IN THE MEMORY OF THE FOREST: A Novel [Hardcover]

Charles T. Powers (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 10, 1997

A murder forces Leszek, the narrator, and his small Polish village to confront troubling questions about the community, its tragic past, the Holocaust, retribution, forgiveness, and personal identity. A first novel. 12,500 first printing.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Even in the days after the collapse of Communism, the Poland of Charles Powers's novel is an "old country in an old Europe," a place that harbors the stories and secrets of a complex and tortured history. When a young farmer named Leszek starts looking into the unexplained murder of a childhood friend in his small hometown of Jadowia, he is led into a dark terrain, and begins to uncover difficult truths about war crimes committed by members of his own family. It's a complex, literary detective story, rendered in precise, jewel-like prose. Powers, who died in 1996, knows whereof he speaks: a journalist for the Los Angeles Times for more than twenty years, he served as the paper's Eastern European bureau chief from 1986-1991.

From Publishers Weekly

A searching exploration of the social, moral and personal impact of communism's collapse in Poland, this dramatic novel is all the more remarkable because its author is not a Pole but the former Eastern European bureau chief for the Los Angeles Times. Powers's only novel (he died in October, at age 53) is a fiercely lyrical tale, set mostly in a Polish village where Leszek Maleszewski, a farmer in his mid-20s, goes sleuthing after a friend is found murdered in a forest. The trail leads to Warsaw, then back to the village's distillery and to Roman Jablonski, formerly a Communist Party bureaucrat and now part of the old guard determined to keep its power and privilege while Lech Walesa cozies up to George Bush. As Leszek uncovers a cesspool of graft, black-market profiteering and gun smuggling to Russia, he also delves into his village's, and Poland's, unspoken history-the trauma of the German occupation, centuries-old anti-Semitism and complicity in the Holocaust. Powers skillfully evokes the widespread aura of cynical disillusionment and paranoia in a country where an informer can be the next-door neighbor or even the relative sitting across the kitchen table. Two extramarital affairs-bachelor Leszek's obsessive love for a drunken veterinarian's wife, and the town mayor's tawdry romance with his secretary-thread through the narrative in parallel, accentuating the sense of moral drift so prevalent in this moving and intense work.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 384 pages
• Publisher: Scribner; 2nd edition (March 10, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0684830302
• ISBN-13: 978-0684830308
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.3 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (25 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,009,009 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A long-overdue note of praise, April 13, 2001

By 

Judith Bradley - See all my reviews

This review is from: In the Memory of the Forest (Paperback)

I picked up this book at the library several years ago (having read nor heard anything about it) and immediately found myself absolutely captivated, entranced, spell-bound by the author's riviting story of a post-WWII Polish village and the shameful secrets shared by its inhabitants. I didn't put it down until I finished it - then returned it to the library and couldn't remember the title! (One of he drawbacks of advancing age) I was beside myself - and no one could help - until just this past month when a total stranger and I were discussing favorite reads, and he popped out with the title of this stunning work. I cannot express what an impact this book has had upon me, and I was devastated to learn that the author (and this was his only novel) had died. What a loss. Evocative descriptions of the Polish countryside, memorable characters, old-world values coming up against the modern age, evil and redemption, and an engrosing story line - this book has it all. I know that I will never forget the title again! - and I am making it part of my permanent fiction collection. Charles T. Powers had a true gift, and we readers are the less for his loss.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One of the most important novels of the past year., June 8, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: IN THE MEMORY OF THE FOREST: A Novel (Hardcover)

This book is a methodical telling of a village's struggle with redemption and its attempts to come to terms with only part of its sordid past. Poland's communist history starts out as the primary backdrop of this murder mystery. However, the murder of one slowly becomes secondary to the old system's silent murder of spirit and morale in the community. Finally, the old system, now replaced, becomes an inconsequential source of reconciliation compared to the disappearance of 80% of the village's population at the start of WWII.

This is a hopeful story, for a broader community than the fictional Poles of the village. Mr. Powers clearly understands that there are victims at every level of societal horror, and that no amount of guilt or ingorance can move a community into salvation. Purposeful recongition of the roles of community attitudes and actions are at the heart of the redemption of individuals.

The story-telling is marvelous and rich. The characters are real and human -- none of them pure evil, but all taking part in the history of a village, and its country. Furthermore, all of the characters are Polish. There is a distinct lack of Americans in the novel, and a distinct lack of Americanisms in the book as a whole, in characters, the plot, the atmosphere, or the pacing. Settling into this novel is a joy, reminiscent of the pace of life, not the thrilling romantic life of an American dream world.

This is a story worth reading for the next several decades.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Crystalline prose that will break your heart., November 13, 1997

By 

[e-mail] (Santa Cruz, California) - See all my reviews

This review is from: IN THE MEMORY OF THE FOREST: A Novel (Hardcover)

The story of a young man coming of age, discovering love and lies, ambition and murder in a town that cannot admit its past or face its present. Set in Poland as communism collapses, the rupture of old foundations reveal the townspeople to be what they would forget.While one of the book's larger themes is what the Nazis, and by complicity, the Polish people, did to the Jewish population during the Second World War, it is not "a Holocaust book." Rather it is an absorbing murder and love story; a murder that begins the novel and whose investigation provides its framework, a love story that will leave the reader in tears, reminded what the world should be but is not. It is a rare book, one that impells its reader onward with a gripping narrative but repeatedly brings the reader to a halt to reflect on the beauty and lyricism of its prose.