This was my first experience of the writing of Nicole Kraus, so I did not know what to expect. All I knewwhen was that this was a book about someone who goes missing. Little did I know that I was about to embark on a thoughtful and carefully written expose of Jews, Jewish history and the life of one of my favorite Jewish authors, Kafka.
As a Jew growing up in the diaspora in Australia and experiencing life on kibbutz and the people of Israel, I could identify with all the plot and its twists.
The deliberation about the origin of Jewish thinking and culture were just so accurate.
And then too slowly drawn into the Kafkaesque plot and its wanderings was thrilling.
This is a book to again again.

Oh, I am afraid i struggled with this one. I simply couldn't bring myself to care about any of the characters, which is seems to me is somewhat of a prerequisite for engagement with a novel. It's a very well researched novel displaying some significant literary and philosophical depth, but I found it slow moving and hard to commit my time to.

That I did not finish this book says I believe, much more about my inability to concentrate on the underlying philosophical concepts and debate, than on the quality of the writing and the beautiful and lyrical prose. I was initially drawn to the story-line, two alternating narrative viewpoints, both located primarily in the Tel Aviv Hilton Hotel. But the introduction of the Kafka elements proved too much for me and I reluctantly gave up. I am sure the novel deserves all the four and five star reviews, but it just wasn’t for me.

I found it hard to read and it left me with a feeling that I need time to process it.

Jules Epstein, aged 68, decides to give away his possessions and move to Israel, where he hopes to honour his parents. His story is intercut with that of Nicole, a novelist - and of course the reader sees parallels with Nicole Krauss herself. They are both going through a kind of metamorphosis and there are references to Kafka here as well as to Jewish history and the old testament.
This is a complex and demanding novel, I enjoyed it but was slightly disappointed that the twin narratives don't really have any sort of conclusion - perhaps like life but not necessarily the best ending to a novel.

This is my second novel by Nicole Krauss, following on from the wonderful History of Love. Many of the themes of Forest Dark will be familiar to anyone who has read this earlier work, the place of faith, identity, the role of art and the artist who creates it, the real ownership of the things we create. In a similar fashion to the History of Love she constructs her narrative through two distinct but related strands. The first is Jules Epstein a successful, recently divorced lawyer undergoing a transformation in his later years, leaving his home and wife in the USA and giving away the bulk of his possessions as he sets out for Israel determined to find the perfect memorial for his dead parents. We also meet a young, well-known novelist named Nicole who is drawn back to the Tel Aviv Hilton when the slow disintegration of her marriage becomes undeniable and her latest latest novel stalls. The unexpected bursts into both lives with the advent of a charismatic rabbi on one hand and a mysterious literature professor (and possible former Mossad agent) on the other. Both strangers lead to the possibility of artistic ventures which neither character could have imagined.

This is another deep, complex and demanding work form Krauss that forces the readers to consider many things in new ways from the infinite, the nature of time and the universe, to the particular, the choices that define us. There is something Sebald-esque in the liminal quality of Nicole's story, the experience of writing and living with a considerable reputation is clearly based on Krauss's personal experience but it impossible to pinpoint where the reality of Nicole Krauss ends and where the fiction of the character Nicole begins. I suspect that the surprising and unsettling events surrounding the literature professor and the ownership of Franz Kafka's remaining unpublished papers are not precisely true but it's an intriguing and thoughtful consideration of art and ownership that is particularly bound up with Kafka's (and Krauss's) identity as a Jewish author. Should powerful art remain in the custody of its creator or can the wider population (and in particular, the state) stake a claim even at the expense of the author's wishes? At the time of writing the fate of Kafka's papers was still embroiled in a long legal battle between the National Library of Israel and the papers' custodian Ester Hoffe. In August last year they were finally judged to be the legal property of the state ostensibly based on the wishes of Max Brod but also because their contribution to Israeli and Jewish culture was considered too significant to justify private ownership. Krauss weaves this fascinating and murky history into a storyline which is itself Kafkaesque, the sudden, threatening appearance of authority, the bizarre development of events, the confusion and uncertainty of the protagonists.

It's a deeply philosophical novel about identity and art, the way stories are created and co-opted, used and abused from Kafka to King David and there are some rather bleak hints about the role of literature and legend in Israel. There is some fascinating and frankly brilliant interplay of cosmological theory and theology and the deeply human ties between the two. My only reservation is that the ends seems to evaporate rather than coalesce with neither story reaching a real conclusion but neither do they seem to be given meaningful ambiguity, they just drift to a close in a way that didn't leave me fully satisfied. While the two narratives intersect and compliment each other they never quite unite in the powerful way that was so successful in The History of Love.

Thanks Bloomsbury Publishing Plc (UK & ANZ) and netgalley for this ARC.

Swimming with a new culture, family, and country make you feel like you a along for the ride with everyone in the novel. A front row seat to all the action makes this a unique viewpoint to read a book.