Critics' Opinion:
Readers' rating:
Published Aug 2012
352 pages
Genre: Literary Fiction
Publication Information
Dorothy Forrest is immersed in the sensory world around her; she lives in the flickering moment. From the age of seven, when her odd, disenfranchised family moves from New York City to the wide skies of New Zealand, to the very end of her life, this is her great gift and possible misfortune.
Through the wilderness of a commune to falling in love to early marriage and motherhood; from the glorious anguish of parenting to the loss of everything worked for and the unexpected return of love, Dorothy is swept along by time. Her family looms and recedes, revelations come to light, death changes everything, but somehow, life remains as potent as it ever was, and the joy in just being won't let her go.
In a narrative that shifts and moves, growing as wild as the characters, The Forrests is an extraordinary literary achievement.
Paperback original
"Starred Review. ...Perkins knows how to artfully reveal her characters' inner machinations as they cope with whatever comes their way." - Publishers Weekly
"This timelessly true tale will appeal to discerning readers of literary fiction." - Booklist
"Recommended for fans of family sagas such as those by Anne Tyler and Zadie Smith." - Library Journal
This information about The Forrests 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.
Emily Perkins was born in 1970. She is the author of Not Her Real Name, a prizewinning collection of short stories that won the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize and was shortlisted for the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, and the novels Leave Before You Go, The New Girl, and Novel About My Wife, winner of the Believer Book Award. Visit her online at www.emilyperkinsauthor.com.
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