A Forest for Zoe

Brian Burch is a teacher, writer and poet and author of Still Under the
Thumb.

Maheux-Forcier’s A Forest for Zoe is new in translation but well known in its original French. In 1970 Un foret pour Zoe won the Governor General’s Award for Fiction. A very sensual book to read, Zoe seems to be a very personal journal of self-discovery.

Zoe is a childhood friend who haunts Therese, who is seldom identified by name in the novel. Zoe seems to be physically or spiritually present at those moments in Therese’s life when Therese is most emotionally vulnerable or most vividly alive. Working backwards from the current moment where Therese is obsessively trying to find the real Zoe to the moment when they parted when Zoe was 13, Maheux-Forcier reveals to us a complex weaving of past still vivid in the present.

Both Maheux-Forcier and her translator David Lobdell deserve praise. The richness of the story could have been marred by poor translation. In A Forest for Zoe the reader is immersed in phrases that easily evoke a physical response to the delicate and flowing language. The strength of Therese’s relationships, both with her real lovers and with Zoe, would come through even with a poor translation, but the complexities of Therese would have been lost without the skill and empathy David Lob-dell obviously brought to his task.

Because the book’s 13 sections can both stand on their own and yet depend on earlier chapters for their full meaning to appear, the book sometimes reads more like an anthology of short stories than one complete novel. While this made the work more enjoyable for me, it might be confusing for those expecting a more traditional work. Perhaps the best way to approach A Forest for Zoe would be to forget that it is a work of fiction and view it as an extended series of prose poems. Zoe’s strong reliance on images and appeals to the senses give it a strong, poetic air.

A Forest for Zoe provides a compelling and enchanting look into the life of a woman maturing in a timeless world. Maheux-Forcier deserves a wide audience for her efforts.