In The Forest Of Forgetting (Hardcover)

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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Goss's collection of 16 gothic stories possesses a spare, surprising beauty, though her modern-day characters, like those in fairy tales, are constrained by the hard lessons she sets out to teach. The three linked stories, "Miss Emily Gray," "Conrad" and "Lessons with Miss Gray," turn on the character of the title, a dark Mary Poppins–like woman who exists to grant children their hearts' desires—often at a high price. Goss layers the Victorian tone and everyday magic of these tales with commentary on familial negotiations and the grave consequences for heedless behavior. Other stories consider family cohesion and snobbery, as in "Sleeping with Bears," about a Southern belle who exhibits "no originality" until she marries a bear named Trout Catcher. Her sister quickly comes to understand the attraction. In "Lily, with Clouds," a bohemian woman dying of cancer returns to her blue-blooded family in Virginia, where her conventional sister can't help judging her unusual life. Though Goss (The Rose in Twelve Petals and Other Stories) crafts these delicate stories with tight control and wit, in toto they become something of a moral sledgehammer. (Aug.)
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From Booklist

*Starred Review* Goss' contribution to the exciting showcase of the new weirdness, Feeling Very Strange (2006), is a version of Sleeping Beauty that unfolds in history as well as time: when the prince arrives for the great awakening, he's a bulldozer driver clearing the forest. That story opens this collection of others that are frequently as incidentally funny. Comedy is here a seasoning, however, of the richly astringent flavor of fine literary fantasy, in which happy endings are tentative, temporary, or even repugnant. In "Professor Berkowitz Stands on the Threshold," possible paradise is spurned because it requires death in the here and now. In "Sleeping with Bears," the narrator's best friend weds a bear, and how can that turn out? (Still, at the end, the narrator is dating the groom's brother.) In "Letters from Budapest," their recipient, a dealer of objets d'art, learns that his aspiring artist brother has found the ideal teacher but may never paint again; meanwhile, that Old Master--actually a mistress--wants the dealer to be hers. More conventionally but oh-so-satisfyingly developed are the stories in which the witch Miss Emily Gray and the turn-of-the-century North Carolina girl Rose appear. Both are in the volume closer, "Lessons with Miss Gray," about learning how to obtain one's heart's desire--and it doesn't seem too hasty to exclaim, "Classic!" Ray Olson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 284 pages
• Publisher: Prime Books; 2nd edition (June 1, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 080955691X
• ISBN-13: 978-0809556915
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.8 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #510,776 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Postmodern gothic fairytales, September 19, 2006

By	Craig L. Gidney "ethereallad" (Washington, DC USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Superior Fantastic Fiction, November 8, 2006

By	Guido Eekhaut (Leuven, Belgium) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A superb collection, October 23, 2006

By	Erin Kissane (Portland, OR USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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.