Into the Forest by Jean Hegland Book Review

Into the Forest

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Jean Hegland’s brilliantly imaginative debut novel will make you feel thankful for electricity, cell phones, and music players, all while underscoring our laughable overdependence on technology. The story is set in a near-future post-apocalyptic world where the mail delivery has ceased, power is out, and violence and looting have turned once-thriving society upside down.

Hegland does actually intimate to us what happened to trigger the fall of civilization. Instead, she jumps directly into the post-apocalyptic story of two surviving sisters, Nell and Eva, and their parents. They live in a 50-acre farm of 2nd-growth redwood forest 32 miles from the nearest town in northern California. The remote location sets up the story for a beautiful buildup, as the story of the downfall of the civilization slips in slowly.

There’s violence, looting, and all-out war out there, with contagious strains of virus raging through the planet. Even more troubling, the food supply is dwindling, there’s no more electricity, no more gas, and stores only have empty shelves. What a recipe for an apocalypse, right?

It didn’t take long before Eva and Nell’s mom died from the emanating catastrophe. Their dad takes it to himself to teach his vibrant daughters the canning, gardening, and other skills they need to survive in the world turned upside down. In an unfortunate turn of events, the chain saw kicks back and cuts their dad, who bleeds to death. Helpless and desperate, the two sisters buried their father at his death site.

With starvation staring down at them, the sister duo must ration a limited supply of expired cornmeal and tea bags. They must learn how to fend for themselves, otherwise, they will fall victim to starvation. The industrious Nell makes an effort to learn how to gather acorns to grind into flour, use herbs for tea & medicine, and kill game with a rifle she barely knows how to use.

Luck for Nell, there’s a young man who is coming to take her away from the miserable life. However, she can’t leave her sister to fend for herself in the vast forestland. While Eva and Nell are naturally and biologically sisters, the author turns them into lovers, pure lovers both at the ideological and physical level.

When Eva bores a sun after getting pregnant through rape by a passer-by thug, they both express breast milk for him. Fearing a repeat of rape and violence, the duo razes their childhood house and sets up another home in a huge redwood stump. By this point in their lives, the sisters have honed their life skills and are well-prepared to forage and fend for themselves like animals in the woods. In post-apocalyptic America, their bond of sisterhood is stronger than ever and they are built to take on whatever life will throw at them.

Right from page one of Into the Forest, you’ll be hooked by Hegland’s beautiful narration of the 17-year-old Nell and her lyrical prose. Besides well-developed, charming characters, one of the most impressive things about the book is the way Hegland renders the story. Despite being her debut work, she manages to use a distinct writing style, lyrical prose, and other elements that speak to the reader in a subtly emotional way.

Into the Forest is elegantly and vividly written, with the author’s knowledge of fruit drying, hunting, and organic gardening offering an authentic touch that makes this book one of the best reads to add to your home library. Contemplative, feminist, and brisk, this book is by no means perfect for every reader; you’ll find that it speaks much more intimately to female readers than to their male counterparts. Nonetheless, it is a great find to add to your post-apocalyptic reading list.

Any sci-fi fan will appreciate how the plot is crafted to draw them along while the vivid writing and details encourage them to read over and over again. Even though Hegland’s lyrical writing style sometimes goes a little overboard, Into the Forest still echoes the high standards that make fans of Ridley Walker by Russell Hoban and Gorge Orwell’s 1984 tick. We highly recommend this novel to lovers of books across the sci-fi and fantasy genres, especially the fans of Carrie Ryan’s The Forest of Hands and Teeth.

To conclude, Jean Hegland’s Into the Forest is a well-written, lyrical post-apocalyptic novel that details the struggles of two sisters to adapt and endure a new world. It’s a touching, heartwarming yet poignant book that will impress.

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