The Forrests

Starred review from April 23, 2012
Perkins’s transcendent newest (after Novel About My Wife) tracks the dysfunctional Forrest family across the globe and through time. The book opens in New Zealand with the father directing the young children—Dorothy (aka Dot); her older brother and sister, Michael and Eve; the youngest, Ruth; and the unofficial additional family member, Daniel, whose troubled home life leads him to the Forrests—in a strange home movie whose poignancy is revealed late in the novel, though the author’s descriptively rich prose and sense of scene (“The sun shone through stacked, strangely cornered dark clouds, and down the street an empty parking space glittered with window glass, like shattered mentholated sweets”) drives the story on. Life unfolds with unexpected turns, tragedies, romances, and revelations as the Forrest children—with a focus on Dot—tumble into the complicated world of adulthood. The gravity of Dot’s first love for Daniel is never far from her mind, and Perkins knows how to artfully reveal her characters’ inner machinations as they cope with whatever comes their way. Agent: Georgia Garrett, Rogers, Coleridge & White Literary Agency.

August 1, 2012
A novel that highlights the triumphs and vicissitudes of the Forrest family, primarily Dorothy, who both lives her life and tries to make sense of it. Sisters Dorothy, Eve and Ruth--along with their brother, Michael--have affectionate though spotty memories of their early life in New York, but while the girls are still young the family moves to Auckland, New Zealand. They soon meet 13-year-old Daniel, whose life will intertwine with theirs for the next 50 years, for he will eventually become both Eve's and Dorothy's lover. The life of the Forrests plays out in both conventional and unconventional ways. When the children are still quite young, for example, the mother takes them to a "wimmin's commune" for some rest and relaxation, where they meet earth mother Rena. As a young adult, Dorothy marries Andrew, an artist, while Eve marries Nathan, seemingly a "safer" choice since he's an accountant. Along the way, both couples have their marital ups and downs and occasional infidelities, but Eve dies at a relatively early age, leaving several young children behind her. As Robert Frost reminds us, however, "Life goes on," and so it does for the Forrests. The kids grow up, Dot grows out of love with her husband, and almost always lurking in the background is Daniel, occasionally messed up by drugs but always charismatic and electrifyingly attractive to Dorothy. Eventually, Dorothy becomes a grandmother, and even toward the end of her life feels the lure of Daniel, for she discovers he has become the primary relationship in her richly indulgent life. Perkins writes with soft beauty and brings out both the serenity and the strains of growing up, growing old and facing the lives we've made.

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June 15, 2012

Family is the subject of Perkins's fourth novel (after Novel About My Wife), which is set in New Zealand. Dorothy Forrest grows up in a commune with childlike parents and siblings that include a boy, Daniel, who shows up one day and never leaves. Dorothy falls hopelessly in love with Daniel, a wanderer who seems incapable of commitment, and becomes estranged from all of her family except sister Eve. Told mostly from Dorothy's point of view, the book follows Dorothy's life from age seven through marriage and motherhood and into old age. Perkins has a remarkable ability to capture the joys and angst of each stage of life, from the stings and sorrows of rejection and loss to feelings of ineptitude, boredom, and desire to the sustaining love of family. While some of the characters, especially Daniel, remain puzzling, the portraits of Eve and, especially, Dorothy are rich and realistic. VERDICT Recommended for fans of family sagas such as those by Anne Tyler and Zadie Smith.--Evelyn Beck, Piedmont Technical Coll., Greenwood, SC

Copyright 2012 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

June 1, 2012
Family dysfunction is always interesting, especially when wrapped up in a deceptively quiet yet emotionally explosive narrative. After immigrating to New Zealand from New York, the formerly well-heeled, constantly struggling, and often deliberately clueless Forrests embark on a multilayered odyssey otherwise known as life. Told primarily through the sensitive lens of middle daughter Dorothy, the story is strung out over nearly 60 years, with rapid-fire switches in time and place effectively mirroring the all-too-rapid aging process. As the action shifts from childhood to adolescence, to adulthood, and, finally, to the bittersweet end, the meaning of everything is summed up by the irrevocable ties that bind the Forrestsand all familiestogether, no matter what. This timelessly true tale will appeal to discerning readers of literary fiction.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)

April 23, 2012
Dorothy Forrest is seven years old when the Forrests move from New York, with dwindling money, to New Zealand. At the opening of the novel, Frank, the father, is capturing his children on a movie camera, trying to make them participate in a special effect. The children run off in different directions, bored of their father’s instructions. But a fragment, a celluloid memory, is captured, and as the novel skips forward in time with each chapter, the past—and the figures in it—hover at the edges of Dorothy’s life.

Emily Perkins, acclaimed author of Novel about My Wife, chronicles a person’s life with depth, poignancy and passion. She manages to find the right, often surprising, words to describe the sensation of being in the world, both in the moment and over time. She never resorts to cliché. Often Dorothy exists both in the past—with her first love and family friend, Daniel, or with her beloved sister Eve—and in the present. She is bemused at how quickly time passes; in later chapters she fails to recognise her own reflection. The novel is, overall, a metaphor for this, with an entire life nestled between the front and back cover. It reflects the deep sadness of time passing, but also the potent joy of ‘the little things’—sensations—of which Dorothy reminds herself and is grateful. Dorothy is perpetually surprised by who she seems to be, and where she has ended up, through choice and life’s inevitable turns.

The Forrests is partly about survival, not just how we survive the often difficult and tragic events in our lives, but how we survive each other: our parents, our lovers, our children. It’s also about how we survive ourselves; how we deal with remnants of the past that remain with us, and how we deal with new fears that crop up and change us. How, too, do we deal with getting older? At one point Dorothy’s brother mentions their family friend and her first love: ‘Flickered with adrenaline, caught out as always at the mention of his name, [Dorothy] told Mike that last she heard he’d gotten married. Adulthood was like this—your voice calm, your face normal, while inside white turmoil squirted, your heart still seven, or twelve, or fifteen.’

The Forrests is a work of art as well as a successful narrative. It is nuanced, compelling and a treat for the mind, senses and emotions. Comparisons to Virginia Woolf, Jonathan Franzen, Zadie Smith and Ali Smith are all valid in the way they deal, in some of their works, with members of a family over time.

Angela Meyer is a writer, literary blogger and former acting editor of Bookseller+Publisher