Gone to the Forest

Starred review from June 11, 2012
In this wondrous tale of both a family and a country’s dissolution, Kitamura brings readers into an unspecified time in an unnamed colonial country where the natives are restless and the white settlers are soon to be relieved of what they’ve taken. In this newly unstable environment, alive with an increasingly destructive undercurrent, we meet Tom, heir to his family’s estate, whose inertia and naïveté make him an equally pitiable and winning character, particularly in contrast to his charismatic, domineering father, whose steady decline is detailed in spellbinding horror. On the brink of the country’s and the family’s decimation, a woman named Carine enters the scene and vies for the attention of both men. She is a manipulative, waiflike woman with a questionable past, and her competing tendencies toward self-destruction and self-preservation make for a vibrant conflict. Finally, there are Jose and Celeste, two bafflingly loyal servants whose connection to Tom and his father is both shocking and fitting. In her second novel (after The Longshot), Kitamura, with spare, mesmerizing prose, paints a memorable vision of emotional chaos echoed by geologic and political turmoil. Agent: Ellen Levine, Trident Media Group.