Forest Dark by Nicole Krauss  {Reviewed by STELLA} Forest Dark is wonderfully complex and thought-provoking, and I don’t say this lightly. Like her previous novel, Great House, which I read half of and put aside to come back to at least a year later (and so pleased that I did - it is still memorable several years on), her work rewards the persistent reader. Her writing is as frustrating as it is brilliant and this is what makes it so interesting. In Forest Dark the novel is told in two voices, one in the third person (Epstein) and the other in first person narrative (Nicole). Julian Epstein is a highly successful, ambitious and confident New Yorker who at 68 has what his family, friends and lawyer would call a crisis. He divorces his wife, starts giving away his wealth and his art, and leaves for Tel Aviv with the purpose of finding a fitting cause or project to memorialise his parents. Epstein is questioning his life, his motivations and is, for the first time in his life, uncertain. Interspersed with his chapters is the voice of Nicole, a 39-year-old writer who is struggling with her next novel. One night, suffering from insomnia, she packs a suitcase and in the morning, almost surprised to see her packed bag, she announces she is off to Israel to research her book. Feeling suffocated by her failing marriage, her adorable but increasingly independent children and her fame, she is running away, looking for answers but ultimately finding only questions. As the novel progresses I expected the lives of these two narrators to intertwine, but Krauss gives us nothing so obvious. There are links between the two, they are both American Jews, they both have a connection to the Hilton in Tel Aviv, and they are both on a quest to understand themselves and their place, or perhaps lack of importance, in the worlds they are familiar with. Set in Israel, a place that both have links to, as does the author herself, Epstein and Nicole are both at home, yet dislocated - their experience is one of history and family - a tenuous and sometimes fraught relationship. Both are free to wander, to be unburdened of their responsibilities, whether they are in the chaos of the city or the barrenness of the desert. Whether they achieve a sense of freedom is debatable, with both finding themselves drawn into schemes which each would, in a different mindset, run a mile from. Nicole’s story is a reflection on the place, and possibly the relevance, of the writer. Krauss is questioning the form and significance of the novel. Krauss is not alone in using the novel form as a vehicle for blending fiction and autobiography. Nicole is not Krauss, but they are closely related. Forest Dark is both serious and wry: Krauss is an intelligent writer who feeds us more questions than answers. Like her previous novels, this will be one to contemplate for a while.