Customer Reviews

In The Forest Of Forgetting

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These delicately crafted, literary fantasies draw from Victorian morality stories and fairytales. The language is spare and considered, the tone dry spiked with mordant humor. Goss discreetly and elegantly updates the gothic tale for postmodern times. Her "Emily Gray" stories concern a governess who grants children's deepest wishes, at a terrible price. Three of the Emily Gray tales are here. The title story turns a breast cancer patient's life into a magical fable. Other stories take place in Budapest, and have a flavor of Central European magical realism ("The Rapid Advance of Sorrow"), while "A Rose in Twelve Petals" fractures Sleeping Beauty into twelve different view points, including that of the spinning wheel that pricks the princess. Goss's stories have dark themes, but she is too graceful a writer to be considered gothic in the classic sense. Her painterly, humorous characters come alive, and her fantastical ideas are grounded in her character's pysches.

This is one of the most delightful short-story collections I've ever read. Goss's prose is immaculate; there are hints of Angela Carter here, but also of Virgina Woolf. She handles very old themes (Gothic, yes, but also older) with a very rare combination of control and freshness. It's an astonishing collection, and I can't wait to see more from her. Novels are my true love, but I'm happy to make an exception -- and a permanent place on my bookshelf -- for this book.

I was really looking forward to reading this series of short stories by Theodora Goss. It ended up being a wonderful collection of stories; most of them are dark and have a European fairy tale feel to them. Many of the stories are incredibly ironic and a bit ambiguous.

I am not even sure how to start describing these stories individually. The story "The Belt" tells a tale of a wife who learns what happens to her husband when she removes the belt he uses to restrain her. There is the story "Professor Berkowitz Stands on the Threshold" where a professor is given a choice: he can go into the magical unknown or return to his weary life...but he only gets one chance to make the choice. In "Letters From Budapest" a man receives mysterious letters from his brother telling of his descent into the art culture of Budapest and ultimately his demise via magical means. A reoccurring figure throughout is Miss Grey a witch of sorts who shows up in one story as a nanny, in another as a teacher of magic. All the stories are interesting in their own right and I would be hard-pressed to pick a favorite.

Goss's writing is dark, descriptive, atmospheric, magical, and at times a bit vague. Many times the reader is left to determine exactly what has happened, the stories are a bit ambiguous and are not spelled out for the reader. Most of the stories have a very fairy tale like vibe to them. I mean Grimm Brothers type fairy tales...a lot of the stories also have an Old World or European feel to them as well.

The writing is very descriptive and some of the earlier stories felt a bit disjointed, so it took me a couple stories to really get into Goss's writing style. Once I did thought I found the book very hard to put down and was eager to see what wonders the next story held for me.

Overall a wonderful collection of dark fairy tale like stories, a wonderful writer. If you like dark fairy tales or stories with an old world feel to them this is the book for you. The writing style reminds some of Catherynne Valente or Elizabeth Hand; intelligently written, beautiful, and a bit vague (not everything is spelled out for the reader). I liked it a lot and will be keeping an eye out for future works from Goss.

Highly original, fantastic, unconventional, and often provocative stories. They range from mystical to humorous. Not all of the stories are top quality but I will never forget the best ones. The story about the woman marrying a bear, one of my favorites, recalls Terry Bison's "Bears discover fire." Other stories suggest fairy tales, especially the retelling of sleeping beauty from multiple points of view.

An excellent collection of stories, all of them little masterpieces of fantastic fiction in the tradition of European storytellers. Most stories belong to a deep tradition of which Kafka was a potent precursor. Atmosphere is certainly Goss's strong point, and utterly well-drawn characters. I'm looking for more of her fiction.

This was a captivating read. The opening by Terri Windling also features a section where Theodora Goss talks of her lifestyle of living and moving around. I related a lot to the multiple sense of identities, yet sometimes the lost sense of identity she talked about.

Most of these stories are disparate, though there are three stories with a witch, Miss Emily Gray, in them, and two stories (one with Miss Gray) that are set in the same town. Others are scattered across time and space. The stories with Miss Ellen Gray are particularly eye-opening regarding careful wishes and harming others who haven't harmed you.

Goss opens with a split perspective of Sleeping Beauty from the king, witch/mistress, wife, daughter and prince. It is very intriguing how it is split among petals.

There are other stories set in a Communist regime (such as the story "Letters from Budapest" which demonstrates how passion for art can go awry) or center around people who have fled the Communist Regime, such as "A Statement in the Case."

Death seems to be a common theme, as two stories appear to end with a character's acceptance of death after travels either trying to find/remember her name while encountering people in a natural landscape (such as "Wife" or "Daughter") or traveling through a ballet dancer's memories while lying in a bed.

One story that particularly touched me with "The Belt" which had such a wonderful moral at its end, I decided to quote it here in my review.

"I will tell you, too, that every fairy tale has a moral. The moral of my story may be that love is a constraint, as strong as any belt. And this is certainly true, which makes it a good moral. Or it may be that we are all constrained in some way, either in our bodies, or in our hearts or minds, an Empress as well as the woman who does her laundry. [...] Perhaps it is that a shoemaker's daughter can bear restraint less easily than an aristocrat, that what he can bear for three years she can endure only for three days. [...] Or perhaps my moral is that our desire for freedom is stronger than love or pity. That is a wicked moral, or so the Church has taught us. But I do not know which moral is the correct one. And that is also the way of a fairy tale.

(pp. 195-96 "The Belt")

Overall this was a provoking read.

This is a collection of short stories by Theodora Gross. Some of the tales are different takes on classic fairy tales such as "Sleeping with Bears" where a Southern society girl marries a bear, with the story told by her jaded/envious sister. This is a take on Rose Red/ Rose White. Other stories in this format include " A Rose in Twelve Petals" and "Feeling Very Strange" (Sleeping Beauty) and The title story is reminiscient of Alice's journey in the forest, but is the tale of a woman suffering from dementia. One of my favorite tales was Lessons with Miss Grey, where a group of Southern girls take magic lessons and learn how to get their heart's desire, although not without consequences. Another intriguing story was that of a painter in a country with a strict regime who sees real artistry and seeks out the artist as a teacher, only to to find that the teacher embues the paintings with the souls of her students. This was a unique and interesting collection with only a little uneveness in the stories.