I vaguely remembered Kate Pullinger’s name as the surprise winner of the GG for fiction a few years back, with a historical novel called The Mistress of Nothing.
The blurb for her new novel Forest Green didn’t really grab me at first, but now in late summer, with the book pile thinning, I thought I’d give this story set in the Depression-era Okanagan a try.
Glad I did. Forest Green is a nuanced and well-crafted story of a troubled man named Arthur Lunn. We first meet him passed out on the streets of the downtown Eastside in the 1990s, then flash back to a chronological account of his life starting in 1934, when seven year old Art and his sister set out to find a rumoured hobo jungle in a neighbour’s ravine. Though Art is secretly hoping that monkeys will be part of the adventure, instead he and Peg find a ton of trouble, of a kind which reverberates throughout the main character’s life. Pullinger deftly and compassionately sketches the complex yet familiar lives of Art and his family, friends and neighbours in this spare but heartfelt story of just over 200 pages.
A pleasant surprise. I recommend it.
