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| Lost in the Forest: A Novel (Ballantine Reader's Circle) | 
| Author: Sue Miller
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Category: Book
List Price: $13.95
Buy Used: $0.01
You Save: $13.94 (100%)
New (42) from $3.48
Avg. Customer Rating:  53 reviews
Sales Rank: 65938
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 272
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.3
Dimensions (in): 7.9 x 5.2 x 0.7
ISBN: 0345469593
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780345469595
ASIN: 0345469593
Publication Date: July 25, 2006
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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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.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 48 more reviews...
 Ratings needed for books May 22, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
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.
Jailtime for the Predator? March 5, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
Couldn't agree more with readers disturbed by Miller's treatment of the predatorial "relationship" between the middle aged man and the teenage daughter.
 Pulled in two different directions September 3, 2007
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 a hauntingly provocative book.
 Not what was expected March 23, 2007
1 out of 4 found this review helpful
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.
 Daisy and Duncan November 25, 2006
6 out of 6 found this review helpful
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.
Although Miller makes Mark's response different, it is not unrealistic in the context of the rest of the storyline. Mark's response is inextricably linked to his ongoing relationship with Eva. As both Emily and Daisy state toward the end of the book, the children's lives were shaped/marred by their "exclusion" from the intimacy that their parents shared. Because Mark still loved her, his first instincts would have been to protect EVA from the knowledge of what happened to their daughter. He knew fully that with all Eva had lost and suffered that this would crush her.
Fortunately for Daisy, over the years, Mark had come to realize his culpability in being an absent father while married, his replacement by John in both Eva's and Daisy's hearts, and even after the loss of his "replacement" through the death of Daisy's step-father. Daisy would not continue to be lost to him, however; she called out to him by crying in the night -- a few days later, he heard her cry in a different way and came to her aid becoming the father she desperately wanted and needed.
Young girls like Daisy do reach out to older/other men when their fathers are absent or have died. The men they find available to them may have other objectives, yet seem to fill a void and shape too many young girls lives. I think Sue Miller successfully addressed a very thorny subject on so many levels that a second reading would intensify an understanding of the strength of her words and message to us as a society.
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