The Review of Contemporary Fiction
Into the Forest by Jean HeglandLois Oppenheim
Jean Hegland. Into the Forest. Calyx, 1996. 208 pp. Cloth: $25.95; paper: $13.95.
Into the Forest is a frighteningly believable dsytopian novel narrated by a young woman who has lost nearly everything in life that she values and so has to construct a new belief system in order to survive in her much-altered world. Like Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, Hegland’s novel is set in a near future, when gas becomes scarce, communications break down, electricity fails, and various diseases sweep the United States. Seventeen-year-old Penelope is the narrator, a bright young woman whose major goal in life is to attend Harvard University. However, when her parents die and the northern California town she lives near runs out of food, she and her older sister Eva must learn to fend for themselves as the infrastructure of the United States disintegrates.
Penelope’s journal writing becomes a record of the transformation of her life. She remembers happier times and these memories at first are interspersed with her attempts to live in a seemingly unstable world. She voraciously reads the encyclopedia and studies French so that when schools reopen she’ll be able to attend, but she slowly learns that what is more important are practical life lessons like how to grow and store food, how to conserve what clothing and tools she and her sister have, how to cure illness with herbs, and how to live in the forest where they are effectively marooned. She comes to realize that book knowledge is not enough to help one survive rape, giving birth, or serious illness.
The language of the novel changes as Penelope’s values change. She starts out loving her books, her sister’s dancing, and each artifact that speaks of her parents. Their home is in the beginning a refuge, from the terrible things taking place across the country, from wild animals and desperate men. By the end, however, the forest is where their life must be, because it can provide food and shelter, as it did for the Native Americans who once lived in this area. It is truly the only place where they can plan a future.
Into the Forest is a novel full of despair and hope, written by a true storyteller who evokes nothing but admiration for her indomitable heroine and her sister. [Sally E. Parry]