Into the Forest
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1.0 • 1 Rating
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- £5.99
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- £5.99
Publisher Description
Set in the near-future, Into the Forest is a powerfully imagined novel that focuses on the relationship between two teenage sisters living alone in their Northern California forest home.
Nell and Eva live alone in the forest. Recently orphaned and completely isolated, they struggle for normality in a post-holocaust world where electricity is a thing of the past and the outside world a distant memory. In one short year, thie normal teenage lives have been transformed as everything we consider necessary to civilization crumbles. Without petrol or electricity they are forced into seclusion, and adolescent dreams of ballet school and Harvard are displaced by the reality of learning to survive.
Nell and Eva wait for the power to come back and the world they understand to return, but as time goes on they are forced to realize that 'civilization' is perhaps nothing more than a temporary condition, a 'fugue state' the world has allowed us. At once a poignant and lyrical portrayal of the power of sisterly loyalty and a horrifying cautionary tale about the future of man and his place in the world, INTO THE FOREST is a deeply moving account of human nature and our fragile existence on earth.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Hegland's powerfully imagined first novel will make readers thankful for telephones and CD players while it underscores the vulnerability of lives dependent on technology. The tale is set in the near future: electricity has failed, mail delivery has stopped and looting and violence have destroyed civil order. In Northern California, 32 miles from the closest town, two orphaned teenage sisters ration a dwindling supply of tea bags and infested cornmeal. They remember their mother's warnings about the nearby forest, but as the crisis deepens, bears and wild pigs start to seem less dangerous than humans. From the first page, the sense of crisis and the lucid, honest voice of the 17-year-old narrator pull the reader in, and the fight for survival adds an urgent edge to her coming-of-age story. Flashbacks smartly create a portrait of the lost family: an iconoclastic father, artistic mother and two independent daughters. The plot draws readers along at the same time that the details and vivid writing encourage rereading. Eating a hot dog starts with "the pillowy give of the bun," and the winter rains are "great silver needles stitching the dull sky to the sodden earth." If sometimes the lyricism goes a little too far, this is still a truly admirable addition to a genre defined by the very high standards of George Orwell's 1984 and Russell Hoban's Ridley Walker.
