Lost in the Forest: A Novel (Ballantine Reader's Circle),Books,Free Shipping,0345469593,

	Lost in the Forest: A Novel (Ballantine Reader's Circle) by Sue Miller
	List Price $13.95 Our Price $11.16 You Save $2.79 (20%) Prices subject to change. Eligible for FREE Shipping See details Availability Usually ships in 24 hours
	Marketplace New from $4.00 Used from $0.01
Product Details Binding Paperback Dewey Decimal Number 813.54 EAN 9780345469595 ISBN 0345469593 Manufacturer Ballantine Books Number Of Items 1 Number Of Pages 272 Publication Date July 25, 2006 Publisher Ballantine Books Release Date July 25, 2006 Availability Usually ships in 24 hours Product Description For nearly two decades, since the publication of her iconic first novel, The Good Mother, Sue Miller has distinguished herself as one of our most elegant and widely celebrated chroniclers of family life, with a singular gift for laying bare the interior lives of her characters. In each of her novels, Miller has written with exquisite precision about the experience of grace in daily life–the sudden, epiphanic recognition of the extraordinary amid the ordinary–as well as the sharp and unexpected motions of the human heart away from it, toward an unruly netherworld of upheaval and desire. But never before have Miller’s powers been keener or more transfixing than they are in Lost in the Forest, a novel set in the vineyards of Northern California that tells the story of a young girl who, in the wake of a tragic accident, seeks solace in a damaging love affair with a much older man. Eva, a divorced and happily remarried mother of three, runs a small bookstore in a town north of San Francisco. When her second husband, John, is killed in a car accident, her family’s fragile peace is once again overtaken by loss. Emily, the eldest, must grapple with newfound independence and responsibility. Theo, the youngest, can only begin to fathom his father’s death. But for Daisy, the middle child, John’s absence opens up a world of bewilderment, exposing her at the onset of adolescence to the chaos and instability that hover just beyond the safety of parental love. In her sorrow, Daisy embarks on a harrowing sexual odyssey, a journey that will cast her even farther out onto the harsh promontory of adulthood and lost hope. With astonishing sensuality and immediacy, Lost in the Forest moves through the most intimate realms of domestic life, from grief and sex to adolescence and marriage. It is a stunning, kaleidoscopic evocation of a family in crisis, written with delicacy and masterful care. For her lifelong fans and those just discovering Sue Miller for the first time, here is a rich and gorgeously layered tale of a family breaking apart and coming back together again: Sue Miller at her inimitable best. From the Hardcover edition. Bestseller Miller (The Good Mother; While I Was Gone; etc.) examines love and betrayal in idyllic wine country in another minutely observed, finely paced exploration of domestic relationships. Idealistic California converts Eva and Mark had a solid marriage until Mark's affair; 'bumps in matrimony' is what one of Eva's friends, Gracie, calls such difficulties, and as Miller presents them it's not a question of whether they'll appear but how to deal with them when they do. Some years later, Mark and Eva's two adolescent daughters, Emily and Daisy, are living with Eva and her second husband, John, and their young son, Theo. After John's death in a freak accident, Mark rescues the children from their mother's anguish and, in the process, realizes he is still in love with her. John's death becomes the locus of an elegant and careful investigation of loss—loss of love, loss of innocence—and the conflicts between men and women, parents and children, friends and lovers. As Eva grieves and Mark acknowledges his feelings for her, their quiet younger daughter, 15-year-old Daisy (who 'had loved [John] the best!'), enters into an affair with an older man. The backdrop of California vineyards is ideal for the growth and life-cycle themes that Miller so carefully cultivates. As Daisy tries her first glass of wine, has her first taste of sex and experiments with her sense of power and voice, she develops into the heroine of the tale—one of the next generation of women learning to navigate the complex familiar waters of love and domesticity. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. It has been said that every good novelist is also a sociologist. Well, if sociologists can be said to shed light on how people must lead their lives at a given time and place in a society, then that statement certainly applies to Sue Miller, who has been providing just that kind of illumination, book to book, since she began her career more than 25 years ago with The Good Mother. This new novel, Lost in the Forest, begins with a cell phone call to a divorced vintner named Mark from his older daughter, Emily, announcing that he is needed immediately, and that it's an emergency. He drives to his ex-wife Eva's house, and picks up Emily, his younger daughter, Daisy, and Theo, Eva's son from her second marriage. It's Emily who tells him that Theo's father, and the girls' stepfather, John, has been killed in an accident: ' 'How did it happen?' he asked at last, keeping his voice gentle. 'When?' 'She seemed stricken again at the question, her eyes swam and grew larger, but she held on and whispered back, 'This afternoon. A car just . . . hit him.' 'Mark cleared his throat. 'He was driving?' ' 'No.' Her hair swung as she shook her head. 'Walking. With Eva and Theo.' ' 'Jesus. They were with him?' ' The novel turns on this event, while giving forth the past: Mark's infidelity to Eva, their divorce, Eva's marriage to John, the friendship Mark comes to feel for Eva and John, the children's adjustments to changed life -- in other words, the stitching together of this family, with all its fault lines and tremors. When John dies, things shatter again, and the whole process must begin anew. We see into the heart of Eva, worried about the slow recession of her grief, the healing that is taking place within her; we are privy to the longing Mark feels, falling in love with his ex-wife all over again; and we see Daisy, the younger daughter, beginning to realize her power as a woman, experiencing her grief with acts of secret defiance, and finally becoming involved with the husband of her mother's best friend. We follow these strains of narrative back and forth and occasionally even forward, far into the future. For Miller rather daringly jumps forward in time, past the boundaries of the story's time-line. Here is a passage from a chapter about Daisy and her affair. The man, Duncan, following her on her way home from school, is driving slowly along beside her. 'Steering with one hand, his body leaned across the front seat toward her.' She sees that it's him and has the thought that she 'was sorry she wasn't wearing any lipstick, or a prettier top.' The passage continues: 'And with that response came an unconscious dawning of awareness -- awareness of why he was there, and what he was doing, speaking her name, calling her over to him. . . . She understood that he'd come on purpose, that he had thought about her and sought her out. 'Years later when she tried to explain it to Dr. Gerard, she said that it was as though her unconscious mind knew everything that her conscious mind hadn't a clue about yet; and this was the moment when they began to communicate with each other.' This device of leaping years into the future is neither intrusive nor as jarring as it might seem. It is all part of the seamless prose surface Miller has constructed with such artfulness. These passages startle the reader rather wonderfully into a visceral understanding of the essential nature of this fine novel, which is in fact gently comic. For, as we know, comedy in literature stresses the community, and its ongoing life, while tragedy stresses the individual, who is doomed. Lost in the Forest is a comedy in the exact and best literary sense, for it stresses beautifully the continuation of the social unit with which it is concerned. Do I sound like a sociologist? Listen to the novelist, describing her an older Daisy as she rehearses for the part of Miranda in 'The Tempest': 'It's the people, she realizes . . . their sheer number and their beauty. The creatures, the mankind: the people! That's where she should put the emphasis, that's what will make it new.' Sue Miller has been making it new now for a long time, and Lost in the Forest is a shining affirmation that her power only continues to grow. Reviewed by Richard Bausch Copyright 2005, The Washington Post Co. All Rights Reserved. Who needs family therapy when one has Sue Miller? Lost in the Forest expertly unfolds to a display of realistic characters and troubled situations, including the sexual initiation (or violation?) of a teenage girl. Yet Daisy’s affair represents only one of many challenges the family faces after John’s death—and there are no easy answers. In understated, powerful prose, Miller moves back and forth in time, a device critics saw as either artful or interruptive. There were divergent views on the explicit sex as well. In this meditation on love, loss, grief, and self-discovery, Miller successfully and painfully examines what divides, and then unites and re-divides, our familial core. Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc. LOST IN THE FOREST can simultaneously soothe one's heart and wring it, and Blair Brown's reading delivers the text with just the right balance. The story begins with news of an unexpected death, a catalyst that brings the listener into the lives touched by he tragedy. Brown's subtle vocal changes for character and drama are always on target, giving the listener just enough information to stay completely immersed in this riveting novel. Sue Miller's characters are authentic individuals whose dealings with life and death will ring true with listeners, and the talented Brown captures the dialogue and description with ease. This audiobook sparkles, thanks to the depth of Miller's words and the richness of Brown's voice. L.B.F. © AudioFile 2005, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine Starred Review In her riveting new novel, Miller once again demonstrates her singular gift for capturing the rhythms of daily family life with laserlike clarity while also summoning the turbulent emotions swirling just beneath the surface. Eva, the divorced and happily remarried mother of three, has finally put the disaster of her first marriage behind her and has even become good friends with her ex. Then her second husband is killed in a tragic accident, and the peace Eva has worked so hard to attain is instantly shattered as she succumbs to an overwhelming grief. Her middle child, Daisy, was extremely close to her stepfather and is emotionally paralyzed by the sudden turn of events, unable to process or even speak of her grief. While her older sister, Emily, pretty and popular, is able to reach outside the family for support, and her brother, Theo, is too young to understand what happened, Daisy feels utterly trapped by her own misery and abruptly embarks on an ill-advised affair with a much older, married man. In one of her shortest yet richest novels, Miller insightfully explores the shifting dynamics between parent and child, a married couple, ex-spouses, and siblings. And as in The Good Mother (1986), she takes a volatile sexual dynamic--in this case, an inappropriate relationship, bordering on pedophilia--and explores it from all sides. It's easy to underestimate Miller's artistry because her writing is never showy. All she does in this fluidly written, perfectly paced novel is to show us what being a family really means. Joanne Wilkinson Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved For nearly two decades, since the publication of her iconic first novel, The Good Mother, Sue Miller has distinguished herself as one of our most elegant and widely celebrated chroniclers of family life, with a singular gift for laying bare the interior lives of her characters. In each of her novels, Miller has written with exquisite precision about the experience of grace in daily life–the sudden, epiphanic recognition of the extraordinary amid the ordinary–as well as the sharp and unexpected motions of the human heart away from it, toward an unruly netherworld of upheaval and desire. But never before have Miller’s powers been keener or more transfixing than they are in Lost in the Forest, a novel set in the vineyards of Northern California that tells the story of a young girl who, in the wake of a tragic accident, seeks solace in a damaging love affair with a much older man. Eva, a divorced and happily remarried mother of three, runs a small bookstore in a town north of San Francisco. When her second husband, John, is killed in a car accident, her family’s fragile peace is once again overtaken by loss. Emily, the eldest, must grapple with newfound independence and responsibility. Theo, the youngest, can only begin to fathom his father’s death. But for Daisy, the middle child, John’s absence opens up a world of bewilderment, exposing her at the onset of adolescence to the chaos and instability that hover just beyond the safety of parental love. In her sorrow, Daisy embarks on a harrowing sexual odyssey, a journey that will cast her even farther out onto the harsh promontory of adulthood and lost hope. With astonishing sensuality and immediacy, Lost in the Forest moves through the most intimate realms of domestic life, from grief and sex to adolescence and marriage. It is a stunning, kaleidoscopic evocation of a family in crisis, written with delicacy and masterful care. For her lifelong fans and those just discovering Sue Miller for the first time, here is a rich and gorgeously layered tale of a family breaking apart and coming back together again: Sue Miller at her inimitable best. From the Hardcover edition. Sue Miller is the best-selling author of the novels The World Below, While I Was Gone, The Distinguished Guest, For Love, Family Pictures, and The Good Mother; the story collection Inventing the Abbotts; and the memoir The Story of My Father. She lives in Boston. From the Hardcover edition. Sue Miller is the best-selling author of the novels The World Below, While I Was Gone, The Distinguished Guest, For Love, Family Pictures, and The Good Mother; the story collection Inventing the Abbotts; and the memoir The Story of My Father. She lives in Boston. From the Hardcover edition. Emily telephoned, his older daughter. 'Can you come get us?' she said. 'It's an emergency.' As usual, she didn't greet him, she didn't say hello at the start of the call. And also as usual, this bothered him, he felt a familiar pull of irritation at her voice, her tone. But even as he was listening to her, he was focused on steering the truck around the sharp curves in the narrow road, around several small heaps of rock that had slid down the steep hillside: he was feeling the pleasure he always took in the way the slanted afternoon light played on the yellowed grass and reddened leaves left in the vineyards, in the way the air smelled. He kept his voice neutral as he responded. 'When? Now?' In the background, behind her, Mark could hear someone give a sudden whoop. Festivities, he thought. As ever. Eva's face rose in his mind--his ex-wife. At the least excuse, there was a gathering at her house: to celebrate a birthday--reasonable enough; but also for a project completed, a team victory, a skill accomplished. You learned to ride a bike, you got a party thrown for you. 'Duh. Yes, Dad, now,' Emily said. 'That's what I mean.' He was headed north on 128 to a small vineyard he thought his crew should harvest tomorrow. He needed to check the grapes. But he could probably get Angel to do it if he had to. His windows were open. The noise of the rushing air made his daughter's voice on the car phone sound distant. 'So?' she said. 'Can you?' If his younger daughter, Daisy, had ever called him because of an emergency, it would have been a child's crisis--not making the basketball team, needing a ride somewhere that her mother or stepfather couldn't provide. But with Emily, this emergency was likely to be at least slightly serious, an emergency in near-adult terms. Terms he might even be sympathetic with. But she would be taking charge again, and this was something he and his ex-wife had agreed that she should be discouraged--no, freed--from doing so often. He cleared his throat. 'Maybe I should talk to your mom,' he said. Yes. The approach to take. 'Dad!' she objected. He didn't answer for a long moment, and as if in response to this, her voice had changed when she spoke again. She sounded younger: 'Mom can't talk right now. That's why we need you.' And with those words, we need you, it was settled. To be needed. Well. Mark thought of Emily's delicate oval face, her regular, pretty features, her curly dark hair, so like Eva's--all the things that were lovely about her. All the things that didn't piss him off. 'Okay,' he said. 'Okay, as it happens, I can come. As it happens, I will.' She wouldn't be charmed. 'Now?' she said impatiently. 'Now. Or, gimme ten or so.' He was slowing, and as he pulled into a turnaround by the roadside, the truck bounced and his tires crunched on the dusty gravel. 'Okay.' She sighed, in relief it seemed. 'Just honk, though,' she said. 'We'll come out. Oh, and Dad?' 'Yeah?' 'It's for overnight.' It could not be for overnight. He had plans. He had a date. He was going to get laid. 'Okay, sunshine,' he said. 'We'll work it all out.' She sighed again and hung up. Twenty minutes or so later, when he pulled up at the curb in front of his ex-wife's large Victorian house, the door opened before he hit the horn and his younger daughter staggered out onto the wide porch, carrying her sleeping bag, her pack an oversize hump on her back. Daisy was barefoot. Her long brown legs were exposed nearly to the crotch in cutoff jeans--legs that were beginning to look less like sticks and more like a woman's, he noted. Emily came out the door after her, turned backward as if to fuss with something behind her. Two pretty, dark, young women, one tall, one short: his daughters. He got out of the truck to go and help them. As he started up the walk, he saw Theo emerging from the house behind Emily. The little boy, not yet three, was carrying a brown paper grocery bag by its handles. Something stuck out of it--a pillow? a blanket? He spotted Mark and smiled. Now Emily took Theo's hand to help him down the wide porch stairs. He paused on each one, and the bag plopped slowly from step to step behind him as he descended. Mark met them on the walk. 'Hey,' he said. He kissed each girl on her head. They smelled identical, a ladylike herbal perfume: shared shampoo. He took Daisy's sleeping bag from her. 'Theo!' he said, and extended his hand down to him. 'To what do we owe this pleasure?' 'I'll explain it all to you,' Emily called back. She had moved ahead of them down the walk, between the orderly gray-green procession of rosemary plants. She was tossing her stuff into the open back of the truck. 'So he's supposed to spend the night too?' Mark asked Daisy. Theo was not his son. Theo was his ex-wife's son, by her second marriage. He liked Theo. He was, in fact, charmed by him--he knew him well from various extended-family events--but he had never before been asked to babysit for him. And actually, no one had even asked. Daisy shrugged. She looked, as she often did, sullen. Or evasive. Her face was narrower than Emily's, her nose still slightly too big on it--she was fourteen--her eyebrows darker and thick. She had shot up within the last two years, and now she was only a few inches shorter than Mark. She carried it badly, trying to hide it. Mark had worried when she was younger that she would be plain, which seemed to him an almost unbearably sad thing--a plain woman. Within the last six months or so, though, her face had changed and strengthened, and he saw that that wouldn't be the case. That she might, in fact, be better-looking than Emily in the end, more striking. It had made him easier around her, he realized. They had caught up to Emily, who said again, 'I'll explain it later.' She sounded irritated, as though she were the adult and he a nagging child. She took Theo's hand and led him to the door of the truck's cab. Mark went around to the driver's side. He opened his door and stood there looking across the cab's wide seat, waiting for Emily to look back at him. She wouldn't. Or she didn't. First she was helping the little boy clamber into the truck; now she climbed up herself and was busy buckling him in. When she finally raised her eyes and met her father's, he was ready. He lifted his hands. 'Hey, Em,' he said. 'You will admit--' 'Daddy, it's an emergency. A real emergency.' Her eyes, he noted now, were red-rimmed, their lids swollen. Theo looked over at him and nodded. 'It's a mergency,' he said, and inserted his thumb into his mouth with an air of finality. Daisy squeezed in next to Emily, and Mark got in and started the truck. He pulled into the street. After nearly a full minute had passed, he asked, 'So, the nature of this emergency is . . . ?' He could feel Emily's gaze on him, and he looked at her. She was frowning--her dark eyebrows made fierce lines. She shook her head. 'We can't . . . we shouldn't . . . talk about it now.' She gestured at Theo, sitting between them, watching them soberly. Mark nodded. After another long moment he said, 'But at some point it will be revealed.' 'Yeah,' she said. She turned away, and when he looked over again, he saw that she and Daisy were holding hands. What the hell was going on? Daisy's mouth hung open stupidly, as though she'd been sucker punched. They drove in near-total silence the whole way to his house. Everyone's eyes stayed devoutly on the road, as though the familiar scenes rolling past--the valley as it widened out and spread the fall colors of its vineyards before them, the deep green of the hills riding along above it all--were some new and fascinating nature movie. Once Daisy said in a near-whisper, 'Are those pills supposed to knock her out or something?' and Emily shrugged. That was it. Knock who out? Not Eva, he thought. He imagined her, his ex-wife--small, dark, quick moving, graceful. Her sudden sexy smile. Not Eva. Above Calistoga, he turned in at the unmarked dirt road to his house. There were sparse, newly planted vineyards on either side of it. He had to swerve and dance the truck to avoid the ruts. He could feel Theo's weight swing against his side. After about a quarter of a mile, he pulled into his driveway and then up onto the cement pad where one day he planned to build a garage. As soon as he cut the engine, they could hear the dogs barking in the house. The children started to unbuckle their seat belts, and he swung himself out of the truck. He began to gather their possessions from the back. They came and stood behind him--silent, oddly passive, waiting for their things to be put into their hands. He led the way. When he opened the back door, the dogs shot out and started jumping around, abruptly quieted by their joy in being released. Their heavy tails whacked everyone. Theo made a little noise of terror and delight and stepped between Mark's legs, gripping his thighs. Mark put his hands on the boy's narrow shoulders, and was instantly startled--and then aware of being startled. Why? Why did it feel so strange to touch the little boy? Perhaps because he had anticipated the way the girls felt when they were Theo's size, when he had loved to touch them, to hold them. Theo's body was wiry and tense, utterly unlike theirs at the same age. It felt hot with energy. 'It's okay, big guy,' Mark said gently. 'They like you. They like kids like you.' Theo looked up at Mark, wide-eyed and alarmed. 'They would like to ea... Customers who bought this item also bought The Senator's Wife For Love The Distinguished Guest While I Was Gone The Good Mother : A Novel Customer Reviews for: Lost in the Forest: A Novel (Ballantine Reader's Circle) Rating - Ratings needed for books I believe there should be ratings for books as in the film industry. I had read good reviews of this book but couldn't get past the sexual filth in the first few pages. The story concept sounded so interesting that I continued past the sprinkling of nasty language. But when she began recounting disturbing sexual descriptions, I stopped reading. When I don't like a book or choose not to keep it in my library, I put it in the give-away box but this one I threw in the trash. Rating - Jailtime for the Predator? Couldn't agree more with readers disturbed by Miller's treatment of the predatorial "relationship" between the middle aged man and the teenage daughter. Rating - Pulled in two different directions If you can get past one of the more disturbing storylines (a 15-year-old girl entering into an affair with an older man, who happens to be a family friend), then this novel is such a fascinating study of people and their motives. There are so many circumstances that change our entire lives as well as those around us. Here we have divorce, remarriage, death, emotional distancing and sexual awakening as some of the topics explored so wonderfully by Miller's skillful writing. Keep an open mind, and you will be treated to ... Read More Rating - Not what was expected I have loved most of Sue Miller's past books. They provide entertainment and quality character development. While the setting in this book was interesting, the plot was lacking. I thought I would be reading about a coming of age girl, yet this tended to be about sexual abuse. I found it disturbing especially because there was not enough information provided to find any sympathy for the characters. This book did not live up to my expectations. Rating - Daisy and Duncan Regarding Mark's discovery of his 15 yr. old daughter's relationship with a 53 year old man: Yes, the relationship is repulsive and hard to read about. We are forced to open our eyes to something that we know as a society does happen: many atrractive young girls do become the objects of older mens' fantasies and sexual attentions. We know wihtout even thiking about it that the typical response would be that most fathers blow up and reject their daughters in response to having knowledge of such acts. ... Read More see more reviews See all books by author Sue Miller

Books : Lost in the Forest: A Novel (Ballantine Reader's Circle)