Forest Dark

Forest Dark is the newest novel from the wonderful author, Nicole Krauss.
Quite the confusing  plot!  Not sure I really understand the book .  One character, an elderly man is giving away all his worldly possessions.    Another storyline of a woman in midlife. She is married and has two sons.  Her marriage is in trouble.  She is an author who is facing a writer's block.  She goes off to Israel looking for the motivation to try and write her next book.  She meets a man who tells her that Kafka left some unfinished work in Israel and he wants her to finish it. 

 One a elderly man at the end of his life, looking to find some satisfaction in giving away all his material goods.  He wants to donate money to leave a memory of his parents.  The other a young woman unhappy in her marriage and stuck in her writing career, trying to come back to a place she has fond childhood memories of to write her next novel.    I know there is deep meaning in this novel, but it is hard to work out alone.  It will be a great book group discussion.

  This is a novel full of disorienting moments.  I loved all of Nicole Krauss's other novels.  This one I am not as sure about.  It is the story of two lost souls.  They parallel their stories, starting in NYC and ending up in Israel. Two plots running side by side, one with a young novelist, Nicole, facing a writer’s block, leaves her husband and children in New York and goes off to Israel to the Tel Aviv Hilton Hotel of childhood family vacations, looking for inspiration.  Running alongside this plot is the story of Jules Epstein, an wealthy, ambitious industrious New York lawyer who is now flailing after the loss of both his parents, retirement from his law firm and divorce from his wife.  At age 68 he starts to divest himself of things including his art collection.  He travels to Israel with idea of leaving a legacy tribute to his parents.  He goes off to Israel to looking for charities to donate his money to and create a memory to his father and mother.  He does not seem to care about leaving anything to his children.   I was never quite sure of his motivation.

Each character go on separate goose chases, which have life changing consequences they could never have imagined.  Epstein follows a charismatic rabbi who has convinced him is a descendant of King David and a young woman who is producing a film in the desert about the life of of the King.  Nicole follows the lost manuscripts of Franz Kafka hidden away in a suitcase by Max Brod and found possibly in the home of his sister in the desert.

Then the plot gets very confusing.  The two characters never meet, which was what I was waiting for.  For their lives to intersect but they do not.  Each character goes through their own trials and tribulations.  Each must find the answers for their own survival.