The Singing Forest

Description

ANYT Book ReviewBest Historical Fiction Book of the YearThe Singing Forestblends thought-provoking reflections on the moral reckoning of war crimes with a young womans attempts to decode her eccentric professional and personal families.Alida Becker,New York TimesIn attempting to bring a suspected war criminal to justice, a lawyer wrestles with power, accountability, and her Jewish identity.In a quiet forest in Belarus, two boys make a gruesome find that reveals a long-kept secret: the mass grave where Stalins police buried thousands of murder victims in the 1930s. The results of the subsequent investigation30,000 deadhas far-reaching effects, and across the Atlantic in Toronto, young lawyer Leah Jarvis finds herself tasked with an impossible case: the trial of elderly Stefan Drozd, a former member of Stalins forces, who fled his crimes in Kurapaty for a new identity in Canada. Though Leah is convinced of Drozds guilt, she needs hard facts. Determined to bring him to justice, she travels to Belarus in search of witnessesand finds herself piecing together another set of evidence: her mothers death, her fathers absence, the shadows of her Jewish heritage. Lyrical and wrenching by turns,The Singing Forestis a profound investigation of memory, truth, and the stories that tell us who we are.PRAISE FORTHE SINGING FORESTThe Singing Forestblends thought-provoking reflections on the moral reckoning of war crimes with a warm, wry, almost Anne Tyler-esque depiction of a young womans attempts to decode her eccentric professional and personal families Leahs losses, her questions about her parents, are subtly contrasted with larger questions about truth and responsibility, especially when she flies off to conduct interviews in Minsk, where facts had been malleable for so long, where they had become saleable commodities.Alida Becker,New York TimesMoving hypnotically between present events and two motherless childhoodsJarviss eccentric upbringing and the loveless brutality of DrozdsMcCormack pulls off a little miracle. For much of the novel, we care about the monster. All this she accomplishes in sentences that wrap themselves around you.The WalrusBy its searing and ambiguous finale, this startlingly humane novel has made an indelible impression.Michelle Schingler,The Foreword Review(Starred Review)The novels twin storylines are beautifully written, and reach a profound and unsettling moral clarity.MacleansMcCormack revives the secret, hovering between whats buried and whats above ground, what sings into a surreal blend. The forest whispers to silence the screams. The children are curious, the reader is curious, and McCormack cares A page-turner with substance, where troubled family trees testify, find new growth, and branch out.Miramichi ReaderThere is nothing bleak or drained of life inThe Singing Forest, despite such harrowing scenes. The energy of the prose does not falter, transcending the expectationsif not the limitationsof a crime drama the scope of McCormacks ambition is nothing less than a poetic meditation on the mutability of identity, and withThe Singing Forest, she succeeds.Ottawa Review of BooksA brilliant stroke McCormacks scope is impressive.The Singing Forestis a crime drama, a historical novel, and a character-driven work This novel posits that time does not heal all wounds. Recognition, reparation, and remembrance are urgent.Quill & QuireJudith McCormacksThe Singing Forestis probably the best Canadian novel, released this year, that you will read.John Delacourt, author ofButterflyMcCormack brings her unique voice to this intriguing novel of difficult choices and moral reckoning. The way that McCormack weaves together Drozd and Leahs narratives makes for a compelling, nuanced and highly thoughtful read. At once a page-turner, an exploration of evil, and an inquiry into the possibilities of redemption.Lori Feathers, Interabang Books (Dallas, TX)The Kurapaty mass grave near Minsk, Belarus, was used to hide the bodies of thousands murdered by Stalins secret police from 1937 to 1941 searingly, as McCormack writes, there are the voices of the dead who cry out, We are here. We are waiting. Know this history through your heart, through the empathetic imagination of McCormacks fiction.Kim Echlin, author ofThe DisappearedIn this hypnotically layered novel, a young Jewish lawyer, Leah Jarvis, is assigned the case of Stefan Drozd, a nonagenarian war criminal facing deportation for acts he committed as a minor in Belarus. McCormack treats her characters with unnerving fairness, balancing terror with beauty, a brutal childhood with an odd and loving one, and somehow squeezing out of the reader sympathy for Drozduntil horror precludes it. Deeply intelligent and deeply moral,The Singing Forestshows that, like glass, truth is amorphous. It also makes the case that, though there is no general duty to rescue in law, a family might save a child, as it did Leah. Or it may, like Drozd, make a monster of him.Caroline Adderson, author ofA History of ForgettingandA Russian SisterSometimes, as a reader, you put down a book in wonder, because you have been inside the mind of a deep and seeing writer, whose vision of the world is captivating, original and illuminating. Such a writer is Judith McCormack. In vibrant and nuanced language McCormack spirals us into the heart of a war criminal, and the brilliant lawyer who unravels the workings of his mind. Dark, disturbing, dazzlingthis is an unflinching look at eviland yet, and here is McCormacks genius, we emerge more whole.The Singing Forestis an absolute triumph!Shaena Lambert, author ofPetraandOh, My Darling