This is the place to be if you want to talk freely about Emily Perkins’s The Forrests, without fear of ruining anyone’s enjoyment with your plot revelations. If you haven’t finished the book yet, you should probably be in our No-Spoiler Zone.
The Forrests: The Spoiler Zone
Caution, all who enter here.
By Guy Somerset In Book Club
4th May, 2012
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10 Responses to “The Forrests: The Spoiler Zone”
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Lucy Hodgson May 30 2012, 6:36pm
I’m glad I’m not alone in my failure to find something to like about this book. I managed to finish it but, when it ended up wallowing in a mangrove swamp, that summed it up for me.
Like you, I wasn't brought up in New Zealand and have lived through some of the experiences that Emily Perkins seems to think deserve death and madness (I’m still alive but the jury is out on the sanity plea). I’ve got a good idea about what Daniel would have got up to in France and it would have been a lot more enlightening than wading through the list of nounless quantifiers describing a loveless marriage, or one that turns a mother’s love into cement boots instead of water wings.
Having escaped the pervading black and grey of English society, bound by their strict notions of properness, I’m not surprised that English reviewers like The Forrests. Just for fun (because there wasn’t much of it to be found in this book), imagine what the Australians and Americans would think of it. I can’t see Mediterranean countries interrupting their colourful lives to read this story. Perhaps Scandinavian and Russian philosophers would get something out of it.
Apparently, we all lead lives of quiet desperation so why would we want to wade through the minutiae of that disappointment and frustration? The flight of a dandelion in the final sentence might give a glimmer of hope but it took 340 pages to get there.
So, that’s my “aha” moment. Most people can’t figure out how to enjoy life until they come to the final sentence – but I knew that already. Think I’ll go out and play in some estuary mud.
Melanie Wittwer May 28 2012, 12:06pm
It may well be that The Forrests will emerge to be the Great New Zealand Novel everybody has been waiting for, but it is lost on me. (I know that the raving reviews from Britain contradict my theory of the book being lost on people who do not share a nostalgic NZ past.)
Cathy Clarke May 27 2012, 10:39am
I’ve re-read the last chapters more carefully, and on page 289 she is nearly 65, but it was the later the Rest Home scenes with her sister reading current news items (duct tape, topless women on bikes etc) that disorientated me. I feel about as muddled as Dorothy now.
Maureen Jansen May 26 2012, 1:13pm
Oceaniadawn May 22 2012, 8:02pm
I'd hesitantly describe the novel as a series of short stories (vignettes). The chapters did not immediately follow one another in the way one might expect: there were slightly disconcerting leaps in time, place, and viewpoint. Because of this The Forrests needs to be read in big gulps, over a few days, to allow the writing to draw you in.
The relationship between Daniel, Dorothy, and Eve is so poignant, and made me think of my relationship with a boy from my own childhood, whom I love even now, even as he has married and had children. So Dorothy and Daniel's relationship really resonated with me.
So, in summary (and as I tweeted today): In The Forrests an ordinary life is made compelling. Full of beautiful imagery; a novel to be savoured.
Guy Somerset May 21 2012, 10:31am
Lucy Hodgson May 20 2012, 3:11pm
Teresa Gordon May 12 2012, 9:23pm
I enjoyed the plot jumping around chronologically. It felt like the writer was leaving space for my own creativity within the text. What did you think happened to Daniel at the ski resort? I really thought the frog being burnt in the fire portended Daniel's imminent demise. It was great book to read at night and put down at the end of a chapter due the episodic nature of the story.
My apologies for not being more analytical about this book. There seem to be plenty of people participating here who have more experience at this book club lark. I just wanted to express my appreciation for Emily's writing and say that I will definitely make an effort to read more of her work in the future.
Linda Lee May 11 2012, 7:47pm
I liked how the chapters moved on with no need for time frames, but you caught up in the following narrative. I liked how the writing came from within the characters. And the love the attention to detail of the smallest thing that made the images come alive.
I found it quite amusing that the "over 50" Dot, had some of the same complaints as me.
Its a real slice of life with many issues that happen, divorce, death, affairs, unfulfilled love. The characters are like your father, mother, sibling, aunt, neighbour. I hope she wins the Booker Prize for this.
Cathy Clarke May 6 2012, 11:16am
In this dysfunctional family, the universal is in the particular. There are many mundane-but-fascinating scenes of day to day (middle-class) life that are described so exactly and minutely that resonated with my own experience that at times it seemed like reading about my own life. It was because of this sensory detail the characters felt like real people and were totally absorbing.
Daniel is the charming, elusive, Byronic figure that Dorothy continually hankers after. Is he the under-tow that keeps dragging her under, or does that longing keep her afloat when life becomes overwhelming? Of one of the many wonderful metaphors throughout the book, this one encapsulates their relationship: ‘A vine had grown over the kitchen window and been cut back, leaving a tattoo of broken black swirls. Dorothy picked at the insistent tendril that crawled under the windowpane, its bright greenness probing the room, pale green shoots emerging like arrowheads, or the tops of the spades suit in a deck of playing cards.’
A minor quibble: The book evokes a nostalgic growing up in NZ atmosphere that I was immersed in so completely, that when references such as silver foil milk bottle tops, the new anti-nuclear policy and EpiPens, and the Red Squad came up, I had to readjust my time-frame slightly. I almost wanted dates with the chapter headings, but then I think Dorothy’s life has been slightly condensed – if Dorothy is 25 in the mid 1980s then the Rest Home scenes with contemporary news items mean that the end of her life is in her early 50s? or is that just her confused memories of another time? It was a bit disconcerting, my reaction was no, no, you can’t do that to her yet!
The episodic style is similar to that of ‘The Stranger’s Child’ and I loved the way the writing got inside the heads of the characters: ‘She would clear out the cupboards and vacuum in the corners and wipe down all the boxes. She would find enough fresh food to make something hearty for dinner, and light the fire and pick flowers for the table and in the morning would sand down the windowsills and paint them and clean the windows and re-roof the house and mow the lawns and burn this house down and build a better one and bring her father back from the dead.’
As the song says 'Life is what happens when you're busy making other plans'. A great read that I just devoured, hence my early review.