The Forest House: A Year's Journey Into the Landscape o… (2024)

Joelle Fraser, college writing professor in the Sierras, starts her memoir rather in media res, having left her husband and moved to an isolated cabin. We follow her explorations of how she got to this point and what she learns from her newly regained independence, an independence half empty because she realizes her ache for her son, who spend half his days with his father, destroys the peace she hoped to find. At various points, family members, including her invalid mother, come to say with her,which then allows for some exploration of her tumultuous family history. She writes about her cats and her efforts to rescue abused and stray cats, and the different sensations of living on one's own after one has moved into, and through, marriage and motherhood. The rural setting, despite the title and despite her efforts to focus on the trees and the snow, the wild animals and the weather, does not really emerge to play a strong part in the narrative. It remains the backdrop against which the writer discovers herself and her capabilities. The scars of barbed wire on the landscape are always a metaphor for human experiences. The greatest weakness of the memoir is the inability to look beyond the self -- everything comes back to helping the author make sense of her own life, nothing about how she might have affected others, or how the land might exist without her using it as a metaphor, or source of meaning.

I was intrigued by the concept for this memoir, but the execution seemed ill thought out. Maybe my expectations are just too high, but I was surprised Counterpoint would publish this rather lightweight memoir, and it seemed like the publisher was doing a favor to the author to print it at all. She can write very nice sentences, but as a whole, it just doesn't leave the reader with anything to hang onto -- I barely finished it, it felt so purposeless, even though it's only 221 pages long. I honestly can't remember if anything happened at the end, I was so detached from it.

One of her nice sentences is about waking up on a day when the sun has already warmed the air: "I step onto the porch in a loose nightgown and feel the breeze, so reminiscent of swimming, the way water flows over the skin, or fingertips trace the curves and hollows of a body" (112).

I've been cranky about the books I've been reading lately, after a year of not reading much of anything new, since I was busy as a part-time editor for a small literary press. But I have to say that if this memoir came across my desk when I was acquiring books, I would have passed. It's too inchoate, too undigested. It seems like a journal that has been typeset. The choice to write it in the present tense does nothing to alleviate this sense. For instance, we are hit over the head with the fact that the author is a writer, but not a famous one, and a reader, because on every single page, she quotes from books she's been reading, refers to authors she's met, and is disconsolate at being one of the few artsy people in her small, rural town, dominated by a state prison. It feels a bit like there should be a bibliography in the back, "Books to read when you are divorced and isolated on a dirt road." Every chapter also starts with an epigraph, but I was flummoxed to figure out the connection of the chapter titles, the epigraphs, and the content. Chapter 13 is titled "Jimmy B," and the epigraph is by the Defenders of Wildlife: "California's last known naturally occuring wild wolf is trapped and killed in Lassen County in 1924." The chapter is about the author's rescue of a one-eyed alleycat.

We get little insight into her husband or their marriage, other than her sense of being trapped and depressed in it, and we only learn very late that it was her second marriage. The book eventually feels like a defense of her choices, which are frowned upon by the town at large, except for by a few allies. Oddly, we first are told she stayed in the town for her husband, but later we find out her mother has property here and she spent some significant time in her youth in this town. A lot of details are brought in quite late in the memoir that would give context to her decisions if they were brought in earlier on. I think the non-chronological, thematic chapters do not help in this regard. A much better version of this kind of memoir, with thematic chapters, is Janisse Ray's fantastic memoir of place, family, madness, and ecology, [Book:Ecology of a Cracker Childhood]. I've read that twice and it's fabulous.

One section I did think was nicely done was her interrogation of her vulnerability, single and with a barely paying job, in connection with how her mom friends, the other mothers in her circle, saw her as a warning sign, the struggle that could await them if they left their marriages. She draws a strength from her own sense of her courage in the face of their fears to overcome her own sense that she might not be able it make it on her own.

Because the conceit of the book is that this is her life in the aftermath of marriage, retreating to the edges like a pariah, one might expect that this would mark a shift in her life, some distinct change in which she finds purpose. But instead, it is a mishmash of reflecting on her current circ*mstances, some mix in of flashbacks to her childhood, a very unfinished exploration of her grandmother's choice to leave her children and follow her husband to the USA, and introducing the people she interacts with (mostly those "on her side."), and lots and lots of quotes from inspirational authors writing about nature. This book felt like a waste of time for a reader because it didn't feel processed. A memoir has to be more than simply a record of life. It should be shaped, honed, not just stream-of-consciousness. There needs to be an examination of purpose, of reasoning, of the WHY of life.

I read Joelle's first book The Territory of Men years ago, and while her life was very different from mine, the depth of awareness with which she wrote touched a piece of my core. Her next book The Forest House is written with the same sense of knowing, but also with the poignancy of someone living on the edge--the edge of her wits, raising her young son of whom she has half custody in an isolated cabin deep in the woods, not knowing how she will make ends meet, how she can forge a career in the middle of nowhere, how she can bear the loneliness when separated from her son. We all experience living on the edge at some point in our lives. The question is: how do we come back?

After a divorce and a shared custody arrangement, Joelle takes her young son and moves to the very edge of the town where she had previously lived. It was a small house in the forest, far enough away from everyone where she could heal and learn to adjust to her new life. Many experiences later, the cold, the snow, things she had to learn to manage herself she is feeling stronger. Some good things happen and then more bad but she learns a great appreciation for nature and a simpler life. I liked reading this and I wondered if I would be brave enough to live in the woods, by myself, far enough away that you cannot even see your neighbors. I really don't know, but I liked reading about the quaintness and the peacefulness, and loved learning about her family, the grandmother that came from Sweden, leaving her many children behind. I also loved that she quoted from books, and that they became her trusted companions.

This was a beautiful read. I enjoyed it very much. It was very relaxing and I felt like I was right there with the writer in her descriptions of solitary living in the forest. If you like slow-paced, nature, wildlife, and scenery, mixed with discussions of moving on and coping mechanisms after divorce and loss, this may just be something you may want to pick up. The cover art alone captivated me at once. The writing was a treat to digest. Lots of books are mentioned throughout, and I love literary references. Each chapter opens with a quote from a nonfiction text on wildlife, animals, or nature. There are some metaphors connected with those throughout each chapter. The chapters are super short, which I loved, so it does not take very long to get through. However, I would recommend reading it slowly to digest the slow paced nature of the environment the memoir is set in. Five stars because I thoroughly enjoyed it and it encapsulates everything I love in a good book: sadness, female independence, strength, and beautiful depictions of nature!

This will be a five star book on lots of my friends' shelves. I would recommend it to anyone who has gone through or is going through a divorce. I find the author to be a strong and respectable woman (who probably doesn't give herself enough credit in many aspects of her life)and I think we'd be friends if we ever met. We'd love to sit on her porch or venture into that mountainside. I like her independent spirit and introspective soul.

Favorite passages:
p. 44) That night I dreamed of my grandmother, and I woke remembering her hands, soft and gnarled as the driftwood she'd collected for her garden. All she endured, all her mother endured, and mine. What makes me think I"m any less of a woman? Of a survivor? (If the application is denied I'll still have food to eat and a warm place to live and a job. You get by. Any maybe, eventually, your life can be extraordinary.)

p.44) I put down the book and spent a minute or two looking around at my thrift store furniture- the $2 bedside table, the scarred bookcase, the poster of a Hawaiian beach tacked on the closet door. Is it staleness around me? You might think so. But for me, these are just the practical choices of a careful woman who knows the edge is not so far away.

I step out onto the porch in a loose nightgown and feel the breeze, so reminiscent of swimming, the way water flows over the skin, or fingertips to trace the curves and hollows of a body . . . suddenly I’m awake to myself.

"When Joelle Fraser needed affordable digs in which to raise her little boy near her soon-to-be-ex, she found two options in her northeastern California town: a crummy apartment or a cabin on the edge of civilization. Abandoning city life for solitude, she found silence, wildlife, wood fires, and a reservoir of strength she had not known she possessed."

In my continuing quest for the perfect get-away contemplation, I found this 2013 memoir engrossing from the first of its 223 pages. Focusing on motherhood, creativity, and the seasons of the soul as one ages, it shows the artist striving for balance in her personal and professional life far from distraction. But in this haven many authors would covet, she must face the challenges of weather, the ever-present threat of mountain lions, and separation from friends.

In this reading, the author reflects on the loneliness of the holidays and the unexpected pull of city life. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xPuvQ...

I so dislike Goodread's STAR rating. It doesn't allow for complexity. That I wouldn't give it 5 stars like The Old Man and The Sea or To A God Unknown, doesn't mean I didn't completely enjoy it for what it was, a memoir of loss, love, and healing. I particularly enjoyed how the epigraphs at the start of each chapter connected Fraser's wilderness surroundings to what was going on in her life - I noticed one reviewer hated them, and such is the subjectivity and beauty of all art. I too am a writer, and I breezed through Fraser's book on a hot afternoon when I should have been writing but didn't have the words. The next day I was back at my keyboard, Fraser's sincerity and simple style the tonic that refreshed me.