I full-up admit that I wanted to read this book because the summary said the middle child in a grief-stricken family embarks upon a journey to figure out who she is and what she means to the greater world via sexual exploration with a much older man. This Lolita topic is something that always piques my interest, probably because of my own not-even-anything-like-that experiences; I think it's a topic that I want to know more about, hear more about, because I am still trying to put my own thoughts on the matter into some sort of coherence.So, yes, I was drawn in by the titillating lure of childhood sexual abuse because, apparently, I am a sicko. Not a big surprise there.But guess what? That's not what this book is about. Whereas I had assumed, via the book's summary, that this would be a look at how divorce and then, later, the death of a beloved stepfather impacts the three children of the family, it was more about the parents, Eva and Mark, and how they survived both their divorce and then the death of John, Eva's husband after Mark. And about sex. I was actually a little surprised at how everything seemed to come down to sex. Sex was the reason for the divorce. After John died, Eva wanted sex and she reminisced on the sexual differences between Mark and John. Mark wanted sex but couldn't always get it because sometimes the kids were at his house. Eva's BFF, Gracie, wanted sex and not marriage. Gracie got married and the sex was great. Emily tells Daisy about sex. Daisy learns about sex, though a weird form of sex. Sex Sex Sex. I guess marketing has it spot-on: It really is all about sex. And when sex isn't the topic, the rest of life shows up and does its thing, but then it's back to sex.It sounds like I have a problem with sex. And you'd think that I'd have been ready for it, since I was expecting, essentially, child-molestation but you know what? I didn't expect it everywhere, all the time. But the ending explains that the sex was important to the story, via Daisy's amazing revelations about herself and her childhood. So why was I left unimpressed by this book?Well, I was put off by the clunky movement of time. Time does not unfold in a mysterious fashion, but in a confusing way. For instance, Gracie goes off on a rant about how Eva should remarry but Gracie won't ever marry because she likes having lots of guys and doesn't want to settle down with one. Essentially. Then a few chapters later, Gracie's husband walks onto the scene and I was all, "What? Who is this guy? Gracie's not married!" Only, she is now and they explain it a little later and that was confusing. There were also grown-up Daisy at the therapist, written in here and there as needed, though I didn't realize there was going to be grown-up Daisy moments until they started cropping up. This type of loop happened with too much regularity for my brain. It hurt my ability to follow the story and it made me feel lost. Maybe that was the point, so that I would feel lost like Daisy. But I never felt like Daisy. I felt like a confused reader.And The Mexicans. What was going on with The Mexicans? Why did they come up? Like, three or four times, randomly, throughout the book, The Mexicans were mentioned for no apparent reason and seemingly out of context. Mark is driving somewhere and there's no one out on the streets except for this one area where there's a group of The Mexicans. And then nothing else was said about it. Until the next time someone mentions The Mexicans. ??? What on earth?(view spoiler)[The whole story does actually focus on Daisy without ever focusing solely on her. The set-up is essentially she's the sullen middle child full of burgeoning sexuality (as noticed by her father) who lost her father to divorce and then her step-father, on whom she doted, to a car accident. She was left bereft and needing a father figure so she was easily seduced by the family friend's intimidating and creepy husband (who shows up out of nowhere) while going through some I Need Attention teenage rebellion (stealing money from her mother's bookstore. And why, btw, did NO ONE notice there was that much money missing from the till? Seriously? There are businesses out there that don't count their money at the end of the day and tally the results against what was sold? Really? Wow. It's a miracle that bookstore stayed in business long enough to have someone else buy it out) Meanwhile, while the creepy old guy (he's, like in his 50's, I think, while Daisy is 15) is molesting a trying-to-find-her-way teenager, Daisy's parents are having an awkward sort-of getting back together thing, full of sexual tension and kissing and stuff and I had to wonder: Was the comparison of Daisy's new molesty relationship to her parents' newly sort-of-renewed relationship supposed to mean something? If so, I missed it. I also missed the significance of Creepy Old Guy's need to be all over Daisy but to never be involved, sexually, himself. I don't think he ever got undressed. It was all about him controlling her body yet she was the one who thought she was in control. I'd have liked some help from the therapist on that one, an explanation as to why it all worked out that way and what Creepy Old Guy was getting out of all this. I also missed why Mark didn't flip the fuck out when he realized what was going on between the creepy oldster and his nubile daughter. I thought maybe pressing charges were in order, but it appears I overreact? He, apparently, merely felt that the whole thing was his fault because he hadn't been around to take care of his little girl, and so he paid for her therapy later but...ok, what? And then to tie it all up in a nice little bow with Daisy becoming and adult and playing the character of Miranda from "The Tempest" in a Shakespeare production theater act and describing her poignant role as an innocent who is trapped alone on an island with only her father and a monster and who then realizes that there are all sorts of other people in the world and what a revelation. It was a little bit too much for me. (hide spoiler)]
In Lost In The Forest, Sue Miller inhabits the family. It’s an extended family, of course, extended in the twenty-first century Anglo-Saxon sense of it being stretched and disrupted by divorce, re-marriage and identity-seeking children. The book starts in what seems to be a conventional setting. Mark and Eva have been divorced for several years. Their two daughters, Emily and Daisy, are approaching adolescence. Theo, their brother, is a toddler, the son of Eva’s second husband, John. Eva’s first marriage to Mark was an exciting and unpredictable affair. The second with John has been a steadier, more reliable experience, perhaps better suited to the anticipated ennui of middle age. But then an accident claims John’s life and Eva must cope with three children, a household, managing her bookshop and, indeed, her own life alone. She turns back to Mark, who is keen and willing to help.As its domestic drama unfolds, Lost In The Forest begins to transform itself. What the reader expected to be a tale of relationships rekindled and rediscovered abruptly changes to focus on the younger daughter, Daisy. Daze, as she is called by her father, rarely lives up to either of her names. She is neither the innocent flower, nor the dreamy-headed teenager. Slowly, she reveals herself as a pretty ruthless manipulator of events with an apparently natural talent for exploiting events to her own advantage.Daisy’s story becomes a tangle of deception. We are led to believe that she also deceives herself and in later years must seek counselling, but this does not square with her clear control of events at the time. Her sexual awakening becomes the exploitation of another, despite its beginnings being founded on threat.Lost In The Forest is a credible tale. Daisy is a complex character in some ways. In others, she is merely and crudely selfish. Her sister, Emily, drifts in and out of the story, as does her mother Eva, with neither apparently aware of the subterfuge. Eventually, the domestic setting of the book cannot sustain the forensic examination of motive and reaction. These people seem to be obsessed with their own myopic personal relationships to the exclusion of all else. This aspect of the book eventually leads to non-sequitur, since Daisy’s eventual admission of what transpired between her and another of the characters would, in reality, have led to disgrace, perhaps prosecution. But in the book it is only Daisy’s own personal emotional response that figures.In the final analysis, time passes. We all grow up and we are all a bit older. As Duncan, a family friend and a significant protagonist in the plot, proclaims, “We’re Americans… We don’t want to understand how. We just want to press the button and be happy.” It’s ironic, then, that an entire genre of fiction should have developed to focus on the dysfunctional family and its associated traumas and unhappiness. Lost In The Forest is a good read. It is highly erotic at times. And it is very much of this self-obsessed genre.
What do You think about Lost In The Forest (2006)?
This is a superbly-written novel, and very close to 5 stars.The family dynamic is beautifully handled, presented in a style that is at once direct and graceful, blissfully void of forced drama or overly-staged conflict--as good as I've read since Judith Guest's Ordinary People over 30 years ago.Ms. Miller has also done a very nice job handling the two primary male characters, developing their personalities and creating dialogue that comes across as realistic, which now and again reads as forced with some female authors I've read (as I'm sure female dialogue written by men may often come across to female readers {I think sometimes writers pen dialogue for characters of the opposite sex the way they would like them to talk, or the way those characters talk on TV}).My main issue with this novel is a matter of personal taste, in that I feel it's an overused storytelling device to reveal a character's introspection through sessions with a psychiatrist. While that worked well in Ordinary People, it was due to the wonderful drama of those scenes; in Lost in the Forest, those interactions don't result in powerful revelations, but read as though the character needs re-enforcement from a counselor to decide whether her own feelings are legitimate.The ending also felt a bit rushed. From a scene that didn't carry enough weight to resolve the plot, the novel jumps years ahead to provide a summary of where the characters end up. And while this reconciles somewhat with the civility of the storytelling, it is missing that often elusive extra something that would have made an already wonderful novel even better.
—Preston Pairo
I picked this up on CD from the library for something to listen to on a road trip. I'd read two Miller books previously, so it seemed like a good bet. However, by the second CD I found this story so dull, so banal, that I had to rewind three times because my mind kept wandering. I went back to it after my trip because the back cover made it clear *something* was going to happen. Maybe it would get good...But there were a number of things that irritated my about this book:1)One character, Daisy, steals from her mother's store, but doesn't cover her tracks. I've worked in retail for years, and now own my own store, and there is no way to take money from the register and have it go unnoticed. Her mother NEVER discovers there's a discrepancy? It really would not have been hard for Miller to interview someone who's worked in retail and find out how Daisy could embezzle without detection. The book loses credibility on this point.2)Twice Daisy is verbally abusive to her 4 year old brother in front of their older sister, and the sister, Emily, never speaks up to protect her brother. Not one, "Daisy, that's enough!" It didn't fit with Emily's character in my opinion. 3)I really disliked the way all the character's lives where wrapped up in a chapter or two at the end, summarized like this is all they had amounted to. It was depressing, and it felt like a short cut to get to the ending.4)Daisy's relationship with an older man is only in the *slightest* way acknowledged as inappropriate. I know there were other things, but why go on? If I'd been reading instead of listening, I never would have finished this book.
—Yvonne
3 STARS"One minute John is the cornerstone of Eva's world, rock to his two teenage stepdaughters and his own son Theo; the next he is tossed through the air in a traffic accident. His sudden death changes everything. Eva struggles with the desolation of loneliness, finding herself drawn back to her untrustworthy ex-husband; Emily, the eldest daughter, grapples with her new-found independence and responsibility. Little Theo can only begin to fathom the permanence of his father's death. But for the middle child Daisy, John's absence opens up a whole world of confusion. Just at the onset of adolescence and blossoming sexuality, Daisy is exposed to the terrifying duplicity of life, the instability that hovers just beyond the safety of parental love, and the powerlessness of that love to protect or even console her. In steps a man only too willing to take advantage of her emotions." (From Amazon)This was not my favourite of Sue Miller's novels but it was an interesting read.
—Kris - My Novelesque Life
