Book Review: The Forgetting Tree

The Forgetting Tree by Tatjana Soli
Publisher: St. Martin’s Press
Release Date: September 4, 2012
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Publisher’s Description:

When Claire Nagy marries Forster Baumsarg, the only son of prominent California citrus ranchers, she knows she’s consenting to a life of hard work, long days, and worry-fraught nights. But her love for Forster is so strong, she turns away from her literary education and embraces the life of the ranch, succumbing to its intoxicating rhythms and bounty until her love of the land becomes a part of her. Not even the tragic, senseless death of her son Joshua at kidnappers’ hands, her alienation from her two daughters, or the dissolution of her once-devoted marriage can pull her from the ranch she’s devoted her life to preserving.

But despite having survived the most terrible of tragedies, Claire is about to face her greatest struggle: an illness that threatens not only to rip her from her land but take her very life. And she’s chosen a caregiver, the inscrutable, Caribbean-born Minna, who may just be the darkest force of all.

I have mixed feelings about The Forgetting Tree. On the one hand, the prose was lush and poetic. I felt like I was in a melancholy fog right along with Claire as I was reading it. On the other hand, I could not relate to Claire or Minna at all. I think they both were mentally-ill in some way. I never found Minna to be a mysterious enigma – I found her to be crazy and mean. I couldn’t understand why Claire was taken with her – sometimes I felt like it was mostly just because Minna was black and Claire hadn’t been around too many black people in her life. That made me uncomfortable, but that is also just my interpretation of Claire and could be totally off base.

This may be one of those cases where I am too practical for a book. I just wanted Claire to fire Minna and get on with her life. I kept wondering why no one else in her family was intervening – I think it was pretty clear Claire needed some kind of mental help. My problems with the plot got in the way of my enjoyment of the beautiful writing. The descriptions were wonderfully written, I just didn’t care for a lot of what was being described. Although, I didn’t love this book, I think there are people out there who will. If you think that person could be you, come back next week when I’ll be giving away a copy to one of my readers!

Thank you to TLC Book Tours for providing me with a copy of this book. Check out the other tour stops:

Thursday, July 5th: CBS Los Angeles – LA’s Summer Reading Guide
Tuesday, September 4th: The Book Snob
Wednesday, September 5th: Bookish Habits
Thursday, September 6th: Broken Teepee
Monday, September 10th: nomadreader
Tuesday, September 11th: My Bookshelf
Thursday, September 13th: Musings of a Bookish Kitty
Tuesday, September 18th: West Metro Mommy
Wednesday, September 19th: Suko’s Notebook
Monday, September 24th: BookNAround
Tuesday, September 25th: Silver and Grace
Wednesday, September 26th: In the Next Room
Thursday, September 27th: The 3 R’s Blog
Monday, October 1st: The Written World
Friday, October 5th: Luxury Reading
TBD: So Simply Sara

Buy this book at:
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