The Forrests

by Emily Perkins

Il y a Lee, la mère, et Frank, le père. Dorothy et ses sœurs, Eve et Ruth, leur frère Michael. Et Daniel, le fils quasi adoptif, au passé tumultueux. Dans cette famille, excentrique et sans le sou, chacun essaye de se construire en dépit des failles des autres.
Pour Dorothy, le salut, ce sera Daniel. Un amour secret, initié dans l’enfance à l’abri des hautes herbes de la communauté hippie qui les accueillera un temps. Mais quelques années plus tard, Dorothy s’est mariée avec un autre et c’est désormais Eve qui partage le lit de Daniel. Daniel, personnage magnétique, omniprésent mais disparaissant sans cesse, sorte de Heathcliff au charme envoûtant.
Récit sensuel et palpitant, ode à l’énergie vitale qui existe en chacun de nous, Les Forrest nous entraîne dans le sillage de Dorothy. Trop perméable aux sensations du monde qui l’entoure, elle assiste peu à peu à l’effondrement de tout ce qu’elle a construit. Un seul espoir, retrouver Daniel, un jour, dans une autre vie peut-être.
Une structure romanesque remarquable, audacieuse, au service d’une exploration extrêmement juste des ressorts humains et des valeurs familiales.

Genres: Fiction, Contemporary, Book Club, Literary Fiction, Novels, Family, Ebooks

340 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 2012

About the author

Emily Perkins is a writer of contemporary fiction, and the success of her first collection of stories, not her real name and other stories, established her early on as an important writer of her generation. Perkins has written novels, as well as short fiction, and her writing has won and been shortlisted for a number of significant awards and prizes. She was the 2006 Buddle Findlay Sargeson Fellow, and she used the fellowship to work on her book, Novel About My Wife, published in 2008. She is an Arts Foundation of New Zealand Laureate Award winner (2011).

Reviews

[Elyse Walters · Rating 3 out of 5]

Library ebook

I debated on writing a review... but here goes.
I started reading this carefully- taking notes...
( and why was I doing this???)...
I have no agreements with anyone.

There were too many things I didn’t enjoy about this novel.
For starters ... I don’t like when a novel introduces eight characters in the first chapter. It’s too many for my brain.
I caught on ....
but my interest in the story was drifting in-and-out.

From early childhood to old age we follow *Dot*... with many other characters who are a part of her life.....
but honestly I couldn’t stay interested ....

I started speed reading ...
only slowing down in ‘some’ bit parts I liked —and even those parts didn’t seem as if they were necessarily connected to anything important.

Much of this book felt choppy- too long -
disjointed... and often plain dull.

It had all the elements we find in family life - all the universal themes -
but I was bored.
This book made me feel as if something is wrong with me.
Maybe there is—- something wrong with me...

A flat as a pancake novel for me....with a few yummy blueberries ‘occasionally’....

2.5 stars

[Emma McCleary · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another reviewer (one star) on here has written, "You keep waiting for something to happen, but as with most families, nothing does" and that's precisely what makes The Forrests so wonderful.

If The Forrests were a movie, it would be European, not American: the beauty and wonder of this novel isn't in finding a problem to overcome it's in overcoming of ourselves. This is about the extraordinary in the ordinary - genuine, normal people living their lives and encountering each other and themselves.

At the start of the novel the Forrests are full of potential - their family is wonderful, they laugh and play together and have nostalgic memories of sunny days. With their blonde hair and American accents, to outsiders they probably seem like the epitome of perfection.

But as they grow and form their own families they become like everyone else - grinding through the days, questioning of the decisions they've made, nostalgic and ever-returning to what could have been, touched with sadness and not special any more.

This is the first book by Emily Perkins that I've read and I was lucky enough to spend two straight days with The Forrests as I lay flat-out on by back with an injury. Her writing is wonderful; descriptive and rich with the kind of sentences and observations that occasionally had me stopping mid-sentence to admire the words in delight and wonder.

Highly recommended but not to all - I think if you enjoy contemporary and New Zealand Fiction you'll like The Forrests. More so if you enjoyed Rain (Kirsty Gunn) Owls Do Cry (Janet Frame) and A Boy and his Uncle (Anne Kennedy).

Even more so if, like me, your parents just got divorced out of the blue and you looked up from your everyday life and realised you were no longer a special family either.

[Michael · Rating 2 out of 5]

The Forrests by Emily Perkins was the book chosen for my local bookclub for June, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to make it to this discussion so I decided to read this while in New Zealand as the author is a New Zealander. This book has already been talked about in regards to being listed for this year’s Man Booker prize so I was interested in seeing what the book was all about. The novel follows the story of The Forrests, a disenfranchised family that moves from New York City to Auckland. It follows the dramas of a family, dealing with normal every day issues; from love, marriage, motherhood and parenting to the financial issue, loneliness and a range of other issues that come with a dysfunctional family.

This book is a bit strange, you start off with all the dramas of this family and throughout the book the issues never end. While you are looking on you never seem to be given enough information to fully understand what is happening and how the characters are feeling. Like the author was always holding the full story from the reader and just expecting them to guess. Each chapter is another scene which I’ve been thrust into without being armed with the relevant information to navigate through it properly. The family dramas never really ended in this book and I just couldn’t wait to get to the end of this book.

This is a beautiful piece of writing and Emily Perkins did a decent job at capturing a family in their flaws but I didn’t enjoy The Forrests so the writing was let down by the characters. It was a bit of a dreamlike book that did grow on you a little but for me it wasn’t enough to pull me to enjoying this novel. I think some people will really enjoy this book, it starts off by putting you in the deep end and I suspect it grows on some readers, just not on me.

[Jenny (Reading Envy) · Rating 3 out of 5]

I first heard about this book in Publishers Weekly's Fiction Review, so when I was given the opportunity to be a participant in a virtual book tour for it, I jumped at the chance.

This is pitched as a dysfunctional family book, and that isn't wrong exactly, but I think it takes more of an explanation. The story is told in vignettes and I think I was probably 1/3 of the way in before I had a clear grasp of the characters. Even then, I am not sure I ever completely grasped what was motivating Daniel, Lee, or even Dorothy most of the time. The children (the Forrests) would slip in and out of stories at such rapid frequency that it was difficult to keep track or really understand. The parents are practically nonexistent, and the children don't really do a good job at making their own way, crisscrossing between countries and continents. Family at one point is referred to as a "thrashing octopus," and I think the events and struggles are very reflective of this concept.

Some of the stories are more effective than others. My favorite was not very far in, "Out There" (chapter 5), chronicling when Daniel and Evelyn are briefly living together at a ski resort. It was beautifully told - painful, tiny details that become important, and unresolved. I wish more of the book had been so effective.

[Helen Heath · Rating 4 out of 5]

Achingly beautiful and moving. Not sure why some people thought nothing happened, a whole life happened!

[Lydia Presley · Rating 2 out of 5]

When I picked up The Forrests I prepared myself for a "literary treat." I'd gathered from the descriptions on the back that I was in store for beautiful writing - and with a setting in New Zealand, I could not wait to get started.

As I read The Forrests the literary scholar in me warred with the reader who just wanted to enjoy a good book. I fought with myself, admiring the deft descriptions and the way every scene came to life - but the reader in me wanted a story that I could follow. Not an easy story, mind you - but one that I could at least figure out by page 50 or so.

Now, I've read Booker Prize winners, I've read classics - in fact, I just this year learned to appreciate and enjoy some of the most difficult literature I've ever read (To the Lighthouse people.. Virginia Woolf is not for the distracted reader!). But I could not get into this book. And it's not because there's a lack of action - some of my favorite books involve quiet stories about every day life. No, it was the muddled confusion that I felt while reading sentences that seemed... well grammatically incorrect. It was the lack of clarification on who was who leaving me to mentally wave the white flag and try to just push my way through the book.

And that's what I did. I mechanically turned the pages, and instead of enjoying a story about Dorothy, I enjoyed beautifully turned phrases and snippets here and there of what broke through to me.

I'm really disappointed that this book did not connect with me - and maybe the next time I pick it up to try again it'll work. But this time, especially with a scheduled review of it on the horizon, it did not work for me at all.

[Virginia · Rating 4 out of 5]

"This was the awful, dawning joke of parenting: that the early shock of children, their need and clamour and inescapable attachment, just as quickly became their blithe withdrawal. And they took everything. They took their friends, their jokes, their daily fresh discoveries, the gorgeous, ungraspable newness of the world. Look sharp, the tide's gone out."

[Courtney Johnston · Rating 4 out of 5]

Intense emotion - high or low - thins your skin. You feel things with a new intensity - the barrier between you and the world becomes more porous; sunrises seep into you, words seduce you, paintings leave you wounded, breathless, tearstreaked. You feel like this when you're first in love - or you feel something like this, a tinge of it, a sharpening of the world, but this is a peripheral phenomenon; the newly loved one is the centre, the discovery, the endlessly fascinating, endlessly absorbing. The world feels brighter just because they're there.

Grief though. You'd think it would make the world dimmer, greyer, but the opposite occurs. The world becomes high-keyed, hyper-saturated, almost kinesthetic. You are so alert, so sleep-deprived, so sensitive to every shifting emotional tone in yourself and all those near you... and perhaps so fortunate that all this strikes awe in you, not fear.

It was this sensation I re-experienced over and over again reading 'The Forrests'. It's generally being viewed as a book in which life - nothing more or less mundane or amazing - plays out, from near cradle to near grave, traced through the central character, Dorothy Forrest: the fluctuating tides of her family and then her marriage, as parents and brothers and sisters and children and husband and lover draw closer and recede.

Perkins breaks intense, minute, almost hallucinatory passages of observation with cinematic leaps in time and occasionally character, often eliding key moments so that, like Dorothy, we come back to experience them events that shape the new present, rather that taking part in the event itself. In fact, events are lavished with much less attention than non-events: here is Dorothy's sister Evelyn cooking during a brief stint as a chalet girl.

She put the macaroni cheese in the oven and started on the birthday cake. She cut adze-shaped chunks of butter and wiped them off the knife with a finger into a large bowl with a chip out of its rim the size of a fingernail.. The fine white sugar poured into a peak on top of the butter, a mountain in the bowl. She sniffed the wooden spoon, which smelled of onions, and scrubbed it under hot water then used it to beat the butter and sugar together hard. The eggs were thick-shelled, hard to crack, with a taut matt skin between each shell and the contents. In the bowl they created a separated viscous swirl with the creamed-butter mixture, the yolk trailing through the pale butter, the transparent whites floating jellyishly around the surface. The fragments of shell were tacky and sharp when Evelyn carried them in cupped palms to the rubbish bin. She sifted flour and baking powder over the wet mixture and a fine dust sprayed over the bench, down her apron, and on to the floor. The vanilla essence bottle was empty; she shook it over the bowl but only that sweet, oozy smell wafted out, and she threw the bottle over to the bin, and it bounced off the rim and skittered along the floor.

Ursula Le Guin, reviewing 'The Forrests' in the Guardian, was irritated by Perkin's static mannerism. I don't agree. I read the book in tiny, tiny chunks - pages, not even chapters - worrying little about the narrative, simply sinking in to the moment I opened the book to. Like Le Guin though I found the book deeply sad - elating in the early sections, where Dorothy is all wildness and potency, deeply sad as she ages and her decisions and non-decisions become the horizons of her world. I feel that everyone who makes it to the end of 'The Forrests' will come out of it with a different conclusion - some may admire Dorothy, empathise with her, dislike her, fear her. I see her as salutary, perhaps not what Perkins intended at all. I doubt very much Perkins wants us to learn anything from the book. Yet I couldn't close it for that final time last night without thinking again of my imaginary friend, 80 year-old me, and how much she doesn't want me to turn out like Dorothy.

[Patricia Gallant · Rating 2 out of 5]

Maybe I didn't get it, I just found this story uninteresting. In fact, I found it terribly lacking. The events described were not described in full, or even to a finish. She was stopped for shoplifting, they looked at pictures of previous offenders... and then what? The storyteller wandered off and we never found out what happened in that circumstance. There was a lot of guessing for the reader. I don't think I knew until the last 10 pages or so where the story took place.

From an award-winning writer this book disappointed me. I got through it quickly because I wanted to get it finished so I could move onto another book. I honestly couldn't tell you what this story was about except the life of a person from childhood to old age with not very much interesting happening in between.

[Kelly · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my friends chose this book for our book club. In it is the story, from young childhood to old age, of Dorothy Forrest and her family. It's broken into chapters which do not make obvious the characters' ages, which I found quite rewarding to read; this tactic reminded me of The Time Traveler's Wife. Maybe this resonated with me because of the stage I'm at in my life, but Dorothy's long-standing love with Daniel hit a nerve, and I thought it was well presented. I finished it and wanted to make a few of my friends read it right away.

[Stephen · Rating 3 out of 5]

the story of the forrests as they moved from the states to new zealand , took me a little while to get ino this book of a very dysfunctional family living on a commune but felt the book was more looking at the emotional state of the family members through the years, well worth reading but a bit slow to start off with though

[Elaine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not quite sure how this lovely work of New Zealand fiction ended up on my Kindle, but it did, and I was on a long plane trip with no ability to add anything new to my Kindle, so I tried this, and wow, am I glad that I did.

It's a spare book (apart from its lush depictions of New Zealand flora) that tells, in episodic chapters, the story of a woman's life (and more tangentially, the lives of her several siblings) from childhood to the end. On the way, we pass through love and loss, motherhood, sisterhood, old age. We lose touch with the actual calendar, as the book seems to start in the 60s or 70s, making Dot more or less my contemporary, but she's quite old, I think by the end. In any event, it's a book that creeps up on you, and is ultimately quite moving - Forrest doesn't give you the plot, she gives you moments in time, and makes you make the connections. Surprisingly powerful, and yes, I cried a couple of times.

[Megan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an interesting book, which I think is the best of Perkin's novels to date. Don't expect a plot, because the plot is peripheral to the main character, Dorothy, Dottie, Dot depending on when and who are referring to her. I really feel this novel brings to fruition some of the earlier promise in Perkins' writing, particularly in her short stories. The beginning of the book took me back to short stories, such as 'a place where no one knows your face' in Not Her Real Name. It conveys a family car journey to the camp ground for their summer holiday. Perkins' ability to zoom in on a moment and to stretch it out to become a story in itself is clearly shown here:

'Your mother passes peaches back from the front seat. You uncross the fingers of your left hand so you can hold the peach. She tells you not to get juice everywhere. You don't see how you're going to be able not to. The peach is over-ripe and squashy and as soon as you bite into it juice dribbles down your chin. It will be sticky later. The squeaking of the furry peach skin gives you shivers. You bite around a bruise. You unwind the window and throw the bruise bit out. It doesn't go out properly and slides down the door of the car. You hope your father didn't see. You stick your face out the window to feel the air rushing over it. You stick your tongue out to be dried by the air and then put it into the peach flesh and feel the peach flesh rushing back into your mouth. Saliva. You hate that word.''

This curious mix of extreme involvement in the moment, and complete detachment from the moment to analyse it so closely is a real feature of Perkins' writing. It is integral to this book. In some ways I didn't get it until I had finished the book. And yet there were clues all the way through. Dot experiences her life, but I'm not completely sure she lives it. Everything happens around Dot, and she has no idea of what is really going on. She watches her family and doesn't really see them. She embeds herself so thoroughly in her experience of the moment, that there is no room for any other experience.


When Grace cries out that her mother (Dot) would laugh at her when she was angry, Dot reflects and remembers that indeed that was so. No interpretation, no thought for the impact beyond herself. Just, yes that was so. Dot is also later surprised to realise how much family knowledge she does not have. Her sister knows of her youthful adventures. knows her parents, and Dot is taken aback - wondering how she knew.

Dot's life continues and continues and she lives it in each moment of time. We don't really get to make any sense of it, because Dot doesn't really. Everyithing happens around Dot, and we get occasional glimpses of the plot of her life. That the story is not plot driven is further exacerbated by the fact that we dip in and out of her life at seemingly random moments. Connect the Dots.

To read this book is like lying on the outdoor table, wooden of course, in the sun, and smelling the woodiness and oil, feeling the hot surface on your cheek as it gradually cools and aligns its temperature with your cheek, then feeling the grain of each piece of wood, and the gaps between, and the small spider that travels over your hand, while noticing that the shadow of the grape leaf is wandering gently over the chair back in front of you, but not noticing that everyone else has gone inside for dinner. Gorgeous writing and stunning in its selection of reveal and not reveal.

[Sharon Burgin · Rating 1 out of 5]

You cannot fault the synopsis on the cover of this book. It does say that this is the story of Dorothy Forrest from the age of seven to the end of her life, and boy does she have a long life.

Dorothy is one of 3 sisters and a brother. The first part of the book you spend your time trying to figure out which sister is which and who is sleeping with Daniel, the family friend. The second half of the book is spent trying to picture whether Dorothy is fat or thin!

This is one boring book about the Forrest family. You keep waiting for something to happen, but as with most families, nothing does. I recommend that you give this book a miss and spend your time investigating your own family history. Even if you have no war heroes or Nobel prize winners in your family, it’s bound to be more exciting than what happens to the Forrests, as nothing out of the ordinary does happen.

[Kate · Rating 5 out of 5]

You’ll either love, love, love Emily Perkins’ sinuous, dreamy writing in The Forrests, or you will find her style unbearably tedious. I loved it.

The Forrests is the story of a family, told mostly through the eyes of Dorothy (Dot) Forrest. It begins when she is seven and, along with her parents, brother Michael and sisters Eve and Ruth, we see the family move, change and experience happy and sad times. But calling this simply a ‘family saga’ does not do justice to Perkins’ extraordinary style of storytelling.

The first thing that struck me about The Forrests was Perkins’ sentences. They’re layered, long, mesmerizing, sumptuous.

Read my full review (with lots of lovely quotes) here - http://booksaremyfavouriteandbest.wor...

[Linda Black · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not often that I put a book down and say that's it after just reading 100 pages. Gave it a good go, but way too disjointed, keep skipping time lines feeling like I've missed something.
Just too hard to keep going.

[Ashley Clark · Rating 3 out of 5]

I appreciate the attempt, but constantly felt like it was trying a bit hard.

[Justin Morelli · Rating 4 out of 5]

There is a lot to love and a lot to hate about this book. Following the life of one woman and her family from childhood to old age, this flows through the milestones that mark her life.
If you love observational comedy, but don't mind not laughing, this might be right up your street.
On the plus side, it is beautifully written, achingly touching and epic.In addition, this occasionally hits the nail on the head when capturing fleeting emotions possibly better than any work I have ever read.
However, this rambles vaguely - it is often unclear who is being described, and consequently this becomes regularly hard to understand. Although certain emotions are nailed, very little depth is ever really added to the characters, and although a life passes, very little of any significance really happens.
The best example of all this is probably a description of making a cake which goes on for pretty much a whole page. The cake is of no consequence, and has no real part to play in the chapter at all. However, the level of detail and observation in the process is unparalleled.
I loved it, but can totally understand why anybody would give up reading this. If you don't like it after the first few chapters, I suspect persevering would be pointless.

[Sarah Laing · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love Perkins' writing and in this book it was magnificent - such wonderful verbs, such brilliant details. I loved her describing the dimpled plastic wine glass, the maraca-like sugar shaker, the swooshing of Dot's daughter around in the swimming pool. It's like she's noticed all those little things in the world, the details not normally worthy of note, and she's glorified them. I was slightly derailed (all my fault; I've lost my concentration span) because I forgot that Daniel was a family friend and imagined that he was Dorothy and Eve's biological brother. So I read the book with an extra thrill and was slightly deflated when I realised my mistake. Perkins said she was obsessed by 'Flowers in the attic' as a teenager - I wonder if this was in the back of her mind. But this was a wonderful, sensory novel - I experienced the world that was described, and I was sad to leave it behind.

[Jackie Murrell · Rating 5 out of 5]

The reviews of this book are very mixed, and at first I was with the thumbs down brigade- I got to around page 50 and was on the verge of giving up. This is because of the way it's written, as a series of almost vignettes that, taken together, illustrate key features about the Forrest family, principally Dorothy. The chapters drop into moments in their lives, and often seemingly trivial incidents and experiences reveal deeper layers of emotions, obsessions, relationships and so on, often with gaps of several years. Some of the Forrests are never really fleshed out, we only see them occasionally and through Dorothy's eyes. After a while, though, it really drew me in, and then I couldn't stop reading, and I think it will linger in my memory for a long time.

[Andrea MacPherson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Engaging and just beyond reach, glittering and opaque, full of insight and gaps. The Forrests is a beautifully written book that made me rethink narrative structure.

Perkins glosses over many of the traditional major plot points in the novel--deaths, births, love affairs--and instead is more interested in the aftermath, how we carry on despite everything. It took me quite a while to find my footing in the novel--the beginning, especially, feels episodic, more like imagistic vignettes than story--but once I did, it was a pleasure to read.

[Jenny · Rating 1 out of 5]

So far this is THE most boring book I have ever read. The author seems to have forgotten that descriptive prose add to a story not replace a story. It is like she has gone out experienced something, attempted to write it in an over detailed way and stuck it all together and called it a book. So far it is a complete waste of the $30.

[Krissy · Rating 4 out of 5]

A beautifully written book about an ordinary life . The writing is amazing, her descriptions are so detailed and startlingly accurate at times I had to pause and re-read the page just to absorb what she had said.

This book made a real impression and I came out of it feeling reflective yet slightly disturbed too.

Recommend it.

[Rebecca Freeborn · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really wanted to love this book. I adored her last book, Novel About My Wife, and was hoping for more of the same with this one. It was certainly well-written - she's a great writer - but this 'saga' of a woman's life was simultaneously meandering and truncated. I didn't find the main character very sympathetic, and while I usually enjoy a dark story, this one ultimately didn't pay off for me.

[Liz · Rating 3 out of 5]

A compelling portrayal of family life and the way that significant people remain present within us (sometimes in wonderful ways, sometimes in stifling, maladaptive ways), even when they are absent physically.

[Eske]

I found this book surprisingly engrossing even though it hasn't got much of a plot.
I felt at home in it because it describes the world I knew in Auckland in the 70s, 80s and 90s
It made me quite homesick for Auckland.

[Judy · Rating 1 out of 5]

Sorry to disagree with friends! I hurled this book across the room - I was so frustrated with the endless similies and unnecessary adjectives. Without everything having to be like something else, the book would have been only a few pages long. I couldn't finish it.

[Christine Williams · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pretty good. Disjointed to the point of leaving me really wondering what was going on at times. Wonderful snippets of life, but without the luxury of savouring them. Some of the characters were not well drawn - Daniel for one - overall an interesting look at the lifespan of one woman in NZ

[Rob Tapper · Rating 2 out of 5]

Could not see the wood for The Forrests. This book had me skimming over what seemed like endless trivia and this became a habit - could not seem to grab on to anything substantive by way of plot, or conversation or description. Guess I missed the point of the whole lot.

[Jax · Rating 5 out of 5]

Better declare my bias, I love Emily Perkins' writing and this book is no exception. The language is delicious and the way she uses it to describe every day life is really special. Read it.