David Guterson is a wonderful and gifted novelist. His "Snow Falling on Cedars" and "East of the Mountains" were so beautifully written. I cared about the characters. I did not want those books to end.
Given the opportunity I will always read Guterson, but, "Our Lady of the Forest" is simply not in the same category as the two listed. This book did not work for me on several levels. First, the ebb and flow of his words were not there. Reading the book, it felt quite choppy and I never got the impression that the narrator had his heart in the material. Secondly, I could not make myself care for any of the characters. They were just not believable. The young lady, Ann, who sees the Holy Mother was a sympathetic character but that is not the same as caring about her.
The story takes place in North Fork, Washington; one of the rainiest places in the Pacific Northwest. The young lady is a runaway from a home of abuse and molestation. She lives in a park in a broke down car and tent and she picks and sells mushrooms for a living, such as it is. One day while in the forest, she is overcome by the Spirit and sees an apparition of the Holy Mother Mary. This happens several days in a row and hordes come to the forest to follow Ann and see the "Lady". It almost takes on a carnival atmosphere at this point.
The best part of the book is the relationship or attempted platonic relationship between Ann and the local priest. But there was always someone in the way of that relationship coming about; another priest, a man from the town, another woman from the park. I don't know if this was part of Guterson's plan or if it was something that just didn't work.
I am a David Guterson fan but sadly I cannot recommend this book on many levels; most of them listed above. ( )

AN engrossing book, though less powerful than Snow Falling on Cedars or East of the Mountain ( )

very enjoyable

A close, damp, green, cynical, and very real recounting of a young woman's hallucinating vision of the Blessed Virgin in a rain forest in the Pacific Northwest. The most telling part is the speed with which the faithful gather for this purportedly concrete manifestation. The use of chat rooms and Web forums leads to a camper city forming overnight on the site.

Guterson is genuine, vivid, and unblinking in portraying the various players. And the cupidity - both in its lustful and avaricious meanings - shows through in this closely- and well-observed story. ( )

A peculiar story written in a peculiar way by the author of the wonder Snow Falling on Cedars. In this novel, a young runaway sees & hears the Virgin Mary in the Oregon forests, & soon develops a vast following. Both the characters & the plot developments are at times implausible, but it's always fascinating reading. ( )

The style of writing was a bit of a revelation. In a lesser writer the lack of punctuation and capitalization would have been a disaster, but Guterson turned it to a graceful flow of thought, revealing a deeply feeling novel of faith and beauty. ( )

Never got me to really care about the characters. I liked Ann and I thought her interaction with the priest was interesting, but the side story of Tom was annoying and I didn't really care about him. I also never believed that Carolyn was out for anyone but herself. The ending was better than the book, but I think I was just glad to be done with it. ( )

I read this book for a book group that never met. That is the only reason that I kept reading it. I didn't enjoy the book, and would normally have stopped reading after the first 50 pages. The story is told from a third person omniscient perspective, which I found annoying. I think I would have engaged with it in a more positive way if it had been told in first person by someone (not the protagonist) who witnessed the events (like The Great Gatsby or All the Kings Men). ( )

I liked this but didn't think it particularly strong as a novel. The most impressive thing about it is the characterizations Guterson creates. These people are very real and finely drawn. Some of the lesser characters, the inhabitants of the town and some of the god followers, reminded me of Flannery O'Connor. Their grotesqueness made me think of what we sometimes used to call Southern gothic, though I haven't heard that label in a long time. Flannery O'Connor of the northwest. Carrying more weight, because it'd been on my mind the whole novel, was a vision of hell. Guterson puts these characters in a blasted landscape, a landscape partly covered in forest punctuated by windfall trees, partly denuded by logging, all of it plagued by insistent rain. The characters are not only damaged in the ways we sometimes associate with low income demography--mean relationships, debt, overwork for low pay, dependence on drugs or alcohol--they seem damned in the spiritual sense. They appear to be lost souls wandering this hell Guterson's envisioned, made more hellish in my mind because I felt like the whole novel took place in the dark, in the rain. The only thing of beauty and color seems to be the Virgin. If some characters seem Flannery O'Connor, the vision seems Ingmar Bergman, even down to the flawed priest. ( )

One of those books that we might label “thought-provoking”, and not character driven, or plot driven, but idea driven. It examines a case of Marian visions of a 15 year old runaway in Oregon in 1999. It investigates the nature of miracles and God, and is thoroughly cynical in some places and leaning towards mystical and unexplained in others. In many ways it is a complement to, you wouldn’t ever guess it, The DaVinci Code in its pondering the feminine, or rather the absence of it from the Catholic church. My esteem for the author has grown significantly after this book. He is able to produce books so different from each other that it’s hard to guess that they have been written by the same person. Besides, he was born to Jewish parents, and yet, has researched the subject so thoroughly in its theological and sociological phenomena, that you would never guess he is not a Catholic who spent his life contemplating the questions of his faith. I would be cautious about reading it if you are a strong believer, though. It’s critical of clergy too. ( )

I was hoping for something more along the lines of Snow Falling on Cedars, I didn't get that. Perhaps I'm a skeptic anyways, but I never found any descriptions of visions to be convincing. Perhaps it was ment to be that way. If you want a good David Guterson book, read Snow Falling on Cedars, not this one. ( )

I really liked Snow Falling on Cedars, and I really DESPISED East of the Mountains. I gave this book a chance, and as expected, it split the difference. I couldn't get into it for most of it, and the writing style bugged - no quotation marks, for the love of Mike! The story didn't pick up, really, ever, and two hundred pages into it I still had to wonder where the "story" was going... but then it ended, and somehow twenty pages of ending redeemed the other three hundred of run-on blathering and non-delineated dialogue. ( )

The style of writing was a bit of a revelation. In a lesser writer the lack of punctuation and capitalization would have been a disaster, but Guterson turned it to a graceful flow of thought, revealing a deeply feeling novel of faith and beauty. ( )