Gone to the Forest
A Novel
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
FROM THE CRITICALLY ACCLAIMED AUTHOR OF THE LONGSHOT comes this gripping saga about the destruction of a family, a home, and a way of life. Set on a struggling farm in a colonial country teetering on the brink of civil war, Gone to the Forest is a tale of family drama and political turmoil in which fiery storytelling melds with daring, original prose. Since his mother’s death, Tom and his father have fashioned a strained domestic peace, where everything is frozen under the old man’s vicious control. But when a young woman named Carine arrives at the farm, the tension between the two men escalates to the breaking point. Hailed by the Boston Globe as “a major talent,” Kitamura shines in this powerful new novel.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this wondrous tale of both a family and a country's dissolution, Kitamura brings readers into an unspecified time in an unnamed colonial country where the natives are restless and the white settlers are soon to be relieved of what they've taken. In this newly unstable environment, alive with an increasingly destructive undercurrent, we meet Tom, heir to his family's estate, whose inertia and na vet make him an equally pitiable and winning character, particularly in contrast to his charismatic, domineering father, whose steady decline is detailed in spellbinding horror. On the brink of the country's and the family's decimation, a woman named Carine enters the scene and vies for the attention of both men. She is a manipulative, waiflike woman with a questionable past, and her competing tendencies toward self-destruction and self-preservation make for a vibrant conflict. Finally, there are Jose and Celeste, two bafflingly loyal servants whose connection to Tom and his father is both shocking and fitting. In her second novel (after The Longshot), Kitamura, with spare, mesmerizing prose, paints a memorable vision of emotional chaos echoed by geologic and political turmoil.
