Jules Epstein, a man whose drive, avidity, and personality have, for sixty-eight years, been a force to be reckoned with, is undergoing a metamorphosis.

In the wake of his parents' deaths, his divorce from a thirty-year marriage, and his retirement from the New York legal firm where he was a partner, he begins shedding the possessions he spent a lifetime accumulating a watch here, an Old Master there and becomes elusive, distant.

Resolving to do something to commemorate his parents, he travels to Tel Aviv and checks into the Hilton.

Meanwhile, a novelist leaves her husband and children behind in Brooklyn and arrives at the same hotel, hoping that the view of the pool she used to dive into on childhood holidays will unlock her writer's block.

But when a retired professor of literature recruits her for a project involving Kafka, she is drawn into a mystery that will take her on a metaphysical journey and change her in ways she could never have imagined.

Reviewed by Olivia at Angus & Robertson Bookworld:

Forest Dark, the incredible new novel by Nicole Krauss, is a thoughtful study of self-realisation experienced from two different perspectives. Two Jewish Americans, one a retired lawyer and the other a writer suffering from writer’s block, make their way to the Israeli desert in search of nothing and everything. One of them emerges from the desert, forever altered, while the other seems to disappear entirely.

One could say that, through these characters, this book takes two very different looks at the same dilemma; what is one’s place in the world and in its individual histories? Kraus doesn’t so much seek to answer this in any definitive manner, preferring to allow meaning to gradually emerge through the charisma of her characters as they grapple with these questions. The result is a profoundly moving novel that offers a tantalising glimpse at one possibility: what would happen if you emptied yourself to make room for the person you were intended to be?

Krauss is a master of the kind of storytelling that captivates without resorting to plot-based gimmickry to hold a reader’s attention. This is a highly contemplative novel, and one might get lost in Krauss’ ruminations on culture, the multiverse theory, and (of all things) Kafka if they don’t pay attention - but with Krauss’ beautiful wordcraft, not paying attention is simply not an option. This was my first time picking up a Nicole Krauss novel; needless to say, it won’t be my last.