The Story of the Forest (2023)
Why this one?
Another relatively recent release that’s been doing the rounds on Instagram, including some extremely vociferous love from none other than Nigella Lawson. Having enjoyed Grant’s 2000 Women’s Prize winner, and being a big fan of era-spanning family sagas, I thought it seemed worth a look.
Linda Grant (1951- ; active 1993-) was born in Liverpool, England. Both her Liverpool roots and her Jewish heritage (she is the child of a Polish-Jewish father and Russian-Jewish mother) are reflected in her fiction. She studied English at the University of York, before completing postgraduate work in Canada.
She returned to England in 1985, beginning her career as a journalist writing for the Guardian. Her first published book was a non-fiction work, Sexing the Millennium: A Political History of the Sexual Revolution (1993).
Her debut novel, The Cast Iron Shore (1995) won the David Higham (best first novel) Prize and she took the Orange/Women's Prize with When I Lived in Modern Times (2000), only her second. She has won awards for subsequent works of non-fiction as well as being nominated for the Booker in 2008 for The Clothes on their Backs, and the Women's Prize again in 2017 for The Dark Circle. She was appointed a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2014.
Thoughts,etc.
The Story of the Forest is a multi-generational tale of the Mendel family and its offshoots, over the course of much of the twentieth century. It begins with the young girl Mina, one of five children of a Latvian grain merchant, who wanders into the forest near their home in Riga, ostensibly to pick mushrooms. While she’s there she meets a group of young Bolshevik men and something undefined happens. Whatever it is, it takes on an almost mythological significance as a foundational story in the life of Mina and subsequent generations of Mendels.
Most pressingly, it acts as an impetus for her older and seemingly wiser brother Jossel to propose the family emigrate to the US. As it turns out, only Jossel and Mina set out on the journey, leaving their siblings and parents to uncertain fates. They find themselves stranded, initially temporarily, in Liverpool by the outbreak of war, but as a Jewish community of similarly placed immigrants begins to form in the suburbs, they ultimately decide to remain in the UK.
The threads of the rest of the novel begin to splinter, but are most clearly focused on the lives of Mina and her family in suburban Liverpool. The century skips past briskly, with the hardship and horrors most likely endured by the Latvian Mendels largely left to our imagination. The Liverpool strand of the family endures incidences of pernicious racism, but their concerns on a day to day basis are largely more mundane ones, of family and community.
Even though the novel is relatively short, a lot is covered in its pages. The highlight is probably the large strand involving Mina’s daughter Paula, who adopts an RP accent and moves to London in search of a more ambitious future. She finds herself in a very modern relationship of sorts with a caddish BBC announcer and then an affair with her employer at a film studio, which ultimately leads to her being dragged back to Liverpool to a more orthodox life via one of many of the book’s arranged marriages. Along the way she has encountered (and seemingly had her action manipulated by) Mina’s rogue brother Itzik, now working for the Russian embassy in London.
The end of the novel does little to tie up the many threads created, instead emphasising the complexity of family history, even before the grand narrative of the twentieth century is taken into account. A younger descendant in the modern day begins to explore the Mendel family history, and even some of the foundational stories that have been threaded through the book are called into question. History is presented as a shifting thing, a collection of stories we tell each other that help us get through difficult and complex times but never point to a definitive truth.
There is definitely something unique about this book’s take on the grand historical novel. Its brevity is at once a frustration (especially for someone who loves a deep dive into the intersection of personal stories with bigger moments in history) and the thing that sets it apart. In that, it reminded me very slightly of Penelope Lively’s excellent Booker winner Moon Tiger, another short book in which the telling of one woman’s life story leaves precious little room for those grander narratives of the past century.
Most notably here, the Second World War passes by in almost a handful of pages, a startling choice in a novel ostensibly about Jewish history and one which even more sharply highlights the fact that the novel is telling only one part of one family’s story. What’s left out is initially shocking but ultimately rendered even more powerful as a result.
Overall, while there are undoubtedly significant points being made about history, storytelling and more, what makes this novel enjoyable is its revolving cast of memorable characters. I’d happily have spent much more time with them, especially those who only end up being given fleeting appearances. Despite this, it’s a powerful book, stark in its economy, that’s hard to forget.
Score
9
Another excellent read which feels very much like a contender for various prizes. It definitely makes me want to check out more of Grant’s work, which is always a good sign.
Next up
The next Women’s Prize winner on my list, which is 2017’s The Power.
