange Prize shortlisted novel, ‘The Great House’ very difficult to read. However, I had wanted to try another of her books and I am very glad that I did as this was a superb novel with exquisite prose. It is also a quite challenging novel in many respects given its themes.

In ‘Forest Dark’ there are two narrative streams. In the first Jules Epstein has divested himself of his considerable wealth and traveled to Israel. He then vanishes though we learn aspects of how and why. The second involves a successful writer named Nicole who goes to Israel to research her new novel and goes on a journey of self discovery. The chapters interchange between the two and while they don’t meet, there are a number of similarities to their journeys.

Nicole’s chapters are stream-of-consciousness, which is a style that I often find difficult. Yet I quickly found that I could relate to her experiences, especially regarding cosmology (like the character I have a passing knowledge of the subject) and the multiple world theory. This assisted me into feeling engaged with her journey.

Jules’ chapters were a more conventional third person narrative, again there was a focus on cosmology (among other subjects) and having some knowledge of mysticism and the Kabbalah helped as at times subjects discussed were quite complex.

Both Jules and Nicole have strong ties with Israel and Tel Aviv especially and both are experiencing an existential crises. Early on in their journeys both meet Dantesque guides, which is very apt given the novel’s title is taken from the opening of Dante’s ‘Inferno’.

Krauss brings modern day Israel vividly to life and confidently explores themes of philosophy, religion, spirituality, heritage, loss, identity and much more. While it very cerebral novel I felt it also had heart. I was left wondering how much of the ‘Nicole’ aspects were autobiographical.

I will admit that there were times that I did feel out of my depth and also a bit of an outsider given the novel’s strong grounding in Jewish identity and culture. Yet this proved no real barrier to appreciating the quality of her writing and power of the narrative.

Given its multiple layers I feel it’s a novel that I would like to read again after gaining some more background in the work of Franz Kafka.

I do feel that even with it being a challenging read and philosophically complex that it deserves 5 stars. It has made me think a great deal.

Forest Dark is the newest novel from the wonderful author, Nicole Krauss.
Quite the confusing plot! Not sure I really understand the book . One character, an elderly man is giving away all his worldly possessions. Another storyline of a woman in midlife. She is married and has two sons. Her marriage is in trouble. She is an author who is facing a writer's block. She goes off to Israel looking for the motivation to try and write her next book. She meets a man who tells her that Kafka left some unfinished work in Israel and he wants her to finish it.

One a elderly man at the end of his life, looking to find some satisfaction in giving away all his material goods. He wants to donate money to leave a memory of his parents. The other a young woman unhappy in her marriage and stuck in her writing career, trying to come back to a place she has fond childhood memories of to write her next novel. I know there is deep meaning in this novel, but it is hard to work out alone. It will be a great book group discussion.

This is a novel full of disorienting moments. I loved all of Nicole Krauss's other novels. This one I am not as sure about. It is the story of two lost souls. They parallel their stories, starting in NYC and ending up in Israel. Two plots running side by side, one with a young novelist, Nicole, facing a writer’s block, leaves her husband and children in New York and goes off to Israel to the Tel Aviv Hilton Hotel of childhood family vacations, looking for inspiration. Running alongside this plot is the story of Jules Epstein, an wealthy, ambitious industrious New York lawyer who is now flailing after the loss of both his parents, retirement from his law firm and divorce from his wife. At age 68 he starts to divest himself of things including his art collection. He travels to Israel with idea of leaving a legacy tribute to his parents. He goes off to Israel to looking for charities to donate his money to and create a memory to his father and mother. He does not seem to care about leaving anything to his children. I was never quite sure of his motivation.

Each character go on separate goose chases, which have life changing consequences they could never have imagined. Epstein follows a charismatic rabbi who has convinced him is a descendant of King David and a young woman who is producing a film in the desert about the life of of the King. Nicole follows the lost manuscripts of Franz Kafka hidden away in a suitcase by Max Brod and found possibly in the home of his sister in the desert.

Then the plot gets very confusing. The two characters never meet, which was what I was waiting for. For their lives to intersect but they do not. Each character goes through their own trials and tribulations. Each must find the answers for their own survival.

An interesting book following two main protagonists with different experience as they go through a series of events leading to personal growth. It was clever, but I couldn't really come to like them and so felt reading the book more of a literary exercise.

Nicole Krauss never disappoints. This is a lovely that is rich, layered, compelling and quite brave. Highly recommended.

With "Forest Dark" Kraus has given his readers a very strange and complex novel which is oddly mesmerising. It merits more than one reading as undoubtedly, by being so multi-layered, there are many different interpretations to be explored. Certainly a novel to get one thinking as to what it might be that really provides value and satisfaction in life.

Breaking the back of the novel with metaphysical discourse

A novel can of course do many things. Traditionally, most of us probably expect a narrative and complex characters to keep us interested in that narrative. There may be innovations taken with structure, and the writer may be exploring and even pushing up against the edges of what the novel might do. Character and plot may also be exploring serious and absorbing subject matter. Nonetheless, if serious and absorbing subject matter becomes the central point, and the writer discourses on their subject matter without really attaching it to the narrative, or inhabiting what they are trying to show into character, than the reader might believe the author would have done better to write a book of philosophy, metaphysics, literary criticism or sociological analysis on what it means to be an American Jew in Israel.

Unfortunately, interesting though I might have found the subject matter of all of these, had Krauss produced a series of essays, I found that Forest Dark was too much of a cerebral construct, a playing with form for its own sake. And that it lacked heart, and it lacked viscera, so that I was never emotionally engaged in the stories of either of her character’s, whether the worldly Epstein, moving towards death and freeing himself of materiality, or the novelist ‘Nicole’ suffering a writing block and exploring the truth (perhaps) about Franz Kafka.

I was sad to find this such a disappointing and disengaging read. The only other Krauss I’ve read (and adored) was The History of Love. I was delighted to be offered this as a review copy, by NetGalley, but, in this case, it would have been worth looking inside the gift horse’s mouth before deciding to accept!

Cerebral, intelligent and thought provoking. Forest Dark’s dual narrative intrigues and questions and engages intellectually more than emotionally. Worth reading.

Unable to leave a review as I was unable to finish the book. It simply wasn't for me.

I loved Krauss’s The History of Love and hoped that I might enjoyed this book as much. Unfortunately it was not to be.

The writing had certain charms when it wasn’t trying too hard and stumbling into pretention.
There were certain observations about Tel Aviv that were so spot on they made me smile. But this is definitely a story of Americans in Israel, rich Americans, with little inclusion of actual Israelis except as a target for a handful of condescending clichés.

Maybe if the book had only been about Jules Epstein I would have enjoyed it more.
Certainly that strain of the narrative had a more satisfying if completely ambiguous ending.
There were some scenes of gentle humour, a fond revealing of a more endearing humanity. And the bathtub scene avoided vulgar lechery by remaining mysterious and mystical.
But even in this storyline there were careless inconsistencies and loose ends; (view spoiler)

However the big problem was the second strain of the narrative, written from the point of view of a writer-not-so-coincidently named Nicole, a narrative pervaded by a disconcerting whiff of self-indulgent autobiography.
This POV was introduced with a fascinating sense of a duplicate self, a scene brimming with potential for magical realism. But this heightened sense of inner-awareness soon dissolved into dull self-absorption and aloof detachment. Several intriguing sparks of inspiration were squandered by a writer too entangled in the introspection of her alter-ego.

Towards the beginning Nicole also experienced a déjà vu which promised much, delivered little and finally seemed to be only the set up line for an inconsequential event that occurs much later.
And what the heck was that second déjà vu, with the lover and the silken ropes. Was that supposed to demonstrate a more liberated, less constrained Nicole post-divorce? It just seemed awkward and out of place.

Once our protagonists get to Israel Epstein tries to find himself by losing himself while for Nicole there is a storyline based on the McGuffin of discovering a ‘lost Kafka’ including frequent mentions of The Metamorphosis and a quite involved discussion of the short story ‘Before the Law.
But Nicole the character undergoes no metamorphosis, in fact her character barely seems to develop at all and similar to Kafka’s character waiting in vain for access to the law I waited in vain for access to anything resembling a plot.

With both Epstein and Nicole floundering around in Israel I expected their narratives to intersect at some point but this never happened and I was left wondering why their stories were paired together.
In fact I was just left wondering why about the whole story?

Nicole Krauss is a superb writer and storyteller, and FOREST DARK is no exception. A little more postmodern than THE HISTORY OF LOVE, her latest novel explores what it means to be situated in a history that you have no control over. The two main characters are both searching for new meaning in their life, and in a roundabout way, they both find it. The richness of the novel is less in the plot itself and more the hypnotically beautiful writing.

I hated this book. It is suggested to be fiction but is clearly if not auto biographical at least factional. The majority - probably a 60 /40 split was narrated in the first person by a person called Nicole - a jewish / israeli author - surprisingly the same as the actual author. I lost interest completely at around 60% the characters were bland and the auto biography of someone with no import boring. This book would not encourage me to read any more by this author

I was given a copy of this book by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.
I can understand why the author is a celebrated novelist. The style of this book is unlike any I have read before. For the new experience, the sense of discovery - I thank her.
Unfortunately, I can't say that I truly understood this book.
The sense of culture and history was lost on me - although beautifully written I don't think I could say I loved it.

A literary novel set in the Levant. Retired, wealthy lawyer Epstein discards his wealthy possessions and sets out on personal journey of self discovery. A novelist, leaves behind her family in New York and also sets out on a journey. Each undergoes a metaphorosis. Inspired and original this is a novel that is profound and relevant to te world we live in.

Hooked from the first page to the last. Purely awesome.

I tried very hard to enjoy this book, but sadly I didn't. I didn't find the characters engaging, and the subject matter was not to my taste either. Still, I'm sure a lot of other readers would like it, so have given it 2 stars.