The Dark Forest

by Hugh Walpole

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Genres: Novels, Fiction, Russia, British Literature

236 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1916

About the author

Sir Hugh Seymour Walpole was an English novelist. A prolific writer, he published thirty-six novels, five volumes of short stories, two plays and three volumes of memoirs. His skill at scene-setting, his vivid plots, his high profile as a lecturer and his driving ambition brought him a large readership in the United Kingdom and North America. A best-selling author in the 1920s and 1930s, his works have been neglected since his death.

Reviews

[Mark · Rating 5 out of 5]

In the back of ' The cathedral ' another novel by Hugh Walpole there is a whole section of single line quotations of reviews of some of his other works. One of the lines quoted for this novel, ' The Dark Forest ' is as follows

" the best picture of life in a field-ambulance on the Eastern Front that has yet been written. " - Saturday Review

Now call me nit-picking but that has always struck me a tad as damning with faint praise. I mean to say how many accounts of the life in a field ambulance on the Eastern front had the Saturday reviewer had the chance to review i wonder

Hugh Walpole is hardly a forgotten genius; he was a writer who was extraordinarily popular between the two world wars though the above quote might lead you to doubt that but at his death in 1941 critics and backstabbers, not decent enough to at least berate and criticize him to his face, came out from under their stones and from the woodwork and set to unpick and destroy his literary achievements.

He was writing at the same time as Virginia Woolf and Orwell and many others who have had far greater effect on the world's literary development and so its certain that he would rest lower down in any hierarchical bookshelving of imfluential novelists but what he did, he did well. He was a storyteller. He had a great knack of drawing in a few lines someone's character, someone's voice or face; a mood engendered by glowering weather, the sinister and the unexpected, the dawn of false hopes, the dissolution of plans and intentions.
This novel, written in 1916, contains all of these elements. It is a story infested with jealousy and fear and a morbid refusal to move on from bereavement. The dark forest of the title is quite clearly used as a symbol for obfuscation and the feared unknown as well as the backdrop to the main action of the novel. At some points it is a curtain of striking beauty needed to be drawn aside to see what lies behind it in terms of cholera and injured soldiers and the approaching enemy; at others it is a womblike place of re-birth and comfort but more often it is the source of unknown noises and lights and nature's croaking.
Two english men join russian doctors and nurses and other workers on a mobile field hospital on the Eastern Front. The story relates the loves and alliances and unexpected revelations and acts of courage of this assorted band but the lion share of the novel is taken up with the three characters Trenchard an english orderly, his fiancee Marie Ivanovna and the Doctor Semyonov and the inter-relatedness of their weird encounters. Walpole seeks to draw us into their minds and their struggles via two main narrators. Durward, the other englishman, who narrates most of the story as an observer to the action which means we only ever see what he sees and only ever get his theories and then the secondary narrator is Durward quoting from the diary of Trenchard. This means the picture we get is always lopsided; Trenchard is an honest if naive man, ready and able to gradually face down his fears and stupidities. Durward is one who, by his own admission, swings in his sympathies quite quickly. This is a common Walpole literary device and here, as in other of his works, it is a useful if imperfect way of communicating the mystery and confusion and sometimes total incomprehension of one person towards another.

Walpole himself seems to be saying no one person can ever fully grasp or understand another and the over-arching theme of the novel through both the main action and a secondary similarly refracted relationship is the clear fact that no-one can ever fully posess another.

This is not the best novel i have ever read by a long chalk but it is one of those novels which, every time I pick it up, continues to fascinate me. Hugh Walpole is not a forgotten genius but I do think it a shame that some of his powerful writings are now totally ignored and unknown.

[Warren Fournier · Rating 4 out of 5]

No, this is not the not the second part of the brilliant "Three Body" scifi series by Liu Cixin; this is the 1916 wartime drama by Hugh Walpole based on his own experiences in the Red Cross during World War I. It revolves around the complex relationships among a company of Red Cross medics, both Russian and English, on the front lines in Galicia.

Superbly written, one can appreciate the burgeoning style that Walpole became known for in the horror genre. Love and heartbreak dance amidst the not-do-distant sounds of cannon fire and artillery shells. Men and women relax after long hours of tending to the tortured wounded, eating borscht and drinking tea in makeshift camps under the stars, with lanterns and candles dangling from birch trees like lights of the fairy folk. Corpses of fallen soldiers smile grimly at the living, alongside living skeletons of those stricken with cholera. The smell of rot and gunsmoke and evergreen fills the air. All the while, thousands of eyes watch from the dark forest, a forest where the Creature lurks, a forest where the trees provide no shade, a forest that eventually brings doom to the little company once they enter it's deceptively beautiful domain.

"The candles twinkled in the breeze and the place had the air of a Christmas-tree celebration, the wounded soldiers waiting their turn as children wait for their presents. The starlight gave the effect of a blue-frosted crispness to the pine-strewn ground."

"The Dark Forest" is a beautiful ode to the Russian spirit, a memorial to the horrors of war and the bravery of those who fight in them, and a brilliant character study amidst vivid imagery. For those of you not familiar with Hugh Walpole, this may not be the book with which to start. But if you know and enjoy the work of this author and have not yet read this novel, seize the day and tread carefully into the woods.

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

Set in Galicia at the Polish Front during WW I, the protagonist is an Englishman working for the Red Cross on the side of the Russians (a physical disability has kept him out of the armed military). He is a keen observer of human nature, profoundly empathetic and analytical, and although he is nearly always just outside the scenes of actual battle, he is absorbed with the interplay and conflicts among his fellow medics as their personalities alter and evolve under the pressure and strain of war.

What a magnificent book!

Free download available at Faded Page.

5* Rogue Herries
5* Judith Paris
5* The Fortress
5* Vanessa
5* The Bright Pavilions
4* Captain Nicholas
3* The Old Ladies
4* Portrait of a Man With Red Hair: a romantic macabre
4* A Prayer for My Son
4* The Dark Forest
TR Joseph Conrad
TR All Souls' Night
TR The Green Mirror, a Quiet Story
TR Katherine Christian
TR The Captives
TR Anthony Trollope
TR Jeremy
TR Fortitude: Being a True and Faithful Account of the Education of an Adventurer
TR The Duchess of Wrexe Her Decline and Death: A Romantic Commentary

[Jennifer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Set in Galicia at the Polish Front during WW I, the protagonist is an Englishman working for the Red Cross on the side of the Russians (a physical disability has kept him out of the armed military). He is a keen observer of human nature, profoundly empathetic and analytical, and although he is nearly always just outside the scenes of actual battle, he is absorbed with the interplay and conflicts among his fellow medics as their personalities alter and evolve under the pressure and strain of war. Walpole's own experience with the Red Cross in WW I provided him with the background and, perhaps, the substance of his complex of characters. The oppressive maze of the forest is a nod to the dark wood of Dante and an appropriate setting for the conflicted inner self. I found the book a gripping and evocative read.

[Lucy · Rating 3 out of 5]

this goes on a bit, but I stuck with it, and I'm glad I did for the last section, the diary of one of the main characters. That's excellent.
If anyone needs persuading that war is awful, this book will help.

[Jim Jones · Rating 3 out of 5]

One of Walpole's most autobiographical novels, this is the story of an Englishman treating the wounded on the Russian/Austrian front during WWI. The writing is lovely, but the characters fail to come to life.

[Thabitta · Rating 3 out of 5]

It is a good autumn read if rattling coffins and chattering teeth are overused. The story is set in times of war, so the psychedelic moments are not as creepy as one would expect.

[Greynomad · Rating 2 out of 5]

read

[John Freeman · Rating 4 out of 5]

When reading about books on Goodreads, I’m usually more intrigued by those books not getting wide readership. Those books with few reviews, limited number of marks showing have read, and absent from the “To Read” bookshelves of the masses. Often popular upon publishing, they are forgotten now. So, when I read one of these less noticed books, and it proves to be great, I get more satisfaction having enjoyed it if others have never heard of it. The Dark Forest is such a work. Absolutely great.

While it may not be as widely read as when it was first published in 1916, when people carried the painful scars of war, I would argue that it is still relevant. I would argue that the plot and ideas explored in the novel would make a great funeral doom metal album. If The Dark Forest can resonate with a metal audience, the subject is timeless.

Metal of the darkest genres—black, death, doom—draws on bleak, emotional themes to craft its music—musical narratives of sadness, suffering and death, loss and mourning. In other words, The Dark Forest. During the carnage of war, two men love the same woman. When she is shot and killed, each is devastated. Anguish gives them something to share, a bond. The man who lost the woman to the other man believes that the first to die will be reunited with her, in death, for all eternity.

And he’s decided it going to be him.

But the novel is so much more than this basic plot summary. It is a well-crafted narrative, thought provoking, full of symbolism and metaphor. And a sadly underrated WWI novel.

[Evan Hughes · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very introspective look at a volunteer medical unit on the Russian front in WWI. Much is made of a love triangle that is never really resolved throughout the book, unless you consider becoming a casualty of war a resolution.

[Rebecca Jaroszewski · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was a bit bland at some times but the overall story was beautiful. I have a weakness for books about war, especially war in Russia. I couldn't put it down for days.