The Inverted Forest: A Novel Review

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(More customer reviews)Unless someone beats me to it, I'm the first reviewer of this book on Amazon. What to say...
I saw "The Inverted Forest" as a B+ blurb in Entertainment Weekly and, it being summer and I being a lover of the adult camp counselor experience, I preordered it and when it came the day it was released, I put down my other reading and read, and read, and read. I found my heart beating with every page I turned, not only because of the desire to know what lay on the next page, but because every page I turned meant one less page of this book that I'd ever get to enjoy.
When I finished this book I actually physically hugged the book, tearing up. This is not to say that it's a beautiful little story, nor even a really sad one. "The Inverted Forest" is populated by probably the most wonderfully and horribly human characters I've read in my 32 years as a lover of literature. From the shadowy heat of Camp Kindermann Forest to all the other average locales of the narrative, I feel like I have known these people- these real, real people- my entire life.
This is summer lit, certainly, but only inasmuch as it will appeal (to a certain degree) to the wistful camp counselor in those who have enjoyed that experience. This is not a light book, by any stretch of the imagination. The plot turns will leave your mouth dry; the lives of these characters (each so frightfully real and flawed that it's hard to ever decide on a protagonist...though you'll probably realize who the real antagonist is after a certain point) will ring true to everyone. We know these people; some of these people are, indeed, ourselves and the ones closest to us.
This might not make much sense. I can't even find the right words to describe this book to even my closest confidants. All I can say is that the raw emotion and John Dalton's magnificent prose (I expect great things from this author) will not disappoint the strong of heart.

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Late on a warm summer night in rural Missouri, an elderly camp director hears a squeal of joyous female laughter and goes to investigate. At the camp swimming pool he comes upon a bewildering scene: his counselors stripped naked and engaged in a provocative celebration. The first camp session is set to start in just two days. He fires them all. As a result, new counselors must be quickly hired and brought to the Kindermann Forest Summer Camp. One of them is Wyatt Huddy, a genetically disfigured young man who has been living in a Salvation Army facility. Gentle and diligent, large and imposing, Wyatt suffers a deep anxiety that his intelligence might be subnormal. All his life he's been misjudged because of his irregular features. But while Wyatt is not worldly, he is also not an innocent. He has escaped a punishing home life with a reclusive and violent older sister. Along with the other new counselors, Wyatt arrives expecting to care for children. To their astonishment, they learn that for the first two weeks of the camping season they will be responsible for 104 severely developmentally disabled adults, all of them wards of the state. For Wyatt it is a dilemma that turns his world inside out. Physically, he is indistinguishable from the state hospital campers he cares for. Inwardly, he would like to believe he is not of their tribe. Fortunately for Wyatt, there is a young woman on staff who understands his predicament better than he might have hoped. At once the new counselors and disabled campers begin to reveal themselves. Most are well-intentioned; others unprepared. Some harbor dangerous inclinations. Among the campers is a perplexing array of ailments and appearances and behavior both tender and disturbing. To encounter them is to be reminded just how wide the possibilities are when one is describing human beings. Soon Wyatt is called upon to prevent a terrible tragedy. In doing so, he commits an act whose repercussions will alter his own life and the lives of the other Kindermann Forest staff members for years to come. Written with scrupulous fidelity to the strong passions running beneath the surface of camp life, The Inverted Forest is filled with yearning, desire, lust, banked hope, and unexpected devotion. This remarkable and audacious novel amply underscores Heaven Lake's wide acclaim and confirms John Dalton's rising prominence as a major American novelist.

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