Not an easy book to read. And of the more surreal books I’ve read in a very long time. Enjoyed the tone and feel of this. It’s language and rhythms. Evocative and breathy. Like Pedro Paramo by Juan Rulfo. Reading it was unlike any experience I can recall when reading before because of the feeling it created; there was an atmosphere to this book. Like strolling thru a damp fog whose heaviness and impending gloom sits right above the chest.

So I read this a few weeks back and it is not as fresh in my memory as books usually would be when I write the review, but I can tell you the feeling I had when I finished is still lingering even now.

I wasn't wrong when I thought this was a blend of fairytale and sci fi, but the sci fi conceit is limited at best. It's more an implication than a clear element, the weight of story sits far more upon the fairytale, and to an extent a sort of detective noir. A wife runnning off with her lover, now lost in the woods at the edge of the world, and her husband's hired detective trying to track her down.

Don't let my summary deceive you. This book is not straight forward or simple in any sense, and is so deeply strange in places that I must admit it lost me. I was compelled to keep reading, intrigued and utterly confused, and at times repelled, by what I could glean of what was going on, and when I was done I felt somewhat adrift. I felt like I had followed that detective into the woods, against the warnings of the guide and even the book itself, and that I was still lost there when it was done. Maybe that was the point. Hard to say.

You will spot elements of fairytale here: Hansel and Gretel and their trail of crumbs, the Big Bad Wolf and the woodsman, the overbearing forest, but most of it is crafted entirely anew from its own poetic, surreal parts, a dream of a half remembered series of stories bound together into a breathless whole that doesn't necessarily have the answers to the questions it asks. This book was quite an experience, though I can't say for certain that I enjoyed it exactly. Maybe I can't see the wood for the trees.

Enigmatic. Haunting. Confusing. Menacing. Slippery. Ruminative. Magnetic. Just a few words to describe this slim novel put out by the wonderful Dorothy Publishing. A down-on-her-luck investigator is hired to find a missing wife. The woman seems to have run off with a lover and disappeared into a peripheral region known as the Taiga. It's an area that’s almost subliminal (feral, disconnected, remote, dangerous; almost a separate language). Although reluctant to take on the case, seeing a kind of futility in it immediately, the investigator sets off on a hunt that explores the nature of love and language and desire. A philosophical inquiry charading as an investigation. A bread crumb trail of language turns into an indefinite journey for our main character.

As the investigator and her hired translator get closer to their prey, meaning and sanity begin to fray. Noise is added to the signal as language passes from language to language, speech to writing, notes to report... A surreal menace tightens masterfully and mysteriously as the story unfolds.

“In fairy tales, the wolf is always ferocious. Astute and agile, the wolf always figures out how to get its way. … The Wolf, in other words, always wins.”

Eventually, language is impotent. It cannot penetrate place/nature in this tale (neither literally nor figuratively).
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The final chapter (XXIII) is simply a musical playlist, which, thankfully, someone has already gone to the trouble of compiling for us on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?
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BITS OF LANGUAGE STILL LEFT ROOTED IN CORPOREALITY
stylohyoid | digastric | sternocleidomastoid
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Asymptote Journal Interview with Garza (Oct. 2020)

where Cristina Rivera garza leads I will follow

There was a man & a woman. A forest. A wolf at the door. A scream. The endless trees. Window after window. A sea of lumberjacks. A sea of salt. A sea.

"We all carry a forest inside us, yes, kilometers of birch, fir, cedars. A gray sky. Things that never change."

Just as good the second time.