Rainforest

by Jenny Diski

The powerful story of a woman compelled to confront chaos.

Mo's life as an anthropologist in London is safe, orderly and stain-free. There is no mystery, only scientific explanation. Why should a research trip to the rainforest in Borneo threaten her cool view of the world? She is only there to observe, after all. And what difference does the absurd sexual behaviour of others make to her as long as she stays sensible? But Mo is not the only one who's looking: something - someone is watching her as she marks out her grid over the lush and rampant forest...

'Great precision and power... a tough exploration of solitude and sexual need... When I put the book down I needed air; I'd been horribly gripped' - New Statesman

'Jenny Diski focuses with razor-sharp precision upon the way in which sexual observation can triumph over reason... a gripping, provocative novel' - Daily Mail

'Jenny Diski's incisive clarity keeps pages turning and brain humming; - Time Out

Genres: Fiction

190 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1987

About the author

Jenny Diski was a British writer. Diski was a prolific writer of fiction and nonfiction articles, reviews and books. She was awarded the 2003 Thomas Cook Travel Book Award for Stranger on a Train: Daydreaming and Smoking around America With Interruptions.

Reviews

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 rounded down

[Liz Mutkins · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's many years since I read this book but I remember it as brilliant and thought provoking. Better re-read it! I have read many of Diski's books since and I think she's a genius.

[Susan Banks · Rating 5 out of 5]

The clarity of the writing is extraordinary, particularly compelling when revealing the hard to understand levels of perception. I don't know how much of this novel I understood [do we ever?] but found it compelling and impressive.

[Polly Theedom · Rating 3 out of 5]

I loved the beginning of this book. It was slow, focused on detail and the psyche of our protagonist. There was also a wonderful, unspoken sexual tension. However, as it goes on I feel it gets too gaudy and misses the nuance that it began with which I found a shame.

[Steve]

Very mixed feelings on this novel. There were aspects I really enjoyed, especially main character Mo's relationships to the spaces she inhabited and how control of those spaces was crucial to her identity in increasingly complicated ways. The sections of the novel focused on Mo alone were really compelling, both in London and in the jungle conducting her research. But there were also many scenes of characters delivering lectures to one another that felt like over-elaboration of what had already emerged more organically from the characters' actions and lives. And I couldn't help the novel made too much of sex, or made too much of it in ways that felt tired — professors wrecking their lives over lust for a student, another professor sleeping around the department. That whole thread of the story was pretty uninteresting to me, and the surprise used to set the end of the novel in motion that seemed so implausible that it really diminished the whole for me, even though I had enjoyed those other elements. Not the ending itself, but the means of making it happen.

[Dahra · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5/5 stars.
A great inside look into women's life, need for independence, relationship with others and mental health.

[Nadia Peters · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really enjoyed how real this felt and the whole aspect of humans place within nature but I think the end lost be a bit

[Alan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well-written by emotionally stunted, August 1, 2008
By Alan A. Elsner "Alan Elsner, author" (Washington DC) - See all my reviews


Mo, the heroine of this intriguing but flawed novel, is the kind of person who needs complete order in her life. Perhaps because of some emotional issues that arose in her childhood, she has almost walled herself off from meaningful human contact.
An environmental scientist, she travels to the rainforest of Borneo to pursue a project intended to measure the natural processes of the eco-system.
Diski is a little too obvious in setting up the inevitable conflict between Mo, who is almost dead inside, and the teeming, pulsating forest which appears as an actual character in the book.
The other dichotomy is provided by Joe, a sexually voracious colleague, who finally pierces Mo's reserve and then cynically dumps her after a single ecstatic night. Joe, the author suggests, is like Nature itself, morally dead, intent only on pursuing his sexual agenda. In a long essay, apparently endorsed by the author, he argues that humans have sentimentalized Nature. "True nature cares for nothing, neither life nor death. It is simply in a perpetual motion of growth and decay, beyond value or morality."
Liam, another colleague, provides different counterpoint. Although happily married with three kids, he pursues a disastrous affair with a young female student with whom he has little in common but whose sexual allure he cannot resist.
The lesson appears to be that life is messy and sometime cruel -- but the messiness and cruelty are necessary for life to exist. The other alternative is Mo's model of total sterility which can scarcely be described as life at all.
The writing is good and occasionally better than good but the characters perform their roles like obedient chessmen manipulated by the author rather than real live people. Ironic in a book about the pulsing necessity of life. For more about me and my latest book The Nazi Hunter: A Novel go to www.alanelsner.com.

[Mike Finn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent. Woman who spends summers in a Rainforest alone and her relationships.