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Title: Our Lady of the Forest by David Guterson ISBN: 0-375-41211-5 Publisher: Knopf Pub. Date: 30 September, 2003 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $25.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.03 (34 reviews)
Rating: 3
Summary: Along with the Author...I lost interest
Comment: Our Lady of the Forest runs in fits and starts.
This story of young girl who is having visions in the primeval forests of the Pacific Northwest is initially compelling, but then gets more and tangled and confusing as it goes along. This is a complicated feat because the novel does not concentrate on an extraordinary amount of characters or themes, yet somehow you find yourself losing your way.
Anne, the "Joan of Arc" of the story, is a well drawn character who we are intensely interested in, despite Guterson's error of giving away most of Anne's tortured background right off. However, her friend, sceptic, and chief disciple is made out to be nothing more than a caricature of her own irony. There is no heart beating there, even though the author bestows her with heavy-handed secular motivations such as wanting to steal from the massive collections to fund her winter in the tropics.
Indeed, all of the characters aside from Anne and Tom Cross, (an unemployed logger who is mean to the core, but obviously searching for healing,) are just mouthpieces to state religious and philosophical questions that anybody with even a freshman Introduction to Philosophy or Theology class already knows. Within the first few pages we get stuff from Aquinas, Pascal's wager, etc. However, the book doesn't go on to illuminate these ideas or fulfill their arguments. Rather, we get long digressions that ultimately prove frustrating, not in their content, but in their context.
The community and the world in which Guterson has set his story is indeed fascinating, but perhaps the book is too short. I had a feeling that Guterson has too many things going on to be accomodated by the brief length. It seems as if the story ends too soon. The author conveys a deep passion for the area and some of the people, but unfortunately, not for the subject matter, and a result he loses not only his interest, but the readers as well.
There is poetic brilliance and exposition in the prose, but the dialogue just seems so contrived and leaden, especially in the beginning sections. As a playwright, I am around dramatic texts all of the time and I am witness to the struggles and pains that playwrights take towards getting dialogue right, because, basically it is all you have. I think it would serve some novelists well to try and write a play or two. Guterson included.
Rating: 5
Summary: ONCE UPON A TIME A GIRL WALKED INTO THE FOREST...
Comment: Our Lady of the Forest is not my usual cup of tea. How could it be? This book--part fairy tale, part social commentary, part rain-sodden film noir--is unlike any book I have ever read.
A while back I tried to read David Guterson's Snow Falling On Cedars. I could not get into the book for some reason. I could not invest myself, emotionally or mentally, in any of the characters. I started out not caring and ended up not finishing the book. You can then imagine my trepidation when I picked up a copy of Our Lady of the Forest. However, I found myself intriguiged by the story description.
Against my better judgement I gave the book a try.
I found that Our Lady of the Forest is one book that is very hard to put down.
Guterson rambled in Snow Falling On Cedars. Here he proves himself to be a master of spare, soul-reverberating prose and taught plot-lines. His characters are hauntingly simple but carry an immense weight and depth. His scenes, especially the climax, echo in the reader's mind for a long time after putting the novel down.
The tale of Anne and her visions, and of the lives affected by them is one of the best pieces of storytelling I have read in a long time. Like the great Northern Forest in which it is set, it is vast--inspiring to the intellect--and stirring, even humbling, to the soul.
I give this book my full recommendation.
Rating: 2
Summary: Our Forest of the Lady
Comment: As a great fan of Guterson's previous novels, I was eager to read "Our Lady of the Forest." Page by page, the book has elements that please, particularly the descriptive treatment of the forest community and Guterson's literate dialog. But ultimately the book fails to satisfy.
Ostensibly, the theme is the personal struggle to come to terms with religious experience. But Guterson makes it clear through this book that he has no first-hand religious experience to draw upon: no anguish of soul, no conversion, no sense of devotion, no spiritual witness, and ultimately no faith. We're left with a portrayal of Christianity so lifeless and banal that it might have been pieced together from NPR talk-shows.
Please, Mr. Guterson, inform your next novel from your own experience, and people it with folks that you really know.
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Title: The Namesake : A Novel by Jhumpa Lahiri ISBN: 0395927218 Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Co Pub. Date: 16 September, 2003 List Price(USD): $24.00 |
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Title: The Amateur Marriage: A Novel by Anne Tyler ISBN: 1400042070 Publisher: Knopf Pub. Date: 06 January, 2004 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title: Love by Toni Morrison ISBN: 0375409440 Publisher: Knopf Pub. Date: 28 October, 2003 List Price(USD): $23.95 |
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Title: The Great Fire: A Novel by Shirley Hazzard ISBN: 0374166447 Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux Pub. Date: 14 October, 2003 List Price(USD): $24.00 |
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Title: The Time Traveler's Wife (Today Show Book Club #15) by Audrey Niffenegger ISBN: 1931561648 Publisher: MacAdam/Cage Publishing Pub. Date: 17 September, 2003 List Price(USD): $25.00 |
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