Into the Forest: A Novel [Paperback]

Jean Hegland (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1, 1998

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.

Over 30 miles from the nearest town, and several miles away from their nearest neighbor, Nell and Eva struggle to survive as society begins to decay and collapse around them. No single event precedes society's fall. There is talk of a war overseas and upheaval in Congress, but it still comes as a shock when the electricity runs out and gas is nowhere to be found. The sisters consume the resources left in the house, waiting for the power to return. Their arrival into adulthood, however, forces them to reexamine their place in the world and their relationship to the land and each other.

Reminiscent of Margaret Atwood's A Handmaid's Tale, Into the Forest is a mesmerizing and thought-provoking novel of hope and despair set in a frighteningly plausible near-future America.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Jean Hegland's prose in Into the Forest is as breathtaking as one of the musty, ancient redwoods that share the woodland with Nell and Eva, two sisters who must learn to live in harmony with the northern California forest when the electricity shuts off, the phones go out, their parents die, and all civilization beyond them seems to grind to a halt. At first, the girls rely on stores of food left in their parents' pantry, but when those supplies begin to dwindle, their only option is to turn to each other and the forest's plants and animals for friendship, courage, and sustenance. Into the Forest, an apocalyptic coming-of-age story, will fill readers (both teens and adults) with a profound sense of the human spirit's strength and beauty. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From 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.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 241 pages
• Publisher: Dial Press Trade Paperback (September 1, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0553379615
• ISBN-13: 978-0553379617
• Product Dimensions: 5.1 x 0.6 x 8.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (158 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #60,898 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

53 of 53 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wow, August 30, 2004

By 

Tome Toad (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Into the Forest: A Novel (Paperback)

I'm a big fan of post holocaust fiction. I've read hundreds of stories over the past 40 years about Life after Doomsday. This is absolutely one of the best. It avoids the common assumptions of the genre. There is no sudden and dramatic change in the lives of the two young protagonists. There isn't an immediate awareness on the part of the community that something awful and terrifying is occurring. People don't suddenly go berserk. Marauding gangs of psychopaths don't appear out of nowhere to prey upon the vulnerability of their fellow citizens. Every character, every behavior, every reaction is believable and easily explained within the context of known human behavior. Everyone initially clings desperately to the belief that things haven't really changed, that the situation isn't that bad, that tomorrow, things will all return to normal. It's just a matter of holding on and continuing with their daily routines.

Hegland's placing of Nell and her sister Eva in a forest, far from the nearest town, was a brilliant device on many levels. Normally, doomsday writers place their protagonists right in the thick of things. They trap them in cities or situations where they can inflict upon them every supposedly predictable terror of life after the collapse, showing us clearly frightened people in clearly frightening times.

But Nell and Eva live in a quiet forest. The forest isn't just a location here. It's not there just to show us the girls' gardening skills or how to live a self-sufficient life. The forest is a major, living, breathing protagonist. Hegland renders it's character brilliantly. It is both serene and tumultuous, comforting and menancing, fiercely protective and neglectful. Placing Nell and her sister in this quiet, slow environment creates a constant sense of dread and tension in the story - what unknowable things are going on outside this ageless, unjudgmental sanctuary? What horrors are taking place? Are cities burning? Has the law of the jungle replaced the fragile contracts between people? Is inescapable death slowing overtaking mankind? Are all the horrors imaginable about to invade this oasis of calm, and when and how will they come? The little intrusions of the outside world that do occur are more terrifying as a result. The forest doesn't protect Nell and Eva from evil. It wreaks no havoc on transgressors, it passes no judgments, it doesn't change or adapt. "Bring it on" it seems to say. "I will not be changed. I will simply out last you, neutralize you with my steadfastness, absord your impact and accept it as part of my nature."

The forest is a sort of allegory for the the human spirit. Primieval, indestructable and unchanging, it survives despite the modern mistakes of humankind.

I disagree strongly with the reviewer who says this is not an inspirational story. It is a story filled with hope and promise. Strip away the false values, the intellectualism, the materialism and the intolerance that are so much a part of the modern human's psyche, and you are left with what got us this far to begin with, and what will save us in the end - a sense of beauty, perseverance, tolerance and acceptance of the world as it is.

It's a beautiful, poetically written story, and well worth a place on anyone's bookshelf.

52 of 58 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Frightening Prospect, August 15, 2002

By 

BeachReader (Delaware) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Into the Forest: A Novel (Paperback)

I found the premise of this book to be eerily fascinating and frightening. It hooked me from the first page and I could not put it down. This was very fast and interesting reading, except for one totally unnecessary scene which those of you who have read it will undoubtedly remember.

"Into the Forest" is what has been called "speculative fiction" and is set in the near-future, focusing on two teenage orphaned sisters. The girls try to survive the collapse, for no apparent reason, of their world and society as they knew it. All of a sudden, tankers do not arrive at gas stations, electricity disappears, law and order become a thing of the past, and there is no communication.

Living in the forest in Northern California, Nell and Eva struggle to survive in an often -alien environment as they try to adjust to isolation. Once they deplete the pantry in their house, feeding themselves is a daily challenge, as is their need to conquer overwhelming feelings of despair.

The author gradually builds the story to the point where the reader realizes that every single action these young girls perform is related to their continued survival. I think that this book provided food for thought, making me cringe at how dependent we all are on today's technology. I appreciated Hegland's knowledge of the uses of forest plants and berries, and of food preservation.

Like Paul Watkins' "Archangel" and Stephen King's "The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon", the forest is a major character in the story.

I fear that I would not be a survivor.

29 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A début novel and already a masterpiece., April 11, 2005

By 

Jan Dierckx (Belgium, Turnhout) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Into the Forest: A Novel (Paperback)

At first sight you could call this a SF novel with the classical ingredients. Something happened: a nuclear war? an accident with a biological weapon? Anyway it seems that public live has ceased to exist. There is no electricity, no TV or radio and everyone seems to have gone.

Two young sisters, who lost their parents, live in a cottage deep in the woods of North-California. As a result of what happened they're cut off completely until one day a young man comes to their house and he stays for a while. After he's gone, the two sisters gradually change into a more 'primitive' way of life with a different perception (more elaborated as time goes by) of their surroundings. (To some degree, it reminds me of the novel 'Lord of the Flies' by William Golding).

But when you think it over, you could say it's a parable about growing up. The arrival of the young man drives them out of the 'Paradise' of their childhood and this starts the process of growing up. They don't turn into 'primitive' humans, they only lose their innocence. They become more mature and finally venture out of their cottage where they used to live for so long.

I wouldn't be surprised if there were other interpretations. It's a characteristic of masterworks to be interpreted in different ways