In a Dark Wood

An engaging and disturbing story of manic depression through the eyes of a man discovering his past, spurred by a book of fairy tales that his mother had written and illustrated before she committed suicide when he was a child. I wanted to empathize with him, but I never really liked him. I kept wanting him to get help before he crashed, with his young son in tow. I did like the intrigue of the layers of truth he had to dig through to find out his family story. (May 31, 2005)

A failing actor feels especially lost after a recent divorce. He decides to try and learn more about his mother, a childrens fairy-tale writer and illustrator, who died when he was very young. In a Dark Wood traces his investigations as he spirals out of control due to manic depression. There are vivid descriptions of the real world and of the fantastical thanks to the full fairy tales interwoven into the story.

I found most of the characters in this book to be very unsympathetic. This made it very hard to relate to the main character especially, however, I was sucked into the fairy tales and the mystery surrounding their long-dead author.

I wanted to love this. The framework was fascinating, with the built in fairy tales written by the protagonist's mother, and woven right into the story. But some of the errors just made me insane, particularly given how easy it is to research in this day and age. Manhattan landmarks moved all over the place. Didn't this writer have an editor? Inexcusable. I hate how that colored my impression of the book, but it was too blatant for me to write it off.