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Title: Into the Forest by Jean Hegland ISBN: 0-553-37961-5 Publisher: Bantam Pub. Date: 01 September, 1998 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.24 (100 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Improbable but beautiful look at man vs. nature
Comment: Jean Hegland clearly knows adolescents, and that's what makes _Into the Forest_ so thrilling. Nell's dreams of the future, her crush on Eli, and her need for acceptance with the kids in town are next to flawless in their realism. The story is in first person, and Hegland takes the reader deep into Nell's perspective. I felt her experiences deeply, from the unvarnished despair of being in a post-apocalyptic world to her silent, intense joy at discovering for the first time her connection with nature.
Now that I've heaped up some praise, I want to defend this novel against some of the more common criticisms. First off, some people ask when they read this novel, "How likely is it that that could actually happen? The federal government collapses due to war and so forth, and for some reason the state governments don't take over, etc..." Well, the answer is that it's *very* unlikely. That part is not realistic and frankly, I don't think it needs to be. Hegland begins with a premise, that two girls are left alone out on the fringe of society, and she asks the question, "If this really happened, what would the response of these intelligent and sensitive but quite sheltered girls be?" She is exploring the connection humans have with nature in a way that *requires* all avenues of escape to be cut off.
Another thing about the novel some people have trouble with is its woman-centered approach and the lack of positive male characters. _Into the Forest_ is about women, and some of its issues are women's-only issues, but I don't see why a man couldn't enjoy it as well. I do not think that Hegland is criticizing men unduly; yes, the father is portrayed as sort of ineffectual, but no more so than the mother. It's obvious that Nell feels, or at least develops, a strong love for them both. As for the rapist...yes, there's some men-are-dangerous stuff in there, but I think it's offset by Eva's baby, who turns out to be, lo and behold, a boy, whom Hegland uses to remind Nell that humanity has not been reduced to only women.
Finally, as for the so-called lesbian incest scene...Maybe it *is* far-fetched, but it is also thematically appropriate. The point is that Nell and Eva are choosing leave behind everything that is dragging them back into the past. Afterwards Hegland is quite pointed, I thought, in indicating that there would be no repeats of that scene, and it was not about two sisters unnaturally lusting after each other, it was about reclaiming their lives from the terror they had been living in.
I hope the obviously controversial issues this novel deals with will not put anyone off. _Into the Forest_ is a challenging book because it treats the positives of the "back to nature" idea very unapologetically. But Hegland is not demanding that we ditch our society; rather, she is reminding herself and everyone else that when we chose this way of life we lost a connection to nature...She invites us to ask ourselves whether, if everything fell apart, we might not rediscover that part of ourselves after all.
Rating: 2
Summary: Well written, but ultimately lacking
Comment: I liked the premise. I thought the author has a wonderful command of the language and constructed beautiful phrases, sentences, paragraphs. But.... How convenient that they would be so deeply cut off from the end-of-the-world experience thus permitting the author to escape from having to imagine much of it. A serious lack of character development, including even Eva. All we know of her is that she's totally obsessed with ballet. Who IS Eli beyond a blank slate, a device there simply to offer Nell a way out?
Some stuff was annoyingly first-novel -- too, too predictable that Eva would be the one to become pregnant; too unbelievable that the father would have taken off the chain brake given their circumstances; odd that he, a principal, would homeschool his kids. These examples, and so much more, just scream "device."
And the so-called lesbian scene -- sorry; didn't buy it. Having just been raped, might sexual contact -- let alone incest -- be far from one of Eva's first choices?
Perhaps a good book club selection as there is ultimately much to discuss, but I would never give it to someone and say, "You must read this."
Rating: 4
Summary: Totally Plausible
Comment: In response to a previous reviewer who reviewed, um, previous reviews: the electricity in the book, and you'll understand this when you read it, does not go off all at once. It goes in and out; the girls' family live on acreage in a nice house out in the sticks. They don't live in town, which actually bodes better for their survival. They hadn't been to school and had thusly been educated by their parents and themselves. They knew how to grow food and preserve it; they knew how to build crude structures; they knew how to ID plants. How many of us know those things?
Anyway, the power. It's never reliable, and as illness and political unrest abroad make the infrastructure in the US more shaky, life becomes more primitive. Backup systems aren't designed to run forever; things can't get fixed if the workforce is decimated by antibiotic-resistant infections.
I thought this was an excellent, spookily prescient book. Reading it again really makes me think -- the troubles Eva and Nell face in their world come about by a war fought far away, coincidentally compounded by illness and domestic terrorism. If you think it couldn't happen here, in this day and age, I believe you're wrong. I'm not saying it will... I'm just saying it could.
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Title: The Condor's Shadow : The Loss and Recovery of Wildlife in America by David S. Wilcove ISBN: 0385498810 Publisher: Anchor Pub Pub. Date: 09 May, 2000 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: Lambs of God by Marlene Day, Marele Day ISBN: 1573227226 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: April, 1999 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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Title: When Smoke Ran Like Water: Tales of Environmental Deception and the Battle Against Pollution by Devra Lee Davis ISBN: 0465015212 Publisher: Basic Books Pub. Date: 05 November, 2002 List Price(USD): $26.00 |
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Title: Windfalls : A Novel by Jean Hegland ISBN: 0743470079 Publisher: Atria Books Pub. Date: 20 April, 2004 List Price(USD): $25.00 |
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Title: Bee Season: A Novel by Myla Goldberg ISBN: 0385498802 Publisher: Anchor Pub. Date: 15 May, 2001 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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