It has always been a common sentiment that a great writer is almost always distinguished from a merely good writer if he can completely engage any type of reader in any type of story.??
For example, some people are the types who like to read about young people throwing their lives away in the moral wasteland of the drug addicted L.A. social scene-think Brett Easton Ellis-or perhaps the offbeat humor of Tim Robbins (hereby named X for the purposes of comparison.)??
A great writer would and should have the ability to hold the attention of X (and any other reader for that matter) writing about a subject completely opposite those?? above, for example, Wally Lamb's \She's Come Undone: the chronicle of an obese misfit coming to terms with life and all its hardships."" (Which is pretty much the polar opposite of what X plucks off the shelf at Barnes and Noble.)??
""Our Lady of the Forest,"" by David Guterson, is a pretty good book, but it fails to reach beyond the blandness of pretty good because, while the subject and the characters were interesting, the reader is never actually gripped by either the plot or the players, and after the first quarter of the book all novelty failed-it simply became boring.??
This is due to the fact that ""Our Lady"" can almost be labeled a genre novel, if a genre existed for ""Religious Vision"" novels.??In other words, it will only appeal to a certain niche of the population who already wants to read about this topic.??""Our Lady"" is about an extremely unfortunate young mushroom picker graced with visions of the Virgin Mary in the forest.
While Anne is portrayed as an unlikely candidate for a visit from such an entity, most will be able to see that she is in essence the stereotypical unlikely candidate-a meek, abused runaway prone to pot smoking yet also completely concerned with prayer and religion.??The other characters are also interesting on the surface, but they never quite break the mold to move past simply being a stereotype with a twist that ends up being fairly transparent. This is not to say the characters are flat or that they are boring.??They are simply a step short of being completely unique or surprising.??
Guterson's writing is never a problem-in fact it is his writing that will keep readers interested in the subject material of the novel.?? He writes with a nice combination of simplicity and descriptive detail that paints a good picture for the reader but does not overdo anything.?? Particularly good are his descriptions of Anne's activity prior to her visions, when she is alone in the forest.??All in all, ""Our Lady's"" downfall is in the story itself.??The characters are not surprising or outlandish enough to pull the reader in and do not stray enough from clich?? to avoid being reminiscent of one.?? Most illustrative of this are Anne's actual visions, which come in the form of an intangible bright light which no one else can see.??Anne ""talks"" to the Virgin and experiences what seems like incoherent euphoria, culminating in tears, collapse and exhaustion.??While Guterson's writing is lively and interesting, the story and the characters are too tired to be revived fully by it.??This novel will likely only be truly enjoyable to those types who enjoy a good religious story with a little bit of a twist.
""Our Lady of the Forest"" is published by Alfred A. Knopf.
