Critics' Opinion:
Readers' rating:
Published Mar 2010
464 pages
Genre: Literary Fiction
Publication Information
1945. Jacob Noah emerges from hiding to discover that his family has perished under the Nazis. Rebuilding his life, Noah becomes a shoemaker in the Dutch town of Assen. Over the years, he patiently expands his business and eventually becomes the city's most influential entrepreneur. Yet success cannot alleviate his loneliness and suffering nor the tragedy of history.
Nearly forty years later, this dispirited, loveless man veers off the road in a tragic accident. But instead of entering death's abyss, Noah finds himself on a journey through his soul. Guided by a peddler, he descends into the town's smoky center, a manmade hell reminiscent of Dante's Inferno. But it is not until he encounters a young man named Marcus Kolpa, a respected intellectual struggling with the implications of his Jewish identity and the shared history of his people, that Noah is able to truly understand the meaning of his own life and the tragedies he has experienced.
"This flat novel...is occasionally interesting but lacks much memorable material." - Publishers Weekly
"[R]ich, complex, obscure and polyphonic... Moring loves to experiment wildly with form, transforming parts of his narrative into cartoons, embracing digressions in enormous parentheses and using graphics to depict fireworks onomatopoetically. Not for the faint of heart. " - Kirkus Reviews
"Readers interested in contemporary European literature may find the narrative thought-provoking." - Library Journal
"Möring deploys a prodigious mélange of motifs and narrative styles ... rendering this selection a virtuoso performance of sorts, at times as confounding as it is inspired." - Booklist
"[T]he incessant roaming and rambling of these two men can be hard to read and follow." - Library Journal
"In a rich tapestry of styles, fantasy, and philosophical speculations, Marcel Möring leads us on a voyage through the dark heart of the twentieth century and through a vivid exploration of loss and guilt. Loosely based on Dante's Inferno, this ambitious and enthralling novel–an in-depth study of Europeans' angst and fear after the Holocaust–confirms Möring's place among "the ranks of the most important European writers of his generation" - Die Welt (Germany)
"A moving and convincing testimony to the continuing tension between the desire for assimilation and the awareness of seperateness Marcel Moring is beyond doubt one of the most imaginative and perceptive novelists writing today." - The Times Literary Supplement
This information about In a Dark Wood was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Marcel Möring is the bestselling author of Mendel, The Great Longing, In Babylon, and The Dream Room. Widely considered the Netherlands' leading contemporary writer, he lives in Rotterdam with his wife and children.
The House on Biscayne Bay
by Chanel Cleeton
As death stalks a gothic mansion in Miami, the lives of two women intertwine as the past and present collide.
The Flower Sisters
by Michelle Collins Anderson
From the new Fannie Flagg of the Ozarks, a richly-woven story of family, forgiveness, and reinvention.
The Funeral Cryer by Wenyan Lu
Debut novelist Wenyan Lu brings us this witty yet profound story about one woman's midlife reawakening in contemporary rural China.
Your guide toexceptional books
BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.
