Review: "Forest Dark" by Nicole Krauss

Nicole Krauss is a talented writer with lots of skill, a fact that is evident while reading her new novel Forest Dark. It has some really interesting and vivid scenes sprinkled throughout it that are engaging at worst and mesmerizing at best. I only wish she would put those talent to use in more interesting ways. This book and Great House, the only other book of hers that I have read, read less like fictional stories and more like academic essays with a flair for the dramatic and a desperate need to show off. They are dense in all the wrong ways and I can say with this book that I felt all of its 290 pages. It was a quick read but rarely a fun one besides a few sections that I thought Krauss exceled at her intended goal. The novel tells two stories that are thematic and stylistic twins, but the stories do not converge in any earthly ways besides location. Told in alternating characters, the first story introduces the reader to Jules Epstein, a contentious and vivacious layer who, at the age of 68 and grief-stricken after the death of his parents, he undergoes a change in personality. He leaves his job and travels to Tel Aviv where a mysterious man claims he is a direct descendent of the biblical David. In another story, an unnamed novelist suffering from writer’s block also travels to Tel Aviv and also meets a mysterious figure with an odd proposition, this one dealing with undiscovered details of the life of Franz Kafka. The Epstein section reads like Philip Roth, with the setting and storyline feeling like a pretty good imitation of Operation Shylock. The first person section feels a little too confessional for my tastes, with Krauss’ former marriage to Jonathan Safran Foer adding a lot of messy context to the storyline. Eventually, each finds themselves on a strange movie set, but the book doesn’t go anywhere, but despite the shiftlessness, some scenes really shine, like Epstein’s backstory, and a really strong and haunting final image. While there might be a lot to slog through here, this is far from a failure.

Rating: 4/5