Gone to the Forest

by Katie Kitamura

Set on a struggling farm in a fiercely beautiful colonial country teetering on the brink of civil war, this second novel by one of literature’s rising young stars weaves a brilliant tale of family drama and political turmoil. Since his mother’s death ten years earlier, Tom and his father have fashioned a strained peace on their family farm. Everything is frozen under the old man’s vicious, relentless control—even, Tom soon discovers, his own future. When a young woman named Carine enters their lives, the complex triangle of intrigue and affections escalates the tension between the two men to the breaking point. After a catastrophic volcanic eruption ignites the nation’s smoldering discontent into open revolution, Tom, his father, and Carine find themselves questioning their loyalties to one another and their determination to salvage their way of life.

With the author’s trademark spare, spellbinding prose, Gone to the Forest delivers a powerful tale of unfathomable loss and ultimate redemption.

Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction, Africa, Literary Fiction, Novels, The United States Of America, Family

195 pages, Paperback

First published August 7, 2012

About the author

Katie Kitamura’s most recent novel is Intimacies. One of The New York Times’ 10 Best Books of 2021, it was longlisted for the National Book Award, the PEN/Faulkner Award and was a finalist for the Joyce Carol Oates Prize. It was also one of Barack Obama’s favorite books of 2021. In France, it won the Prix Litteraire Lucien Barriere, was a finalist for the Grand Prix de l’Heroine, and was nominated for the Prix Fragonard. Her previous novel, A Separation, was a finalist for the Premio von Rezzori and a New York Times Notable Book.

Her work has been translated into over 20 languages and is being adapted for film and television. She is a recipient of the Rome Prize in Literature as well as fellowships from the Lannan, Jan Michalski and Santa Maddalena Foundations. She teaches in the creative writing program at New York University. Her new novel, Audition, will be published by Riverhead Books in 2025.

Reviews

[Libros Prestados · Rating 4 out of 5]

Han pasado varios días desde que terminé este libro. Su efecto ha ido macerando en mí. Y todavía estoy en shock. Todavía soy incapaz de expresar lo que me hizo sentir.

Mal. Principalmente me hizo sentir mal. Incómoda. Acongojada. Esperando a que esa atmósfera que se iba cargando estallara de repente. Temiendo que estallara.

No es una novela para estómagos sensibles. He leído libros más gráficos que este que, sin embargo, no me han producido tal efecto o me han dejado indiferente. La muerte, la violencia (tanto física como verbal), la decadencia de unas personas, de un país... todo eso está condensado en esta corta novela.

Pero realmente no puedo expresar con palabras lo que sentí.

[Repellent Boy · Rating 2 out of 5]

2,5. "En el bosque" nos va a hablar de un sociedad colonial donde Tom vive a la sombra de su despótico padre, en la granja familiar que este tomó hace cuarenta años cuando los blancos llegaron, colonizaron las tierras y exclavizaron a su gente. Esta granja es su mundo, por eso hace oídos sordos a ese rumor que cada vez coge más fuerza: los nativos están sublevándose, no aguantan más que el hombre blanco se haya apoderado de todo lo que les pertenecía. La llegada de Carine, provocará el inicio del fin de la vida tal y como la conocía.

Sinceramente me cuesta mucho plasmar mi opinión sobre este libro, porque pese a que trato de ser objetivo con las cosas interesantes que le he visto, que sos varias, no ha terminado de despertar en mi gran cosa. Y me da rabia por el tema suele resultarme especialmente interesante casi siempre, y a poco que esté tratado medianamente bien, me cautiva. Pero la forma tan "cerca, pero lejos" en la que está tocado el tema durante gran parte de la novela, ha conseguido mantenerme tan tibio, que cuando por fin parece que va a explotar, ya no estaba metido en la historia.

(Esto puede ser considerado spoiler) Para colmo no me ha gustado mucho como está tratado el personaje de Carine en según que circunstancias, ni por los personajes, ni por la tranquilidad con la que se narran ciertas escenas. Hay escenas de violencia sexual, que no terminan de ser criminalizadas y se quedan en un segundo plano. Quizás es un tema que me incomoda y afecta especialmente, pero no ocurre siempre que me enfade por como se plasma a la mujer que sufre esta agresión y en este libro no me terminó de encajar ni de gustar como lo estaba mostrando. (Fin del posible spoiler)

Pero no es todo malo. De hecho, el libro tiene muchas reflexiones interesantes sobre como el hombre toma todo lo que quiere y como se cree superior a otros hombres, especies o a la misma naturaleza. También me gustó como muestra lo seguros que están de su superioridad, tanto que no creían que fuera ni remotamente posible que los nativos se organizaran entre ellos, porque ni siquiera podían creer que pensaran libremente. Pero aunque las últimas 30 páginas son muy interesantes, la sensación que me ha dejado al acabarlo ha sido de total indeferencia. Quizás el problema lo he tenido yo y no era su momento, o simplemente la autora no es para mí.

[Jane · Rating 1 out of 5]

I feel as if most of this novel might have just went over my head. All of the characters were very flat and the plot quite slow, even as the civil unrest grew.

There was an awful rape scene that wasn't in relation to the country being at war and the unfortunate consequences of that. It was a gang-rape committed by the main character's father and farmers from around the area. Instead of maybe using that to highlight the terror women in countries of unrest go through or just how deplorable it is that rape happens as Adichie does in Half of a Yellow Sun, it just happens and is just swept under the rug. I feel silly having to say rape is an incredibly serious issue, so it definitely matters how it is portrayed. This book just wasn't for me.

[Rich · Rating 1 out of 5]

there's a chance this whole book is a big metaphor and it's really deep and I didn't get it. otherwise it's really really dull. the plot is depressing but doesn't really keep you gripped, you feel attached to no-one, the writing is very repetitive-which I understand is on purpose, but it's bloody annoying!

[Ruben · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked this up at a library sale and wasn't planning on reading it soon, but after the first few lines I was gripped. The same happened with the other two novels I read by Kitamura - I think it's not the plot, but the atmosphere that does it.

There is a tension and something ominous in the background, always subtle and only referred to in passing, but it colours everything.

In 'Gone To The Forest' the plot is suspenseful as well: a big farm in a colonized country, an imperious white father and his hardworking son, civil unrest in the capital closing in on them.

A very accomplished novel, although not quite as outstanding as her later works. Kitamura has become one of my favourite writers and I hope for a new novel soon - who knows in 2024?

[Cris · Rating 2 out of 5]

Many people compare this to Coetze’s disgrace. I hated it just as much. The fact that we don’t even know what country we are talking about, that all the protagonists are white and that there interior lives are cardboard made this a claustrophobic, sad chore.

[Bec · Rating 4 out of 5]

A strange & haunting book. It is hard to pin down exactly what it is about, it is set on a farm during a period of land reclamation & told through the eyes of Tom, a man so bowed down by life or perhaps innate stupidity that he doesn't realise what is going on around him, til the land before his eyes is literally sub-divided into 1 acre farms, where before his land stretched 10 000 acres. But this isn't what it's really about. It's about his relationship with his father, & the girl who is really a woman & in the end Jose. It's allegorical, but I'm not sure yet what the moral is. This writer is definitely one to watch. She writes pictures, you can see what she wants you to see, feel the hard finger in your soft places & smell the blood on the air. I guess the themes are hard to pin down because they are so huge, life, death & survival by any means possible. But told in a lovely poetic way so you don't notice the horror you've stepped into before it's too late.

[Catherine Weller · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kitamura's deceptively simple prose draws the reader into her tale of colossal colonial and personal collapse and keeps one spellbound to the end. The cast of characters runs from an infuriatingly cold land owner, to his ignorant and naive son, to a victimized and victimizing young woman -- each of them unlikable, each at times sympathetic. And each unwitting participants in the undoing of the world as they know it. The land buckles, social order is breached, and the main characters march (or stumble)on at a time when just doing what one always did is no longer sufficient. Of course there is a price to be paid for such stubbornness, and Kitamura describes it with affecting, stark language that had me alternately holding my breath and rushing forward in the text unable to read quickly enough.

[steph · Rating 2 out of 5]

2 stars because it was a quick read, but it was a very 'meh' sort of book. And I didn't really get on with Kitamura's writing - it felt quite stilted and I didn't like her staccato sort of sentences, or her use of full stops where I think commas would have worked better. Such a shame, because the cover of this edition is gorgeous!

[Karen · Rating 3 out of 5]

I grabbed this one off a mention on Goodreads, I think. It's a small novel set in an unspecified, generic colonial country during the process of decolonization. The story centers around an old colonial farmer, his hapless adult son, and a woman who enters their lives right around the time things start to go to hell.

So, I have some different thoughts about this book. First off: the prose is dense and simple and solid, in the vein of Cormac McCarthy. Kitamura trains her omniscient lens on the land and the family, putting them under intense focus and often producing startlingly beautiful sentences and insights into (flawed) human nature. There are few wasted sentences--most are careful and polished, revealing depths rather than skimming surfaces.

Second: this is not a gentle book. There's no nostalgia here for the colonial era or its discontents. Interestingly, the story focuses not on the country's "natives" but on the colonizers who are in the process of being ousted. It's an uncomfortable focus--not a bad one, but a challenging one, since inevitably the readers' sympathies end up painfully divided.

I thought Kitamura's decision to use an anonymous, generic country was good--or at least it didn't bother me. The only things we know about the country in question is that it has a mild, probably equatorial, climate; plenty of rich agricultural land; volcanoes; and that dorado (mahi-mahi) live in its rivers. The term "dorado" is Spanish, which suggests that there's some Spanish influence--but that leaves plenty of territory wide open.

I thought her decision to use a generic placement in time was less successful. There was a mention at one point of a nuclear bomb--a concept that seemed jarring in the timeless setting of the farm. A few times, technology and dialogue made me wonder when exactly the story was taking place. This wasn't hugely distracting, but I don't think leaving it open was any particular benefit to the book.

So, I had some quibbles with some other aspects, but they're spoilery, and possibly also trigger-y for folks who prefer not to read about sexual or other types of violence.



One of the story's triggers is the arrival of Carine, a young woman sent to the colonies because of some unnamed sexual indiscretion. She arrives at the farm as a prospective mate for Tom, but is quickly swept up by the old man. There follows a brutal gang rape at the hands of some of the other farm-owning men, which the old man fails to prevent.

The trope of female-body-as-colonized-land is old and familiar. Kitamura leans heavily on it here, going so far as to have her male characters think of Carine as land to be sown and harvested, property to be possessed. It's pretty language and of course it rings true because it is true--the history of men and women and power and land often plays out with the women and the land getting raped. But it's not original, and the analogy falls flat for me because it's so familiar. It's also a punishing scene to read, particularly in a book in which there are no really sympathetic characters.

Predictably, Carine becomes pregnant and predictably, the old man despises her for having another man's seed in her womb.* I can't argue with the psychology here, but I just got so tired reading this. If it had been a longer book I wouldn't have finished. I understand that the history of colonialization is ugly and rapacious. I appreciate the need to bear witness to this. But I didn't really connect with this story, or feel anything but revulsion and anger. Those may be good things to feel when reading about rape, but they're not enough to sustain a story for me.

Another predictable plot point was the revelation that Jose, the native son of the old man's native housekeeper, is the old man's son and Tom's half-brother. Again, Kitamura trades on familiar (familial, in this case) metaphors for the painful ties of colonization--but I couldn't really see how this relationship served the story. We have no access to Jose's thoughts or feelings, and there's no particular development of his relationship with his parents or with Tom. Tom does develop a slightly better appreciation for Jose's capabilities compared to his own incompetence, but their relationship as half-brothers adds no real depth. They might as well just be two men of about the same age living through the same time and events, one as a native and the other as a colonizer.

There are other cataclysmic events, mirroring and echoing Carine's rape--a volcano explodes and half-murders the whole country with ash and fire. The old man becomes terminally ill, and after trying to leave the diminished farm, returns to die there in agony. The rebels rise up, and Tom has to brave a horrible gauntlet of murder and chaos to find morphine for his dying father. At a certain point in the third act, it starts to feel like One Damn Thing After Another, and my expectations for resolution were set very high.

So it's particularly disappointing that the book ends as it does, with Tom and Carine cowering behind a tree at the farmhouse as the rebels approach. The old man is dead, and Jose has just (apparently) given them over to the soldiers. Carine is still hugely pregnant--the implicit promise of that plot point is left completely unresolved. Tom makes no real gains as a character. The ending is left open, but the clear implication is that they will both be killed within moments.

And so. After all that--all the suffering and brutality and dogged endurance--they're shot or machete-d, and that's it. Again, I understand that this happens in reality. People struggle and die anyway. But this is a story, and it's a story that raised its own stakes very high by the final act. I was disappointed to see it ignore them.


*Barf.




Overall, I was impressed with Kitamura's mastery at the sentence level, but at the levels of characterization and story I felt like this novel needed more thought. Kitamura may disagree--in the afterword, she comments that she intentionally made her characters flat, avoiding psychological realism as a readerly indulgence. For me, this approach resulted in a less enjoyable read. For others, it may be brilliant.




Note: Does not pass Bechdel test.

[Amy Rose · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book had so much potential but just seemed to fall short. I wanted to like it, I did. The majority of the book is very slow and almost boring with not much development. The characters are all very unlikable with no real redeeming qualities. The last few chapters had me more interested and invested in the plot but this was abruptly ended by a vague attempt to end the story on a meaningful note which seemed to fall flat and was at best, frustrating and annoying. Just when the story starts to take shape and things actually start to get interesting, the book ends. Very disappointing read.

[Kim Skidmore · Rating 2 out of 5]

A stylistically artistic rendition of the age old story of colonialism--> the rape of a country, a people, the fight to save a dying lifestyle, and all of the analogies that go along with it. The characters are one-dimensional: although I do believe that is an intentional, artistic, choice of the author. Unfortunately, I didn't enjoy reading this book. The writing is stylistic, but not lyrical and the story is boring... I really didn't care whether I ever picked it up again or not.

[Misty · Rating 1 out of 5]

I won this book in the Goodreads giveaways.When I started reading this book after getting into the first few
chapters I lost interest in the book but I wanted to finish the book to give it and the author a chance.But after reading it to the end I didn't really care for it I found It a little difficult to read .

[Stephen Pincock · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this small, powerful and tense book very quickly. I really enjoyed it. Its spare beauty and tragic characters caught me. Almost allegorical in its simplicity, reminiscent of master stylists of straightforward prose, and dealing with some of the same issues as Coetzee and other writers about countries South Africa, it is worth picking up.

[Bernie Walsh · Rating 2 out of 5]

The book was interesting however the style of writing just didn't click well for me. I found it to be somewhat methodical in its tone and it left me feeling like I wanted it to hurry along.

[Nick · Rating 2 out of 5]

Oof. Sorry to say that this one did not resonate with me like A Separation and Intimacies did. Kitamura's writing and stylistic choices in "Gone to the Forest" came off to me as forced, dull, and oddly both overwritten and empty. I do my best to start a new book without looking at others' reviews. While I was reading this one, I kept thinking, "This is kind of reminding me of a J.M. Coetzee book that I read in college, but like a beginner/bootleg version." Sure enough, there are reviews out there that compare the book to Coetzee's works. I'm sure there's a biting story about colonialism and misogyny in here somewhere, but I can't confidently tell you where it is. Instead, there's just this nebulous, wispy narrative with some flat characters thrown in, all pushed along by redundant and overly stylized writing.

[Professor Weasel · Rating 2 out of 5]

Reminiscent of early Coetzee.

[Monica · Rating 4 out of 5]

El amor y el odio. Buscar la aceptación de un padre. Un destino que no nos satisface, pero es lo único que tenemos y el temor de que nos sea arrebatado. En esta novela de apenas 160 páginas Tom se ve en los otros como algo mejor de lo que él no es. Excelente novela. En el bosque al igual que Kafka en la orilla de Murakami, ¿Seremos capaces de encontrarnos?

[Debbie · Rating 1 out of 5]

I won this book from Goodreads First Reads. I really tried to read it, in spite of what I consider elementary school level writing. But when a man is having sex with his son's fiancé, and then she's stripping for more men, I had enough. Life is too short.

[Meryan · Rating 1 out of 5]

I won it through Good Reads Eirst Reads. It didn't have a plot that I could find,you never found out where it was set, or when it was, and you never cared about the characters.All in all a wasted read.

[Agnes Muscoreil · Rating 2 out of 5]

I did not like any character in the book, I didn't like the style of writing, and I was glad it was a short read. I have no idea what the thought process was behind this book, very depressing! Surprised at all the awards it got, I can't figure that out either. LOL

[Mary · Rating 1 out of 5]

Not my cup of tea at all.

[Connie · Rating 3 out of 5]

First time reading this author. Wasn't really my cup of tea..had to finish reading for a book challenge.

[Scott Simpson · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book has all kinds of problems.

[Laura · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was well written, but not my style. I just wasn't a favorite; luckily, it was fairly short, so I did finish it quickly.

[Amelia · Rating 4 out of 5]

I hate all of these people, but respect what this book is trying to do.

[Lucinda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Brilliantly disturbing.

[Sarah Cavar]

DNF @25%. This book is less than 200 pages long and yet the prospect of even reading 150 more boring pages seems daunting.

[Steff · Rating 2 out of 5]

The premise of this book hooked me in, but my high hopes were slashed very quickly. The writing is repetitive and the dialogue bland and unrealistic. Whilst there are a few scenes of not, for the most part, nothing much happens in the story. The final scene was by far the most exciting and engaging and left me wanting to read the story of what happened next. Too bad the rest of the book did not envoke this.

[VB · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was hypnotising, almost like watching a train collision in slow motion. Beautifully written, mesmerising and tragic. Felt quite exhausted at the end.