The Forrests

Their father balanced behind the movie camera, shouting directions as he walked backwards and forwards in front of them. He handled the Kodak, their most valuable possession, as though i were an undulating live animal, a ferret or a snake, and it was leading him. The children took turns hunching under a cardboard box in the back garden for a sequence he told them would be funny later. When it was Dorothy’s turn she crouched like a turtle on the grass, forehead pressed into her bony knees, arms tucked down by her sides, and breathed hotly into her own skin, whole Michael lifted the box and placed it over her, a warm shadow, a rare private place. She inhaled it. (page 1)

The Forrests is Emily Perkins’ fourth novel, longlisted for the 2013 Women’s Fiction Prize. My mother got the book for her birthday and I borrowed it to read myself and now find myself wishing that more of Perkins’ work was readily available in the US. I find it particularity apt that Perkins starts her novel with a scene of a parent making a film of his children at play.  This novel is a series of snapshots or videos documenting the life of a family – principally the life of Dorothy Forrest. While told in a linear fashion, there are gaps as the story skips through Dorothy’s life picking up and leaving off effortlessly. If you are a person who needs to know the complete story, this novel may not be for you as readers know they are not getting a complete accounting. However, if you just go with the flow that Perkins establishes, it will be well worth your effort.

The novel starts in Aukland when Dorothy is seven years old. Her family has just relocated from New York City where her father was part of a wealthy family. There is a sense that the family has fled for some unknown reason. There are hints of needing independence from the family trust as well as hints of money issues which trouble the family through Dorothy’s childhood. The parents are distinctly odd with the father not truly connected to the realities of life. The parents relationship also seems volatile with the father disappearing for a time and the mother taking the children to a woman’s commune in the country. Dorothy, her sister Evelyn (whom she considers a”twin”), their older brother Michael, the youngest sister Ruth, and Danny – a neighbor boy who becomes part of the family, make their way through childhood, adolescence, and finally adulthood.

While Perkins does occasionally speak through other characters, it is Dorothy who is the focus of The Forrests. Three things characterize Dorothy, the sensual physical world around her, her sister Evelyn, and her relationship with Danny. As the narrative moves through her marriage, her children and grandchildren, to her old age – these are the three touchstones of her existence and these are the threads that hold the snapshots together.

This is the book of an ordinary life with the familiar highlights of the timeline (marriage, birth, death) as well as spotlighting the ordinary such as child tending, dinner making – all the flotsam and jetsam of the everyday. This is what makes the writing of the book remarkable. Perkins takes the ordinary and transforms it into sheer poetry:

‘Come on darlings, breakfast time,’ Dorothy said, picking up toys on the way to the windows. ‘Feed the fish. And then you need to get ready for school.’ Her body operated in space, not her. The tangibility of the mini stegosaurus and cloth doll, the need to remove them from the floor before someone turned an ankle or broke the wing of a kitset airplane, the silver light in her eyes after pulling the curtains, the lid of the fish-food jar to replace, the rumpled pillows and sheets to straighten, bedside books to pile, the papery skin of oatmeal that lined the saucepan as porridge thickened on the stove, the faces of rubbish day, and buying a board for Amy’s science project and letting gorgeous, leggy Grace cycle off without laying anxiety shit all over her independence and knowing already how much she was going to miss that girl and school bells and bus timetables and volunteer morning with crossing duty, these things saved her. (pages 191-192)

Through circumstance and incident, holes are left in our lives. Holes left by unsatisfactory upbringing. Holes left by loss – both permanent and temporary. Holes left by bad experiences. Holes left by the mere passage of time. Holes left by denying who you are. Perkins exposes those holes and fills them with the basics of life. Unfortunately, at times, this leaves you wondering who you are, where have you left yourself, and does anybody know the true you including yourself. What do you know and what have you invented?

Perhaps subconsciously she had known that this day would come, although that morning she had been told that there was no such thing as fate, no stories in anybody’s lives other than the ones they invented. Maybe she had invented herself into this place. (pages 201-202)

She had wanted to – what, to keep something of her sister but now Ruth was leaving and she was once again glossy, s o controlled, and since the mention of the will they hadn’t had a meaningful conversation and she felt stupidly scared of sitting in a cafe with her, of ordering watery quiche and attempting to introduce the real things, the state of her marriage, the hole left by Eve, her fear that she had lived her life on the inside, ruled by the fantasy that someone out there knew her, held her true self. (pages 262-263)

I found an interview with the author and she states, “I’m really interested in how we construct ourselves, the building up of identity and how much we live as a known quantity and how much we’re mysteries to ourselves and how much we invent ourselves and live in other people.” In her work, The Forrests, Emily Perkins has given the reader a platform to explore this notion of identity with beautiful language and an unforgettable character.