David Guterson has obviously done his homework in depicting this appearance of the Virgin to a bedraggled, asthmatic teen-age mushroom gatherer in a soggy northwest rain forest. There have been numerous purporrted sightings of the Virgin throughout history, the two most famous ones occurring at Lourdes in France and at Fatima in Portugal. What North Fork, a depressed lumber town in the Pacific Northwest near where the sightings take place, has in common with the other sites is that they are all in a poor region. The people who live there lead hard, trapped lives and are looking for something better. They are eager to believe that Ann Holmes has really seen the Virgin. The Virgin of course bestows miraculous powers to people who are seeking various kind of "cures". The novel is as much about the "believers" as it is about Ann who is never too specific about what she has seen, except to say that she saw a luminous incandescent figure within a ball of light appear to her in the forest. Ann is a runaway, a victim of child abuse and rape,she has stolen, used drugs, experienced hallucinations. The Virgin's message to her is vague, asking people to answer Mother Mary's call through Christian service founded on Jesus. But there is also one specific request - a church should be built on the spot, one that "will be a beacon to unbelievers and bring them into the presence of God." Why would anyone believe this forlorn waif? For one thing, the bones of a long lost child are found in the forest and this is attributed to intercession on the part of the Virgin. She benefits from a smooth-talking friend, Carolyn, who builds a good case for the legitimacy of the Virgin sightings (and in the process siphons off donations for her own use). People are eager to believe these occurrences, in the United States as elsewhere, as evidenced by reporting of "visions" by such homegrown American women as Veronica Louken and Mary Ann Van Hoof ( I had never heard of these people, but googled them, and sure enough, they attracted large numbers of true believers). In this fictional work, the word gets out quickly, and religious pilgrims descend upon North Fork by the thousands, overwhelming the town's ability to organize and take care of the influx. A local priest is contacted , a young Father Collins, struggling with his own issues of faith and trying to manage his first assignment in North Fork. A older priest is sent from the bishop's office to investigate, and his jaded and skeptical approach clashes with Fr. Collins' more open mind about Ann's visions. Another key character is Tom Cross, a divorced, hard-drinking, out-of-work logger who feels guilty for accidentally maiming his son, now a paraplegic for life, and if ever there was person in need of a miracle, Tom is that person. Did the visions really take place? Did miraculous cures appear? Ann says she saw the Virgin, plenty of people claim that their maladies were cured, and in an ending that can either be viewed as cynical, "miraculous" in a peculiar faith-filled way, or a ambiguous combination of the two, Fr. Collins gets a new church built, the town revives financially due to the now steady flood of religious tourists, the con-artist friend makes a lot of money, Tom Cross undergoes a positive change of attitude. What more could you ask for from "Our Lady of the Forest?"
I made it to disc 5 (of 10) in this and had to stop listening/reading. I couldn't do it. What is it about postmodern writings that everyone has to be hella depressing and have terribly uncomfortable and pessimistic sex with everyone? I don't get that. Plots can go along just fine without it. I promise.So I actually didn't realize much of what this was about when I picked it up because sometimes I just grab something for a long car trip. I've actually gotten some surprising winners that way, but this wasn't one of them. I liked it at the beginning; as a medievalist, it was interesting to think about what the modern world would do to a visionary, and how our skepticism rides so closely to our desire to have some experience outside of what we know, what we always experience. I liked seeing the pilgrimage aspect with the relics and the physicality of the "faith" as one who has read a number of medieval accounts of saint sightings, miraculous healings, and the like. I even liked how uncoordinated the priest was, how human, how incredibly unexalted because it is real and true. (I about died when they brought in all of the church inanity regarding building another church, though, as that exact type of conversation was part of the reason I was going on vacation at the time!) I wasn't sure of the necessity of the priest's attraction to Anne, though; that just seemed like a potshot, an easy way to make him just a bit more sullied.So it was promising--but then we got into the back story of EVERYONE, which made the book feel incredibly long and convoluted. It wasn't that I didn't understand what was going on, I just didn't care. Tom's life sucks. Got it. You don't have to tell me all of why it sucks, or every instance that produced the many ways in which it sucks now. I understand. It's postmodern--everyone's life sucks, and everyone is miserable, and everyone hopes but no one will have a happy ending because that's not "real." Got it.I finally gave up, though, at the descriptions of Anne's back story. There are some things you just don't need to write, I feel, some intensities that aren't for mass market distribution. I won't spoil it here, but it caught me totally off-guard, and I have to give props to the narrator because I would not have been able to read some of this stuff, nor to give it the gutturally twisted pleasure that the character needed.No thanks. There's enough depressing in my life. I don't care enough about these characters to suffer theirs as well. Unfinished, and likely to stay so.
What do You think about Our Lady Of The Forest (2004)?
I picked this book up at a garage sale because of the cover, and didn't really know what to expect. I discovered (after the fact) that it was written by David Guterson, author of 'Snow Falling on Cedars', which I really enjoyed. The story revolves around a 4-day period during which a young runaway named Ann begins to see the image of the Virgin Mary, while out picking mushrooms. All of this takes place in a failing logging town, where many are down on their luck, and Ann's visions give them a reason to hope. After finishing, this afternoon, I can't honestly say whether or not I *liked* the book. The story grabbed me and did a great job of showing the daily struggles that surround religion and just living in today's society. But the lack of standard punctuation (no quotation marks) and the high-level/flourishing vocabulary of supposedly uneducated characters made it a little hard to swallow, at times. Definitely a book worth giving a try, although, be aware that there's some *colorful* language and themes that may not be appropriate for everyone.
—Tony J
This novel has made a deep impression on me. I am an atheist, but surprised myself by being deeply moved by the religiosity of the mushroom-picking teenage runaway, Ann Holmes, who experiences the Marian visions. The flawed, but very human, not to say humane priest, Father Collins, also attracted my sympathy. The rather cynical and educated societal dropout, Carolyn Greer, acts as an effective foil to the visionary and also manages to inject some dark humour into the novel; her protectiveness towards the visionary is rather touching and clearly sincere notwithstanding the fact that she is also trying to exploit the situation for her own benefit. It is obvious almost from the outset that the ex-logger, Tom Cross senior, who openly admits to hating and paralyzing his own son, and is, on the face of it, unpleasant, mildly racist, and even menacing, yet still eager to be redeemed by his faith, is going to feature prominently in the denouement.The dark, rain-soaked, mysterious forest provides a wonderful backdrop to the story. The spirit of the place is evoked in very poetic, literate and polished prose that is occasionally, as one reviewer has put it, 'thesaurus-splitting'. One very unusual and rather radical aspect of the writer's style is the fact that he doesn't use apostrophes to report speech; instead the characters' spoken words feature within normal sentences. I cannot recall a book I've read where the author has chosen to do this, yet it works well here.I think this novel is not only entertaining, and gritilly realistic, if a novel about Marian apparitions can be described as such, but it also touches on some very profound epistemological and ontological questions (yes, both those words feature in the book). And although I don't recall the author mentioning shamanism, I think the experiences of the teenage seer have as much connection to that ancient form of spirituality as they do to Roman Catholicism. Perhaps it is the novel's explicit association with Roman Catholicism that is the reason for some of the totally unwarranted and jaundiced reviews of this book I have seen elsewhere (e.g. on Amazon); some reviewers appear to take offence when characters and events don't live up to expectations they may have because of their own Catholic faith. Ironically, I do not believe that the author presents the Roman Catholic faith, or the Church, in an unsympathetic light at all; his take on religious experience and belief is nuanced and sophisticated.I loved this haunting and vivid book, and will never forget it.
—Drcgb
I saw that you guys hadn't finished, so I almost gave up, but then it seemed to be getting better. So I was like "okay, maybe it was just a bad beginning..." Nope! Oh well. Live and learn.
—Meredith
