Nicole Krauss' FOREST DARK - A Melange of Mysticism, Memoir and Existentialism

Nicole Krauss (b Amer 1974) is a gifted novelist (A HISTORY of LOVE) whose novel THE GREAT HOUSE was a Nat'l Bk Award finalist.  FOREST DARK is a novel that loosely connects two characters with their ties to the Hilton hotel in Tel Aviv.  Nicole is the female protagonist, an acclaimed Amer. novelist with 2 young sons & a marriage hanging by a thread.  The male protagonist, Jules Eisman, is a wealthy Amer. atty., father of 3 young adults, recently divorced from a long & seemingly copacetic marriage.  Krauss discreetly intertwines different people from different walks of life.  Nicole & Jules are both of the Jewish faith with indeterminate religious convictions .  Still both maintain a cohesive connection to their Jewish heritage and to Israel.  Jules is the vociferous character used to being in charge & doling out commands.  Not to say Jules is a tyrant, but there is an irony to him playing the role of King David in a film towards the end of the novel.  Jules is going through an existential transformation purging himself of most of his valuable possessions.  He sojourns on a journey to Tel Aviv at the happenstance urging of a Rabbi.  Nicole who shares the same name as the author bears other similarities with the writer; such as 2 sons and a dissolution of a 10 year marriage.  The foundation is laid to make assumptions the fictional Nicole represents Krauss herself.  Nicole is experience the same nagging rootless & restless feelings experienced by Jules.  She imagines herself both in the future and in a future that is tied to the present.  She too leaves her home in the US to awaken her creativity & a sense of herself.  She believes it's only with distance & her eventual return to the home that shelters her can she discover her true self.  Both character's feckless behaviors make them both seem too easily lead.  But, their contemplative, inward reflections draw them out as both surreal & complex people.  "Some of us are touched too much, and some too little; it is the balance that seems impossible to get right."  Both Nicole & Jules ponder spirituality, heritage and the legacy they will leave.  The climatic deja vu entendu ending is both calming & horrific.  It speaks to the never ending search for or believing in meaning.  Krauss continues to expand her craft as a writer of great intelligence.  She creates in a diaphanous style that bridges mysticism & exceptional storytelling.