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In the Forest of Forgetting
The reprint of In the Forest of Forgetting by award-winning author Theodora Goss, first published in 2006 by Prime Books, with an introduction by Terri Windling and cover art by Virginia Lee. The table of contents has been slightly modified: "Phalaenopsis" has been replaced by "Her Mother's Ghosts," which first appeared in 2004 in The Rose and Twelve Petals and Other Stories, released by Small Beer Press.
"The Rose in Twelve Petals"
"Professor Berkowitz Stands on the Threshold"
"The Rapid Advance of Sorrow"
"Lily, With Clouds"
"Miss Emily Gray"
"In the Forest of Forgetting"
"Sleeping with Bears"
"Letters from Budapest"
"The Wings of Meister Wilhelm"
"Conrad"
"A Statement in the Case"
"Death Comes for Ervina"
"The Belt"
"Her Mother's Ghosts"
"Pip and the Fairies"
"Lessons with Miss Gray"
"The Rose in Twelve Petals"
"Professor Berkowitz Stands on the Threshold"
"The Rapid Advance of Sorrow"
"Lily, With Clouds"
"Miss Emily Gray"
"In the Forest of Forgetting"
"Sleeping with Bears"
"Letters from Budapest"
"The Wings of Meister Wilhelm"
"Conrad"
"A Statement in the Case"
"Death Comes for Ervina"
"The Belt"
"Her Mother's Ghosts"
"Pip and the Fairies"
"Lessons with Miss Gray"
302 pages, Paperback
First published October 1, 2005
127 people are currently reading
4704 people want to read
About the author
Theodora Goss
131 books2,138 followersTheodora Goss was born in Hungary and spent her childhood in various European countries before her family moved to the United States, where she completed a PhD in English literature. She is the World Fantasy and Locus Award-winning author of the short story and poetry collections In the Forest of Forgetting (2006), Songs for Ophelia (2014), and Snow White Learns Witchcraft (2019), as well as novella The Thorn and the Blossom (2012), debut novel The Strange Case of the Alchemist’s Daughter (2017), and sequels European Travel for the Monstrous Gentlewoman (2018) and The Sinister Mystery of the Mesmerizing Girl (2019). She has been a finalist for the Nebula, Crawford, Seiun, and Mythopoeic Awards, as well as on the Tiptree Award Honor List. Her work has been translated into thirteen languages. She teaches literature and writing at Boston University and in the Stonecoast MFA Program.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 127 reviews
August 8, 2020
$1.99 Kindle sale, August 8, 2020, for this collection of 16 fantasy shorts by the very talented Theodora Goss, and I’ve only read one of them (where the GR librarians did their trick of moving short story reviews to a collection, so that review is below). I’m going to bite on this Kindle sale, though!
“Pip and the Fairies” is a charming short story about the intersection between fairy tales and reality, free online at Strange Horizons. Review first posted on Fantasy Literature:
I went on a bit of a Theodora Goss binge; this story and “Singing of Mount Abora” were my favorites of her works that I read. In “Pip and the Fairies,” the main character Philippa Lawson had a mother who was an author of children’s fiction, a series of stories about a little girl named Pip and the fairy characters she met: a green-haired girl named Hyacinth, the Thorn King and the May Queen, and Jack Feather, whom Pip loved.
Pip and the Thorn King
Philippa, who is now a grown woman and an actress, remembers these stories because she loved them so, and because they saved her and her widowed mother from the poverty that was a constant threat.
This is a gentle, poignant story, a little reminiscent of stories of the real-life Christopher Robin and his mixed emotions of his father’s inclusion of him in his Winnie-the-Pooh stories. The details of a life on the edge of poverty are bittersweet: the lack of lunch money and the constant soup and toast in the Lawson home that morphed into an emphasis on food in the Pip stories, like toadstool omelets or “Jeremy Toad’s cricket cutlets, which neither she nor Hyacinth could bear to eat.” And I think we’d all like to find a door that leads to a fairy land where good companions and magical adventures await.
“Pip and the Fairies” is a charming short story about the intersection between fairy tales and reality, free online at Strange Horizons. Review first posted on Fantasy Literature:
I went on a bit of a Theodora Goss binge; this story and “Singing of Mount Abora” were my favorites of her works that I read. In “Pip and the Fairies,” the main character Philippa Lawson had a mother who was an author of children’s fiction, a series of stories about a little girl named Pip and the fairy characters she met: a green-haired girl named Hyacinth, the Thorn King and the May Queen, and Jack Feather, whom Pip loved.
Pip and the Thorn King
Philippa, who is now a grown woman and an actress, remembers these stories because she loved them so, and because they saved her and her widowed mother from the poverty that was a constant threat.
Her mother never actually called her Pip. It was Pipsqueak, as in, “Go play outside, Pipsqueak. Can’t you see Mommy’s trying to finish this chapter? Mommy’s publisher wants to see something by Friday, and we’re a month behind on the rent.” When they finally moved away from Payton, they were almost a year behind. Her mother sent Mrs. Payne a check from California, from royalties she had received for the after-school special.After Philippa’s mother died, a documentary was made about her that has revitalized the public’s interest in the Pip stories and in Philippa herself. As Philippa returns to Payton, the town where her mother wrote so many of these stories, she remembers how elements of the Pip stories were inspired by actual events … and, perhaps, how events and characters in the Pip stories found their way into her actual life as well.
This is a gentle, poignant story, a little reminiscent of stories of the real-life Christopher Robin and his mixed emotions of his father’s inclusion of him in his Winnie-the-Pooh stories. The details of a life on the edge of poverty are bittersweet: the lack of lunch money and the constant soup and toast in the Lawson home that morphed into an emphasis on food in the Pip stories, like toadstool omelets or “Jeremy Toad’s cricket cutlets, which neither she nor Hyacinth could bear to eat.” And I think we’d all like to find a door that leads to a fairy land where good companions and magical adventures await.
February 3, 2015
This is the kind of mythopoeic fiction I like. A collection of quite short stories, but they pack a lot in to their brief length.
"The Rose in Twelve Petals"
A fractured retelling of 'Sleeping Beauty' (or, 'Briar Rose'), in a dozen brief vignettes, set in a more concrete version of Europe than the usual fairy-tale fare.
"Professor Berkowitz Stands on the Threshold"
A not-very-successful professor and a French poet, both with hidden talents, are summoned by a mysterious figure to an interstitial place-between-the-worlds, and offered a choice. Why does the professor make the choice he does? I'm still not sure.
"The Rapid Advance of Sorrow"
A poetic, surreal piece on the theme of trying to have a relationship with a revolutionary.
"Lily, With Clouds"
Two sisters, long estranged. One conventional, the other the lover of artists. The latter's terminal cancer brings them back together one last time. Closure or understanding may not be possible, but the meeting will leave its mark.
"Miss Emily Gray"
Emily Gray features in several of Goss' stories - and I want more of her! I LOVE this morally ambiguous Mary Poppins figure who, here, shows up as a young girl's governess - and grants wishes in a quite unexpected way.
"In the Forest of Forgetting"
This title story is actually probably my least favorite piece in the book. A fairy-tale allegory that is explicitly about a woman dying of cancer; I felt it would've been more effective if it were more subtle.
"Sleeping With Bears"
Another allegory, which compares men to bears - but this one is done with a deft touch, and wry humor.
"Letters from Budapest"
A spooky and lovely Hungarian vampire story about an undead artist who suck talented young men dry. Reminded me a bit of Tanith Lee.
"The Wings of Meister Wilhelm"
One of the more powerful pieces I've read about the tragedy of European anti-semitism, and a beautiful story of a young girl, her violin instructor, and his impossible dream.
"Conrad"
Another Emily Gray story! Here, as a nurse, she's a powerful if mysterious advocate for a young boy whose own family is trying to poison him.
"A Statement in the Case"
The 'case' is question is the possible arson of a pharmacy - and the witness in question admits that he was drunk and that he might not have seen exactly what he believes that he saw.
"Death Comes for Ervina"
An elderly former ballerina receives a visit from an old lover, and reminisces about her complicated past.
"The Belt"
"I will tell you... that every fairy tale has a moral. The moral of my story may be that love is a constraint, as strong as any belt. And this is certainly true, which makes it a good moral. Or it may be that we are all constrained in some way, either in our bodies, or in our hearts and minds... Or perhaps my moral is that a desire for freedom is stronger than love or pity. That is a wicked moral, or so the Church has taught us. But I do not know which moral is the correct one. And that is also the way of a fairy story." (And that is why I have realized that I love Theodora Goss.)
"Phalaenopsis"
A truly creepy and horrific story about a monastery where all the monks are blind. Or maybe it is an inspiring and uplifting story of spiritual triumph. I'm picking the former, but others will probably think the latter.
"Pip and the Fairies"
'Pip''s mother featured her as the title character in a series of books for children, which have made her a kind of minor celebrity, as the books have achieved a classic fame. But, thinking back, she wonders if the stories that she told her mother about her adventures with the magical folk were true...
"Lessons With Miss Gray"
Yay! Emily Gray again! Here, she offers three girls lessons in witchcraft. It's their obsession, for a summer...
"The Rose in Twelve Petals"
A fractured retelling of 'Sleeping Beauty' (or, 'Briar Rose'), in a dozen brief vignettes, set in a more concrete version of Europe than the usual fairy-tale fare.
"Professor Berkowitz Stands on the Threshold"
A not-very-successful professor and a French poet, both with hidden talents, are summoned by a mysterious figure to an interstitial place-between-the-worlds, and offered a choice. Why does the professor make the choice he does? I'm still not sure.
"The Rapid Advance of Sorrow"
A poetic, surreal piece on the theme of trying to have a relationship with a revolutionary.
"Lily, With Clouds"
Two sisters, long estranged. One conventional, the other the lover of artists. The latter's terminal cancer brings them back together one last time. Closure or understanding may not be possible, but the meeting will leave its mark.
"Miss Emily Gray"
Emily Gray features in several of Goss' stories - and I want more of her! I LOVE this morally ambiguous Mary Poppins figure who, here, shows up as a young girl's governess - and grants wishes in a quite unexpected way.
"In the Forest of Forgetting"
This title story is actually probably my least favorite piece in the book. A fairy-tale allegory that is explicitly about a woman dying of cancer; I felt it would've been more effective if it were more subtle.
"Sleeping With Bears"
Another allegory, which compares men to bears - but this one is done with a deft touch, and wry humor.
"Letters from Budapest"
A spooky and lovely Hungarian vampire story about an undead artist who suck talented young men dry. Reminded me a bit of Tanith Lee.
"The Wings of Meister Wilhelm"
One of the more powerful pieces I've read about the tragedy of European anti-semitism, and a beautiful story of a young girl, her violin instructor, and his impossible dream.
"Conrad"
Another Emily Gray story! Here, as a nurse, she's a powerful if mysterious advocate for a young boy whose own family is trying to poison him.
"A Statement in the Case"
The 'case' is question is the possible arson of a pharmacy - and the witness in question admits that he was drunk and that he might not have seen exactly what he believes that he saw.
"Death Comes for Ervina"
An elderly former ballerina receives a visit from an old lover, and reminisces about her complicated past.
"The Belt"
"I will tell you... that every fairy tale has a moral. The moral of my story may be that love is a constraint, as strong as any belt. And this is certainly true, which makes it a good moral. Or it may be that we are all constrained in some way, either in our bodies, or in our hearts and minds... Or perhaps my moral is that a desire for freedom is stronger than love or pity. That is a wicked moral, or so the Church has taught us. But I do not know which moral is the correct one. And that is also the way of a fairy story." (And that is why I have realized that I love Theodora Goss.)
"Phalaenopsis"
A truly creepy and horrific story about a monastery where all the monks are blind. Or maybe it is an inspiring and uplifting story of spiritual triumph. I'm picking the former, but others will probably think the latter.
"Pip and the Fairies"
'Pip''s mother featured her as the title character in a series of books for children, which have made her a kind of minor celebrity, as the books have achieved a classic fame. But, thinking back, she wonders if the stories that she told her mother about her adventures with the magical folk were true...
"Lessons With Miss Gray"
Yay! Emily Gray again! Here, she offers three girls lessons in witchcraft. It's their obsession, for a summer...
December 13, 2015
In the Forest of Forgetting is an anthology of beautiful, well crafted, and dreamlike short stories. They exist on the edges of dream, fable, and folklore, each one a unique take on the fantastic. With a very few words Theodora Goss takes us into visionary realms.
Dreams are central to these tales. Some are explicitly about dreaming, like "Professor Berkowitz Stands on the Threshold", while others draw heavily on dreams, dreamlike states, and visions, such as "Conrad", "Pip and the Fairies", "Phalaenopsis", and "Miss Emily Gray".
Others address politics and history, starting with the author's native Hungary in "Letters from Budapest" and "A Statement in the Case". Perhaps my favorite story in the collection. "Rose in Twelve Petals", is (among other things) a delicate alternate history, placing the Rumpelstilskin story in a world where Napoleon conquered Britain and the rest of Europe.
But folklore looms largest in Forest. Many of these stories are retellings of fairy tales, or critiques of same, or feature fairy tale literacy as a major plot point. Time and again one layer of civilization peels back to reveal a folkloric basis, as when a successful children's author turns out to be drawing on real fairies (perhaps), or an arson and murder involves magical animals (and people). "My story has the contours of a fairy tale" begins the densely packed "The Belt", which starts with a riff on fairy tales, moves to sexual fetishism of several stripes, then concludes with social revolution.
Time and again I was struck by well-wrought passages. Goss' tone veers from wry amusement (see the bear wedding story) to cold insight to lyrical surrealism:
There is a fascinating and deep focus on gender in these stories, an attraction to, yet desire to escape from girlhood and womanhood. So much of the book focuses on objects and dynamics we normally assign to women's writing and concerns: mother-daughter relations, ballet, fears of being overweight, flowers, marriage, proper ways of being a lady. Sometimes the characters seem immersed in this world with pleasure or at least careful attention, like the heroines in the first half of "Lessons with Miss Gray". Yet Goss is concerned with the ways these situations sour and demand escape, as with "Miss Gray"'s conclusion, or the aching flights of "Wings of Meister Wilhelm." "In The Forest of Forgetting" follows a woman's visionary voyage as she suffers from cancer, each stage of her flight defined by her gendered roles, and often with beauty. "Lily With Clouds" occurs from the point of view of a wealthy society woman, trying to cope with a black sheep sister who spends her life avoiding that privilege. Women take center stage in these perfectly wrought stories.
Recommended for anyone interested in the contemporary short story, or fantasy, or gender, or simply fine reading.
Dreams are central to these tales. Some are explicitly about dreaming, like "Professor Berkowitz Stands on the Threshold", while others draw heavily on dreams, dreamlike states, and visions, such as "Conrad", "Pip and the Fairies", "Phalaenopsis", and "Miss Emily Gray".
Others address politics and history, starting with the author's native Hungary in "Letters from Budapest" and "A Statement in the Case". Perhaps my favorite story in the collection. "Rose in Twelve Petals", is (among other things) a delicate alternate history, placing the Rumpelstilskin story in a world where Napoleon conquered Britain and the rest of Europe.
But folklore looms largest in Forest. Many of these stories are retellings of fairy tales, or critiques of same, or feature fairy tale literacy as a major plot point. Time and again one layer of civilization peels back to reveal a folkloric basis, as when a successful children's author turns out to be drawing on real fairies (perhaps), or an arson and murder involves magical animals (and people). "My story has the contours of a fairy tale" begins the densely packed "The Belt", which starts with a riff on fairy tales, moves to sexual fetishism of several stripes, then concludes with social revolution.
Time and again I was struck by well-wrought passages. Goss' tone veers from wry amusement (see the bear wedding story) to cold insight to lyrical surrealism:
One becomes bored, eventually, even of penance. Do not blame Sophia, Mada,. Boredom is a healthy impulse. It is a sign of the will to live. Fear the man who is not bored by suffering.(195)
Sorrow: a feeling of grief or melancholy. A mythical city generally located in northern Siberia, said to have been visited by Marco Polo. From Sorry, he took back to Italy the secret of making ice. (44)
There is a fascinating and deep focus on gender in these stories, an attraction to, yet desire to escape from girlhood and womanhood. So much of the book focuses on objects and dynamics we normally assign to women's writing and concerns: mother-daughter relations, ballet, fears of being overweight, flowers, marriage, proper ways of being a lady. Sometimes the characters seem immersed in this world with pleasure or at least careful attention, like the heroines in the first half of "Lessons with Miss Gray". Yet Goss is concerned with the ways these situations sour and demand escape, as with "Miss Gray"'s conclusion, or the aching flights of "Wings of Meister Wilhelm." "In The Forest of Forgetting" follows a woman's visionary voyage as she suffers from cancer, each stage of her flight defined by her gendered roles, and often with beauty. "Lily With Clouds" occurs from the point of view of a wealthy society woman, trying to cope with a black sheep sister who spends her life avoiding that privilege. Women take center stage in these perfectly wrought stories.
Recommended for anyone interested in the contemporary short story, or fantasy, or gender, or simply fine reading.
August 11, 2020
I’ve always enjoyed that section of fantasy writing that not only retells fairytales but takes them in different directions, to the darker places, or sets them in more contemporary situations. This collection of 16 stories by Theodora Goss is beautifully crafted, well written and reflects on many things. Some are dreamlike or surreal, others have more subtle magic (science that we don’t understand yet). My favourites include “Lily, with Clouds” about estranged sisters and the title story about a woman’s cancer journey. Many are set in Eastern Europe and reflect on totalitarianism and anti semitism, relationships between parents and children, friends and couples. There’s murder and art, and fear of greatness, flying and witchcraft, and justice, a wedding to a bear!, aNd the wonderful “Miss Emily Gray” who appears in a few of these stories.
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December 19, 2024This was very good but not as good as I’d hoped it would be. It’s no doubt a very beautifully written, imaginative set of stories that center on a few main themes: Budapest throughout time, the suppression and control of art, art as liberation and transcendence, Eastern Europe under Communist control, cancer and dying, prejudice in small Southern towns, and a strange woman named Miss Grey who mysteriously arrives to help children in need. I personally prefer my dreamy, atmospheric fantasy to be set in secondary worlds as opposed to our world, but I think my main quibble with this collection is that a few too many stories left me thinking “Oh, that’s it?” at the end. That’s bound to happen with a few stories per each collection, but my favorite short story collections have more gems than duds in their ratio. That being said, my favorites of this collection were:
-The Wings of Meister Wilhelm, for being sad, ambiguous and hopeful in exploring antisemitism and dreams of a better world
-In the Forest of Forgetting for creating a beautiful fairy tale out of letting go of life and stepping into death
-Lessons with Miss Gray for its quintessential coming of age elements with a great cast of girls learning to become witches
-Pip and the Fairies because I loved the whimsical little samples of each “book” and I would have been a major Pip fan as a kid
As more of a note to myself than anything, I was also very moved by the story of a stray dog finding an enchanted tower while on the brink of death before recovering there, living a long, happy life and dying as a very small part of the tower’s story. It’s grounded, bittersweet details like those that make the best stories here stand out.
-The Wings of Meister Wilhelm, for being sad, ambiguous and hopeful in exploring antisemitism and dreams of a better world
-In the Forest of Forgetting for creating a beautiful fairy tale out of letting go of life and stepping into death
-Lessons with Miss Gray for its quintessential coming of age elements with a great cast of girls learning to become witches
-Pip and the Fairies because I loved the whimsical little samples of each “book” and I would have been a major Pip fan as a kid
As more of a note to myself than anything, I was also very moved by the story of a stray dog finding an enchanted tower while on the brink of death before recovering there, living a long, happy life and dying as a very small part of the tower’s story. It’s grounded, bittersweet details like those that make the best stories here stand out.
May 22, 2012
Here is an interesting collection of stories from Theodora Goss. I would rate some as 3 star and some as 5 star so the aggregate score is 4 stars for the book.
The best and most personally meaningful was "In The Forest of Forgetting". In this story, the main character is in a dream like forest and can't remember who she is or why she is there. She keeps meeting people that she vaguely recognizes as important people in her life but keeps moving deeper into the forest. Several people try to convince her not to go too deep into the forest but she continues anyway. The author subtly lets us know that this character is dying of cancer and is temporarily stuck between living an dying. She must decide to either come back from the Forest of Forgetting to live, or continue her journey deeper into the forest.
The best and most personally meaningful was "In The Forest of Forgetting". In this story, the main character is in a dream like forest and can't remember who she is or why she is there. She keeps meeting people that she vaguely recognizes as important people in her life but keeps moving deeper into the forest. Several people try to convince her not to go too deep into the forest but she continues anyway. The author subtly lets us know that this character is dying of cancer and is temporarily stuck between living an dying. She must decide to either come back from the Forest of Forgetting to live, or continue her journey deeper into the forest.
September 19, 2022
I enjoy Goss's fiction, but reading this collection straight through was like eating a box of chocolates in one sitting; individually I would have enjoyed them, but in bulk they left me feeling uncomfortably overfull. Her tone and themes simply don't change much from story to story. I liked the first stories better than later works, but is that because they were stronger or because they were fresher to me?
"Lily, With Clouds" may have been the stand-out for me, with a great surrealist ending. But I also enjoyed a chance to revisit "The Rose in Twelve Petals," and "The Wings of Meister Wilhelm" was a solid story with a less-experimental style.
"Lily, With Clouds" may have been the stand-out for me, with a great surrealist ending. But I also enjoyed a chance to revisit "The Rose in Twelve Petals," and "The Wings of Meister Wilhelm" was a solid story with a less-experimental style.
July 27, 2010
A beautifully crafted collection of short stories, Theodora Goss’ In the Forest of Forgetting draws on fairy tale and mythological motifs in creative and unexpected ways. While most, if not all, of the stories were amazing, these were the highlights of the book, at least in my opinion.
In the Forest of Forgetting
In the Forest of Forgetting, the story from which the book takes its title, is breathtaking and haunting. A soberly enchanting allegory, it chronicles a woman’s journey with breast cancer with sensitivity and poetry. To my delight, I found that it was available to read online at the author’s website and have included the link to it here:
In the Forest of Forgetting
The Rose in Twelve Petals
A kaleidoscopic version of the Sleeping Beauty story. Goss wove the fairy tale with bit of history and then shifted everything just slightly. The story’s point of view also shifted among various characters, even the roses the grew in the Queen’s garden, the castle itself and a stray dog that takes up residence in the enchanted castle while it’s inhabitants sleep.
Miss Emily Gray
A story that reminded me a bit of a more fairy tale-esque version of W. W. Jacobs’s famous short story, the Monkey Paw
Sleeping with Bears
A charming if surreal take on the Goldilocks story which is also available to read online.
Sleeping With Bears
Letters from Budapest
A delightfully spooky tale about a young artist caught in the thrall of a sort of artistic succubus.
Overall, I enjoyed the way the author wove the mythic and the modern elements of her stories together and thought that her use of language was lyrical and beautiful. There was a sense of Old World, Eastern European flavor to many of the stories that worked really well. And the fact that certain names, places and images would appear like slightly altered echoes in multiple stories, intertwined the stories subtly together and made each story seem like a view into a kaleidoscope, something that took familiar components and then twisted them into something beautiful, unique and new. At the end of the day, I simply loved this collection and can’t wait to add it to my personal library.
In the Forest of Forgetting
In the Forest of Forgetting, the story from which the book takes its title, is breathtaking and haunting. A soberly enchanting allegory, it chronicles a woman’s journey with breast cancer with sensitivity and poetry. To my delight, I found that it was available to read online at the author’s website and have included the link to it here:
In the Forest of Forgetting
The Rose in Twelve Petals
A kaleidoscopic version of the Sleeping Beauty story. Goss wove the fairy tale with bit of history and then shifted everything just slightly. The story’s point of view also shifted among various characters, even the roses the grew in the Queen’s garden, the castle itself and a stray dog that takes up residence in the enchanted castle while it’s inhabitants sleep.
Miss Emily Gray
A story that reminded me a bit of a more fairy tale-esque version of W. W. Jacobs’s famous short story, the Monkey Paw
Sleeping with Bears
A charming if surreal take on the Goldilocks story which is also available to read online.
Sleeping With Bears
Letters from Budapest
A delightfully spooky tale about a young artist caught in the thrall of a sort of artistic succubus.
Overall, I enjoyed the way the author wove the mythic and the modern elements of her stories together and thought that her use of language was lyrical and beautiful. There was a sense of Old World, Eastern European flavor to many of the stories that worked really well. And the fact that certain names, places and images would appear like slightly altered echoes in multiple stories, intertwined the stories subtly together and made each story seem like a view into a kaleidoscope, something that took familiar components and then twisted them into something beautiful, unique and new. At the end of the day, I simply loved this collection and can’t wait to add it to my personal library.
April 11, 2017
A short story about a woman reflecting back on the fantasy tales her mothers wrote and their interrelation with her life. Quite magical.
August 11, 2012
I read "Sleeping With Bears" online (on a fantasy magazine website, I think?) and as soon as I'd finished it, I ordered this book. That was how good it was. I couldn't wait to read this, and although some of the stories were better than others (I'll be honest, I didn't really understand the philosophy ones?) I've never been so satisfied with an impulse buy.
The writing is perfect -- exactly to my taste. It's beautiful and enchanting, but not overly complex or inaccessible. The ordinary sits alongside the extraordinary, blurring the line between truth and fairytale. And the sense of place in each tale is wonderful, whether it's Eastern Europe or the deep south. In fact, there's a bit about Theodora Goss at the end of the book that sums up what I'm trying to say: "Her stories often take place on the border between fantasy and reality, and reflect the influence of an Eastern European literary tradition that incorporates fantastic elements into otherwise realistic works." That's exactly it. You read this book, and you start to wonder whether it might be possible to learn witchcraft, or marry a bear. It's wonderful, like falling into a dream.
My favourite stories, in the order they appear in the book:
The writing is perfect -- exactly to my taste. It's beautiful and enchanting, but not overly complex or inaccessible. The ordinary sits alongside the extraordinary, blurring the line between truth and fairytale. And the sense of place in each tale is wonderful, whether it's Eastern Europe or the deep south. In fact, there's a bit about Theodora Goss at the end of the book that sums up what I'm trying to say: "Her stories often take place on the border between fantasy and reality, and reflect the influence of an Eastern European literary tradition that incorporates fantastic elements into otherwise realistic works." That's exactly it. You read this book, and you start to wonder whether it might be possible to learn witchcraft, or marry a bear. It's wonderful, like falling into a dream.
My favourite stories, in the order they appear in the book:
Sleeping With Bears
The Wings of Meister Wilhelm
Pip and the Fairies
Lessons With Miss Gray
February 4, 2018
I love a good book of short stories, and these are exquisite. Just the right blend of magical and unnerving, without being too weird, too overwhelming, or too depressing. Highly recommended if you love Karen Russell, Aimee Bender, Elizabeth Hand, or Kelly Link's short story collections.
September 6, 2012
3.5 stars
Evocative haunting fantastical short stories.
Evocative haunting fantastical short stories.
May 26, 2018
I liked some of the short stories. There is one that is like sleeping beauty and a weird one about bears. Maybe I don’t really get this author.
January 8, 2019
What an absolutely remarkable collection of stories. Remarkable, phenomenal, fantastic – I could waste a day’s worth of superlative adjectives on this book and Goss. These stories are fairytales in the truest sense of the genre. They call to mind Tolkien’s quote on the origin of fairy-stories; “Such stories have now a mythical or total (unanalyzable) effect … they open a door on Other Time, and if we pass through, though only for a moment, we stand outside our own time, outside Time itself, maybe.”
So much in these stories straddle liminal spaces – spaces between genres, between times, between the familiar and the strange. There are the bones of recognizable tales like Bluebeard’s Wife, Mary Poppins, Sleeping Beauty – but they’re so recast and reformed they merely suggest their antecedents. These stories belong wholly to Goss’ mercurial and transformative mind. The settings range from the reconstruction south, to Hungary behind the Iron curtain, to New York City, etc. The forms of telling are myriad - epistolary, expository, witness statements, remembrances and more.
It is all so wondrously strange and yet that strangeness never runs rampant, instead it is constrained by Goss’ pellucid and controlled prose. And in that act of constraint they become even more dreamlike. It is as if the straightforward nature of the prose lends the wildness of the story a framework of rationality that makes the mythic inhabitable. Goss’ choice to reuses characters and settings across stories, yet not necessarily the events the characters experience in each store, compounds the collection’s sense of otherness. It both heightens the sense of familiarity given the remove from the characters history, as we know it, and the sense of strangeness.
I cannot recommend this collection enough. Truly. It is the most exciting thing I’ve read in months. The effect of reading these stories has slipped into my dreams the past two days. I feel energized and inspired. I’m already budgeting to buy the rest of her books.
So much in these stories straddle liminal spaces – spaces between genres, between times, between the familiar and the strange. There are the bones of recognizable tales like Bluebeard’s Wife, Mary Poppins, Sleeping Beauty – but they’re so recast and reformed they merely suggest their antecedents. These stories belong wholly to Goss’ mercurial and transformative mind. The settings range from the reconstruction south, to Hungary behind the Iron curtain, to New York City, etc. The forms of telling are myriad - epistolary, expository, witness statements, remembrances and more.
It is all so wondrously strange and yet that strangeness never runs rampant, instead it is constrained by Goss’ pellucid and controlled prose. And in that act of constraint they become even more dreamlike. It is as if the straightforward nature of the prose lends the wildness of the story a framework of rationality that makes the mythic inhabitable. Goss’ choice to reuses characters and settings across stories, yet not necessarily the events the characters experience in each store, compounds the collection’s sense of otherness. It both heightens the sense of familiarity given the remove from the characters history, as we know it, and the sense of strangeness.
I cannot recommend this collection enough. Truly. It is the most exciting thing I’ve read in months. The effect of reading these stories has slipped into my dreams the past two days. I feel energized and inspired. I’m already budgeting to buy the rest of her books.
July 21, 2019
I haven't the slightest idea where I even came across this book other than I must have come across it in the midst of a short story collections kick. I don't have a lot of fantasy short story collections other than a few Lord Dunsany volumes although I'm not sure that fantasy is as well known for its short fiction as say, science-fiction unless you start counting sword-and-sorcery Conan the Barbarian type stories. Maybe because fantasy can lend itself easier to epic sprawl than SF or maybe its easier to drop someone into a SF story because there were enough common symbols and tropes that were understood that you didn't need to sketch out an entire world, just build it around some familiar ideas and go from there. Or maybe just the bookstores I frequented weren't very good at stocking variety.
Goss is a semi-prolific writer (it looks like she published at least a couple stories a year for the past, oh, seventeen years or so) mostly centering around stories but with a couple novels to her credit as well. This is a collection of her earlier fiction published between 2002 and 2005 containing two stories that were nominated for awards although if you like what's in here you're going to have to start hunting through magazines for the rest because it doesn't appear that her work since then has been collected comprehensively (it looks like she had another come out this year but it only reprints eight stories based around fairy tales).
But her stories are worth collecting. Goss' stories are generally "fantasy" in the more classical fairy-tale sense, even though titles like "In the Forests of Forgetting" or "The Rapid Advance of Sorrow" sound like the kinds of tales where the eldritch beasts arise and the magic swords come out. If you're looking for the action packed struggles of heroes fighting implacable overlords this definitely isn't the right place. Instead there's a more ornate feel about the proceedings, not in a mannered bloodless way but more in a precise fashion, done with the steady hand of someone who knows exactly where to stick the needle in.
For me, the better stories were the dreamier tales that still felt grounded in an actual world. While I don't need a detailed chronology of everything that once happened in the world that you've invented for twenty pages, I like the sensation of a world that extends off the printed page. "The Wings of Meister Wilhelm" (a World Fantasy Award nominee) worked the best for me in that regard, where a young girl's music teacher turns out to be building wings to reach a place that may not be real. It wraps together a coming of age tale as a child learns her parents are definitely not perfect with an aching sense of a world that we want to be real, that we're just the twitching in your sleep nightmare of that other place and if we try hard enough whatever slim impossible barrier that exists can be crossed.
It works less well in the other award nominee (the Nebula this time) "Pip and the Fairies", about a woman who was the model for a heroine in her mother's children's books coming to terms with her legacy and the world she created . . . this one didn't hit as hard for me maybe because I felt I had already read a version of it in Mike Carey and Peter Gross' "Unwritten" comic, which had way more space to explore the same territory as this tale and more.
But everywhere she attempts that ambiance she mostly nails it, whether it’s the exercise in cowardice "Professor Berkowitz Stands at the Threshold", the dark "The Rapid Advance of Sorrow" or the even darker "Letters From Budapest". The latter's one of the collection highlights, pairing a creeping sense of dread with the sense that the world has corners that can only be seen at certain angles and being perceptive enough to realize that is no gift at all. In that vein expecting solid explanations for events from any of these stories is going to leave you disappointed. Like most fairy tales they tend to operate on their own internal logic even when the story itself is relatively straightforward ("Conrad", where a young kid is tormented by his aunt and finds unusual rescue) where the mechanics of how it works aren't as important as the overall feel.
Done correctly you don't find yourself asking too many questions as much as accepting the general vibe, although fortunately for her the prose is often strong enough to overcome the story calling too much attention to its own inner workings ("The Rose in Twelve Petals", which didn't subvert things quite enough for me, even if it was beautifully written, or "A Statement in the Case" which succeeds on voice and gets points for having a pharmacist). But the stories featuring Emily Gray, a sort of cross between Mary Poppins and the Room in Tarkovsky's film "Stalker" hit the mark nicely ("Lessons With Miss Gray" comes close to being a bit long but sticks the landing in the final pages) showcasing a world where its quite plausible that someone exists to show you exactly how big the gap is between what you want and what you think you want.
If this sounds like a steady diet of stately melancholy with a pinch of occasional sinister you'd be absolutely right and depending on how you like your fantasy this may not be the collection for you (the one exception is "Sleeping With Bears" which is exactly what the title suggests it should be, hilariously). Not everything is a total winner ("Phalaneopis" did nothing for me) and often the best they're able to do is sustain a certain mood over the course of their lengths, a mood that doesn't always follow you too far past the story being over. But none of them are bad and most are short enough to be worth rereading again. For a debut it’s a good collection that shows someone emerge kind of fully formed but able to add enough wrinkles to make you wonder what she'd be able to do in this style next. And given this was published over a decade ago and she's published at least twenty-five stories since, its past high time for someone to consider collecting another set.
Goss is a semi-prolific writer (it looks like she published at least a couple stories a year for the past, oh, seventeen years or so) mostly centering around stories but with a couple novels to her credit as well. This is a collection of her earlier fiction published between 2002 and 2005 containing two stories that were nominated for awards although if you like what's in here you're going to have to start hunting through magazines for the rest because it doesn't appear that her work since then has been collected comprehensively (it looks like she had another come out this year but it only reprints eight stories based around fairy tales).
But her stories are worth collecting. Goss' stories are generally "fantasy" in the more classical fairy-tale sense, even though titles like "In the Forests of Forgetting" or "The Rapid Advance of Sorrow" sound like the kinds of tales where the eldritch beasts arise and the magic swords come out. If you're looking for the action packed struggles of heroes fighting implacable overlords this definitely isn't the right place. Instead there's a more ornate feel about the proceedings, not in a mannered bloodless way but more in a precise fashion, done with the steady hand of someone who knows exactly where to stick the needle in.
For me, the better stories were the dreamier tales that still felt grounded in an actual world. While I don't need a detailed chronology of everything that once happened in the world that you've invented for twenty pages, I like the sensation of a world that extends off the printed page. "The Wings of Meister Wilhelm" (a World Fantasy Award nominee) worked the best for me in that regard, where a young girl's music teacher turns out to be building wings to reach a place that may not be real. It wraps together a coming of age tale as a child learns her parents are definitely not perfect with an aching sense of a world that we want to be real, that we're just the twitching in your sleep nightmare of that other place and if we try hard enough whatever slim impossible barrier that exists can be crossed.
It works less well in the other award nominee (the Nebula this time) "Pip and the Fairies", about a woman who was the model for a heroine in her mother's children's books coming to terms with her legacy and the world she created . . . this one didn't hit as hard for me maybe because I felt I had already read a version of it in Mike Carey and Peter Gross' "Unwritten" comic, which had way more space to explore the same territory as this tale and more.
But everywhere she attempts that ambiance she mostly nails it, whether it’s the exercise in cowardice "Professor Berkowitz Stands at the Threshold", the dark "The Rapid Advance of Sorrow" or the even darker "Letters From Budapest". The latter's one of the collection highlights, pairing a creeping sense of dread with the sense that the world has corners that can only be seen at certain angles and being perceptive enough to realize that is no gift at all. In that vein expecting solid explanations for events from any of these stories is going to leave you disappointed. Like most fairy tales they tend to operate on their own internal logic even when the story itself is relatively straightforward ("Conrad", where a young kid is tormented by his aunt and finds unusual rescue) where the mechanics of how it works aren't as important as the overall feel.
Done correctly you don't find yourself asking too many questions as much as accepting the general vibe, although fortunately for her the prose is often strong enough to overcome the story calling too much attention to its own inner workings ("The Rose in Twelve Petals", which didn't subvert things quite enough for me, even if it was beautifully written, or "A Statement in the Case" which succeeds on voice and gets points for having a pharmacist). But the stories featuring Emily Gray, a sort of cross between Mary Poppins and the Room in Tarkovsky's film "Stalker" hit the mark nicely ("Lessons With Miss Gray" comes close to being a bit long but sticks the landing in the final pages) showcasing a world where its quite plausible that someone exists to show you exactly how big the gap is between what you want and what you think you want.
If this sounds like a steady diet of stately melancholy with a pinch of occasional sinister you'd be absolutely right and depending on how you like your fantasy this may not be the collection for you (the one exception is "Sleeping With Bears" which is exactly what the title suggests it should be, hilariously). Not everything is a total winner ("Phalaneopis" did nothing for me) and often the best they're able to do is sustain a certain mood over the course of their lengths, a mood that doesn't always follow you too far past the story being over. But none of them are bad and most are short enough to be worth rereading again. For a debut it’s a good collection that shows someone emerge kind of fully formed but able to add enough wrinkles to make you wonder what she'd be able to do in this style next. And given this was published over a decade ago and she's published at least twenty-five stories since, its past high time for someone to consider collecting another set.
January 22, 2022
Beautifully written, even if I personally found the collection a bit uneven in terms of stories that appealed to me although that also shows Theodora Goss's range. I really loved "The Wings of Meister Wilhelm", a story of escape into imagination and antisemitism in the pre-depression American south, and the denouement of "Professor Berkowitz Stands on the Threshold" will stay with me forever. Otherwise it somewhat reminded me of The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories as several stories took classic fairytales as their jumping off point, though "Sleeping With Bears" was the most impressive display of creative license with Goldilocks.
September 3, 2018
This is a most excellent collection of sixteen not-at-all-sweet-but-very-literary fantasy short stories. I found the use of language and vocabulary particularly appealing. Many have mythological or traditional fairy tale foundations. My favorites were the Emily Gray stories, and saw in them something of a foreshadowing of the Athena Club novels. The stories all had a rather dark and bleak character and I could have done with a bit more humor or a more cheerful perspective at times, but enjoyed the book very much.
March 11, 2013
Originally posted on Short Story Review:
Theodora Goss is a master of place. In all sixteen short stories included in her collection In the Forest of Forgetting, the setting, though often a fictional and fantastical place, is as vivid as the characters, many of whom are greatly affected by the places they inhabit. In the introduction by Terri Windling, which gives an interesting biography of Goss and explores her historical context for the way she writes, Windling says, “Goss is a travel guide across borders both real and imaginary: borders of time, of gender, of genre, of landscape, of culture, and of expectation.”
I couldn’t put it better myself. Goss does indeed eschew borders. Her fiction crosses genre lines and is therefore difficult to categorize. While the fantastical is always an element in her stories, it is often metaphor, or a subtle expression of her character’s rich inner lives that manifests itself in reality. And while Goss’ work is certainly fiction, her prose could be called a form of poetry. The images she creates are certainly vivid enough.
The most poetic piece in the collection is “The Rose in Twelve Petals,” which revisits the story of Sleeping Beauty from the point of view of each character involved: the witch who curses Sleeping Beauty, the magician who alters the curse from death to sleep, the king and father, even the spinning wheel, the tower and the rose. Goss’ structure is flawless; there are twelve numbered sections, and each section is a point-of-view. The unifying theme of each section, besides the Sleeping Beauty story itself, is the presence of the rose.
Goss also crosses borders of traditional story structure. Often her stories are split into pieces that, by the end, form a whole. Sometimes numbered, sometimes not, each section reads like a transition in the story and explores a refreshing view of the short story itself; so often one assumes that short stories, unlike novels, do not contain parts. Perhaps this is because the parts of a novel – its chapters – are obvious. Goss makes it obvious that short fiction as well is capable of layers.
The collection as a whole contains many linking parts. Many of the stories bleed into one another. The character of Miss Gray, a dark Mary Poppins-like woman, shows up in three stories, always when the other characters, particularly children, need her. She grants wishes, though sometimes in unfavorable ways; her magic comes with a price. The story “Lessons with Miss Gray” revisits the lives of two of the characters from the World Fantasy Award-nominated story “The Wings of Mister Wilhelm” and fills in the blanks regarding the back story of the characters.
In several other stories, character names are repeated. Though the fact that they are the same character in both stories is never clarified, the repetition gives the impression that these stories must be related in some way. Discovering the links between stories is rewarding. The world of In the Forest of Forgetting feels as rich as the worlds of the stories inside. And as mysterious.
Which brings me to the mystery of Goss’ fiction. What I like most about her writing, and what makes her such an exciting writer to read, is that she never explains everything. Though she certainly gives the reader enough information to form their own opinion of what exactly has occurred in many of these stories, she never answers every question. There is no attempt on her part to tie up all her loose ends, a technique that I think engages the reader even more in the story and makes things much more interesting.
Other highlights of the collection include “Pip and the Faeries,” “The Rapid Advance of Sorrow,” and “Letters from Budapest.”
Contains the following stories, three of which are available online:
Also available online:
"The Rapid Advance of Sorrow"
"Sleeping with Bears"
"Pip and the Fairies"
Not available online:
"The Rose in Twelve Petals"
"Professor Berkowitz Stands on the Threshold"
"Lily, With Clouds"
"Miss Emily Gray"
"In the Forest of Forgetting"
"Letters from Budapest"
"The Wings of Meister Wilhelm"
"Conrad"
"A Statement in the Case"
"Death Comes for Ervina"
"The Belt"
"Phalaenopsis"
"Lessons with Miss Gray"
Theodora Goss is a master of place. In all sixteen short stories included in her collection In the Forest of Forgetting, the setting, though often a fictional and fantastical place, is as vivid as the characters, many of whom are greatly affected by the places they inhabit. In the introduction by Terri Windling, which gives an interesting biography of Goss and explores her historical context for the way she writes, Windling says, “Goss is a travel guide across borders both real and imaginary: borders of time, of gender, of genre, of landscape, of culture, and of expectation.”
I couldn’t put it better myself. Goss does indeed eschew borders. Her fiction crosses genre lines and is therefore difficult to categorize. While the fantastical is always an element in her stories, it is often metaphor, or a subtle expression of her character’s rich inner lives that manifests itself in reality. And while Goss’ work is certainly fiction, her prose could be called a form of poetry. The images she creates are certainly vivid enough.
The most poetic piece in the collection is “The Rose in Twelve Petals,” which revisits the story of Sleeping Beauty from the point of view of each character involved: the witch who curses Sleeping Beauty, the magician who alters the curse from death to sleep, the king and father, even the spinning wheel, the tower and the rose. Goss’ structure is flawless; there are twelve numbered sections, and each section is a point-of-view. The unifying theme of each section, besides the Sleeping Beauty story itself, is the presence of the rose.
Goss also crosses borders of traditional story structure. Often her stories are split into pieces that, by the end, form a whole. Sometimes numbered, sometimes not, each section reads like a transition in the story and explores a refreshing view of the short story itself; so often one assumes that short stories, unlike novels, do not contain parts. Perhaps this is because the parts of a novel – its chapters – are obvious. Goss makes it obvious that short fiction as well is capable of layers.
The collection as a whole contains many linking parts. Many of the stories bleed into one another. The character of Miss Gray, a dark Mary Poppins-like woman, shows up in three stories, always when the other characters, particularly children, need her. She grants wishes, though sometimes in unfavorable ways; her magic comes with a price. The story “Lessons with Miss Gray” revisits the lives of two of the characters from the World Fantasy Award-nominated story “The Wings of Mister Wilhelm” and fills in the blanks regarding the back story of the characters.
In several other stories, character names are repeated. Though the fact that they are the same character in both stories is never clarified, the repetition gives the impression that these stories must be related in some way. Discovering the links between stories is rewarding. The world of In the Forest of Forgetting feels as rich as the worlds of the stories inside. And as mysterious.
Which brings me to the mystery of Goss’ fiction. What I like most about her writing, and what makes her such an exciting writer to read, is that she never explains everything. Though she certainly gives the reader enough information to form their own opinion of what exactly has occurred in many of these stories, she never answers every question. There is no attempt on her part to tie up all her loose ends, a technique that I think engages the reader even more in the story and makes things much more interesting.
Other highlights of the collection include “Pip and the Faeries,” “The Rapid Advance of Sorrow,” and “Letters from Budapest.”
Contains the following stories, three of which are available online:
Also available online:
"The Rapid Advance of Sorrow"
"Sleeping with Bears"
"Pip and the Fairies"
Not available online:
"The Rose in Twelve Petals"
"Professor Berkowitz Stands on the Threshold"
"Lily, With Clouds"
"Miss Emily Gray"
"In the Forest of Forgetting"
"Letters from Budapest"
"The Wings of Meister Wilhelm"
"Conrad"
"A Statement in the Case"
"Death Comes for Ervina"
"The Belt"
"Phalaenopsis"
"Lessons with Miss Gray"
August 28, 2013
A great collection of (quite) short stories by Theodora Goss. They mostly fall into a category I'd call fantasy, but some are more closely related to fairy tales. I'll go over each story briefly.
### The Rose in Twelve Petals
A broken-up retelling of *Sleeping Beauty*. I'm not super familiar with the original tale, but this story is set in Medieval Europe and told in twelve parts.
### Professor Berkowitz Stands on the Threshold
A professor and a French poet meet at a place-between-the-worlds (of life and death perhaps?), and offered a choice. I'm still not too sure about this story or why the professor ultimately made the choice that he did.
### The Rapid Advance of Sorrow
Very surreal piece of writing about having a relationship with a revolutionary. This was actually the first piece of Goss's writing that I read and what originally made me seek out this collection of stories. Beautiful, poetic, well-paced.
### Lily, With Clouds
Two sisters who have not seen each other in a long time. One has cancer and is dying so they are brought back together one last time. Mostly just a conversation, relatively effective, but without any closure.
### Miss Emily Gray
Emily Gray is introduced here. She is a governess who grants children's wishes, generally at a terrible price. This story didn't do much for me.
### In The Forest of Forgetting
This story is the namesake for the collection, and is an allegory about a woman dying of cancer. Way too obvious to be effective for me. Probably the weakest story of the collection in fact.
### Sleeping With Bears
An allegory which compares men to bears. Pretty humorous.
### Letters From Budapest
This story stands out as one of my favorites. It is a dark Hungarian story about an undead artist that steals the talent of young male artists, leaving them in an alive, but untalented state.
### The Wings of Meister Wilhelm
A great story with a lot to say about the tragedy of European anti-semitism. We follow a young girl, her violin instructor and his dream to visit a city in the clouds, even if it means his death. Another one of my favorites.
### Conrad
Emily Gray returns, this time helping a young boy who is being slowly poisoned by his family.
### A Statement in the Case
This may be my favorite story in the collection. Not a whole ton happens, but the pace and descriptions really kept me interested in the story. A witness is questioned about the possible arson of a pharmacy. He realizes what he thought he saw may not actually have been what happened.
### Death Comes for Ervina
An old ballerina; a visit from an old lover. Not for me.
### The Belt
A fairy tale about a belt which may be a metaphor for one or many morals to this story.
### Pip and the Fairies
A very light and fun story. As a child, Pip was the subject of some stories written by her mother that gained some success and have turned Pip into a bit of celebrity as an adult. Revisiting her past has caused her to wonder if the stories she told her mother (and her mother wrote about) were true or just her imagination as a child.
### Lessons with Miss Gray
The final story in the collection and another Emily Gray story. Three girls are offered lessons by Miss Gray in witchcraft. They become obsessed with it. Some interesting events occur.
## Verdict
*In the Forest of Forgetting* is a fantastic collection of short stories sure to please readers of all types. While not every story was a home run for me, the ones that stood out to me were excellent indeed.
My favorites stories (in no particular order):
- Pip and the Fairies
- A Statement in the Case
- Letters from Budapest
- The Wings of Meister Wilhelm
I look forward to reading Theodora Goss again in the future. She has a poetry collection *Songs for Ophelia* coming out soon, which you can find out more about at [her website](http://theodoragoss.com/2013/08/12/th...).
### The Rose in Twelve Petals
A broken-up retelling of *Sleeping Beauty*. I'm not super familiar with the original tale, but this story is set in Medieval Europe and told in twelve parts.
### Professor Berkowitz Stands on the Threshold
A professor and a French poet meet at a place-between-the-worlds (of life and death perhaps?), and offered a choice. I'm still not too sure about this story or why the professor ultimately made the choice that he did.
### The Rapid Advance of Sorrow
Very surreal piece of writing about having a relationship with a revolutionary. This was actually the first piece of Goss's writing that I read and what originally made me seek out this collection of stories. Beautiful, poetic, well-paced.
### Lily, With Clouds
Two sisters who have not seen each other in a long time. One has cancer and is dying so they are brought back together one last time. Mostly just a conversation, relatively effective, but without any closure.
### Miss Emily Gray
Emily Gray is introduced here. She is a governess who grants children's wishes, generally at a terrible price. This story didn't do much for me.
### In The Forest of Forgetting
This story is the namesake for the collection, and is an allegory about a woman dying of cancer. Way too obvious to be effective for me. Probably the weakest story of the collection in fact.
### Sleeping With Bears
An allegory which compares men to bears. Pretty humorous.
### Letters From Budapest
This story stands out as one of my favorites. It is a dark Hungarian story about an undead artist that steals the talent of young male artists, leaving them in an alive, but untalented state.
### The Wings of Meister Wilhelm
A great story with a lot to say about the tragedy of European anti-semitism. We follow a young girl, her violin instructor and his dream to visit a city in the clouds, even if it means his death. Another one of my favorites.
### Conrad
Emily Gray returns, this time helping a young boy who is being slowly poisoned by his family.
### A Statement in the Case
This may be my favorite story in the collection. Not a whole ton happens, but the pace and descriptions really kept me interested in the story. A witness is questioned about the possible arson of a pharmacy. He realizes what he thought he saw may not actually have been what happened.
### Death Comes for Ervina
An old ballerina; a visit from an old lover. Not for me.
### The Belt
A fairy tale about a belt which may be a metaphor for one or many morals to this story.
### Pip and the Fairies
A very light and fun story. As a child, Pip was the subject of some stories written by her mother that gained some success and have turned Pip into a bit of celebrity as an adult. Revisiting her past has caused her to wonder if the stories she told her mother (and her mother wrote about) were true or just her imagination as a child.
### Lessons with Miss Gray
The final story in the collection and another Emily Gray story. Three girls are offered lessons by Miss Gray in witchcraft. They become obsessed with it. Some interesting events occur.
## Verdict
*In the Forest of Forgetting* is a fantastic collection of short stories sure to please readers of all types. While not every story was a home run for me, the ones that stood out to me were excellent indeed.
My favorites stories (in no particular order):
- Pip and the Fairies
- A Statement in the Case
- Letters from Budapest
- The Wings of Meister Wilhelm
I look forward to reading Theodora Goss again in the future. She has a poetry collection *Songs for Ophelia* coming out soon, which you can find out more about at [her website](http://theodoragoss.com/2013/08/12/th...).
July 31, 2013
Quote from the introduction: "My problem is with the guards who say, 'You cannot cross the border.' Because when borders are closed, those on either side experience immobility and claustrophobia, and those who cross them (illegally, by night) suffer incalcuable loss."
I find so any people build their own borders and are their own guards, mostly out of fear.
What an usual mind this author has to come up with all these very unusual stories! I love short stories! So few authors write them anymore, and when they do, they aren't always successful. Goss does them very well!
(There were enough typos in the book to be irritating, at least to me. As shown on pg. 66, "thought" for "though", same error was made on pages 81 and 148.) Then on page 115- "could lost his desire..." which could be "could have" or "could lose"...)
there are 16 stories in this book. I've commented on each...
The Rose in Twelve Petals- a variant on Sleeping Beauty, told simply yet elegantly in sections highlighting each person who plays a part in the tale. I chuckled a bit now and then, though this is not a humorous story; it is still, as the original, a cautionary tale. - 5 stars
Professor Berkowitz Stands on the Threshold- a story of self examination. -3 stars
The Rapid Advance of Sorrow- if you refuse to join in the "advance of sorrow", are you running from your fate or choosing not to join the group? -4 stars
Lily, With Clouds- beautiful, absolutely beautiful- made me cry. Beautiful! -6 stars! (out of 5)
Miss Emily Gray- what an awesome tale, in the archaic meaning of the word. Be wary of what you wish for! -5 stars
In the Forest of Forgetting- this one is hard to describe ...The Stages of a Woman's Life, maybe; a little life challenging disease and a lot of insight, maybe... -5 stars
Sleeping with Bears- very odd, rather funny, reflective on young women's motives. -3 stars
Letters from Budapest- wow. Call this one The High Price of Excellent Art- the soul of the artist. -5 stars
The Wings of Meistersinger Wilhelm- "But I like to think' liebling, that in this sad world of ours, those who create do not destroy so often." I believe this too, but certainly haven't said it so elegantly. A willful child lives a willful life. -4.5 stars
Conrad- vague, though enjoyable. A sick child almost dies, but "earth, air, and skies" come to his aid. -3 stars
A Statement in the Case- a witness tells an interesting story in an interesting manner. -5 stars
Death Comes for Ervina- an old ballerina reviews her life, meets an old friend. -5 stars
The Belt- a fairytale that is not what it at first appears to be. -5 stars
Phaelaenopsis- an orchid teaches a seeing man to see better. -3 stars
Pip and the Fairies- when an imaginative child grows up, will she still be able to see Fairyland? -4 stars
Lessons with Miss Gray- five young women take special classes for a summer which change their lives... Mostly. -3 stars
I find so any people build their own borders and are their own guards, mostly out of fear.
What an usual mind this author has to come up with all these very unusual stories! I love short stories! So few authors write them anymore, and when they do, they aren't always successful. Goss does them very well!
(There were enough typos in the book to be irritating, at least to me. As shown on pg. 66, "thought" for "though", same error was made on pages 81 and 148.) Then on page 115- "could lost his desire..." which could be "could have" or "could lose"...)
there are 16 stories in this book. I've commented on each...
The Rose in Twelve Petals- a variant on Sleeping Beauty, told simply yet elegantly in sections highlighting each person who plays a part in the tale. I chuckled a bit now and then, though this is not a humorous story; it is still, as the original, a cautionary tale. - 5 stars
Professor Berkowitz Stands on the Threshold- a story of self examination. -3 stars
The Rapid Advance of Sorrow- if you refuse to join in the "advance of sorrow", are you running from your fate or choosing not to join the group? -4 stars
Lily, With Clouds- beautiful, absolutely beautiful- made me cry. Beautiful! -6 stars! (out of 5)
Miss Emily Gray- what an awesome tale, in the archaic meaning of the word. Be wary of what you wish for! -5 stars
In the Forest of Forgetting- this one is hard to describe ...The Stages of a Woman's Life, maybe; a little life challenging disease and a lot of insight, maybe... -5 stars
Sleeping with Bears- very odd, rather funny, reflective on young women's motives. -3 stars
Letters from Budapest- wow. Call this one The High Price of Excellent Art- the soul of the artist. -5 stars
The Wings of Meistersinger Wilhelm- "But I like to think' liebling, that in this sad world of ours, those who create do not destroy so often." I believe this too, but certainly haven't said it so elegantly. A willful child lives a willful life. -4.5 stars
Conrad- vague, though enjoyable. A sick child almost dies, but "earth, air, and skies" come to his aid. -3 stars
A Statement in the Case- a witness tells an interesting story in an interesting manner. -5 stars
Death Comes for Ervina- an old ballerina reviews her life, meets an old friend. -5 stars
The Belt- a fairytale that is not what it at first appears to be. -5 stars
Phaelaenopsis- an orchid teaches a seeing man to see better. -3 stars
Pip and the Fairies- when an imaginative child grows up, will she still be able to see Fairyland? -4 stars
Lessons with Miss Gray- five young women take special classes for a summer which change their lives... Mostly. -3 stars
March 26, 2014
Redditgifts Book Exchange 2014
This short story collection has, with just a single reading, immediately been added to the short list of books I recommend to all readers. Somewhere online, possibly on her own site's FAQs, Catherynne M. Valente mentioned Theodora Goss and specifically this collection as being writing that she especially found meaning in. That is how I first heard of Goss, and I immediately put the book on my wishlist. If I had known how good the writing is, how deeply thoughtful the stories are, how much quality resides within the pages, I would not have wasted time waiting for someone to give me this book as a gift, I'd simply have bought it that first day.
In a couple of the stories characters seemed to repeat themselves. A young girl in southern US society who feels her mother doesn't love her because she is so different from that mother, both in looks and in personality, with the mother being a transplant from the east coast. This character appears in more than one story, with different names and different history and different plot. That Goss uses the same Hungarian first name for male characters in multiple stories in the same collection is unfortunate, as it made me wonder if those stories were meant to be connected. But aside from nitpicks like that--which can be explained away easily if these stories were published elsewhere before being collected together--this is a book of fantasies, fairy tales, dreams, nightmares, and myths. It's all here, it's all different, you don't know what you'll get when you start the next story, except that it will be worth the time you give it. Unbelievable that Goss isn't better known and that there is very little more of her work that I can seek out from here. If you enjoy fiction at any level, if you have ever given time to a story that involved magic and been happy to do so, you owe it to yourself to find this collection and read every story in it. Read slowly, make it last.
This short story collection has, with just a single reading, immediately been added to the short list of books I recommend to all readers. Somewhere online, possibly on her own site's FAQs, Catherynne M. Valente mentioned Theodora Goss and specifically this collection as being writing that she especially found meaning in. That is how I first heard of Goss, and I immediately put the book on my wishlist. If I had known how good the writing is, how deeply thoughtful the stories are, how much quality resides within the pages, I would not have wasted time waiting for someone to give me this book as a gift, I'd simply have bought it that first day.
In a couple of the stories characters seemed to repeat themselves. A young girl in southern US society who feels her mother doesn't love her because she is so different from that mother, both in looks and in personality, with the mother being a transplant from the east coast. This character appears in more than one story, with different names and different history and different plot. That Goss uses the same Hungarian first name for male characters in multiple stories in the same collection is unfortunate, as it made me wonder if those stories were meant to be connected. But aside from nitpicks like that--which can be explained away easily if these stories were published elsewhere before being collected together--this is a book of fantasies, fairy tales, dreams, nightmares, and myths. It's all here, it's all different, you don't know what you'll get when you start the next story, except that it will be worth the time you give it. Unbelievable that Goss isn't better known and that there is very little more of her work that I can seek out from here. If you enjoy fiction at any level, if you have ever given time to a story that involved magic and been happy to do so, you owe it to yourself to find this collection and read every story in it. Read slowly, make it last.
April 14, 2017
I thought I had read quite a few short stories by Theodora Goss, but of the sixteen stories in this collection, I had only read one! And I enjoyed almost all of them, and even the few I was iffy on, I thought were well-written. Goss writes with rich imagery and focused, realistic, unique characters, and her entwining of those two are what makes her short stories so good. The characters feel real, and I almost believe they are real, yet the situations are fantastical. My favorites were "Professor Berkowitz Stands on the Threshold," about a professor given the opportunity to cross the threshold to another world, "The Wings of Meister Wilhelm," about a Jewish violinist who wants to fly, and "Lessons with Miss Gray," about a group of girls who decide to take lessons on witchcraft. All the stories in this collection seek to question and explore the boundaries between the real and the unreal, and how we use those boundaries and how they change us. And even on a technical level her writing is both grounding with its realistic and often ordinary characters, and fantastical with her rich, layered descriptions.
I think if you're a fan of Kelly Link or Christopher Barzak, you'll also enjoy Theodora Goss. Though she writes differently than these authors, her entwining of the fantastic with the realistic is similar. It's been a while since I've read short stories that I didn't say after finishing them, "That felt like the start of a novel." But her stories feel complete.
I think if you're a fan of Kelly Link or Christopher Barzak, you'll also enjoy Theodora Goss. Though she writes differently than these authors, her entwining of the fantastic with the realistic is similar. It's been a while since I've read short stories that I didn't say after finishing them, "That felt like the start of a novel." But her stories feel complete.
August 22, 2018
I actually picked up this book thinking it was something else, but I'm glad I decided to read it. This is a collection of Goss's fantasy short stories -- it's an uneven collection, but Goss's prose is unfailingly assured and beautiful. These stories get five out of five stars for atmosphere and imagery, but the plot and characterisations do let them down at times. Mostly stories are independent of one another, but there are a couple of recurring characters, particularly Miss Emily Gray, the mysterious governess and witch, and the stories about her are among the strongest. I also particularly enjoyed the two stories about a young woman called Rose, set in the late 19th century, The Wings of Meister Willhelm and Lessons with Miss Gray. In these, Goss gives herself more space to develop the character of Rose and the society in which she lives, and this makes them more successful. Sometimes, Goss's writing about place and ideas is very good, particularly when she writes about revolution or the impacts of communism in the 20th century. In Her Mother's Ghosts, the narrator sees the ghosts of parts of Budapest that are gone forever, and in The Rapid Advance of Sorrow, we watch a strange revolution swallow a country. Goss's writing can be very moving, and it's definitely worth picking up this collection.
January 30, 2013
Absolutely adored the story "Lily, with Clouds." The others were well imagined as well. I like an author who introduces fantastical elements as if they are a part of every day life.
November 20, 2023
Varied and imaginative. The latter half didn't appeal to me as much, but I still found the stories interesting enough.
May 2, 2020
Short story collections rarely get more than 3 stars from me, because a collection always has such different stories, some that I really enjoy and some that don't do much for me. This is probably a 3.5 stars. In this collection, my favourite stories featured Miss Emily Gray, a sort of a Mary Poppins-like character with a dollop of "be-careful-what-you-wish-for".
CW: Terminal cancer. Two of the stories ("Lily, with Clouds" and "In the Forest of Forgetting") specifically revolve around this, but a lot of the stories have characters whose mothers/spouses died of cancer.
A list of all the stories, with the stories I particularly liked marked with a *, and my favourites marked with **
* The Rose in Twelve Petals: A Sleeping Beauty retelling, enjoyed it.
Professor Berkowitz Stands on the Threshold: One night, a professor finds himself in a mysterious place and has to make a decision. Not for me.
*The Rapid Advance of Sorrow: A faction from the city of Sorrow takes over. Interesting, good concepts.
Lily, with Clouds: An estranged sister, who has terminal cancer, comes home.
**Miss Emily Gray - Probably my favourite! Historical, a girl gets a new governess.
In the Forest of Forgetting - Terminal cancer as walking into the woods.
Sleeping with Bears - The protagonist's sister is marrying into a family of bears, this is the wedding.
*Letters from Budapest - Now this one was interesting! A man receives a letter from his brother, detailing his time at art school and his search for a mysterious artist.
The Wings of Meister Wilhem - Starts as a slow story about learning the violin & building a plane, but takes a surprisingly nasty turn. CW: antisemitism, racial slurs
**Conrad - A sick kid gains a new nurse, another Miss Gray story, I love these!
A Statement in the Case - An American is questioned about what happened at this Ukrainian immigrant's shop with his mysterious wife.
Death Comes for Ervina - An old ballerina on her deathbed takes a look back at her life.
**The Belt - A shoemaker's daughter marries a rich man, who has a strange request. Yes, another story with a fairy tale feel! This one reminded me a bit of how I felt when I read Red as Blood and White as Bone, the first of Goss' works I read.
Phalaenopsis - At an unusual monastery, a man considers an orchid.
Pip and the Fairies -One of those "my mother wrote children's fantasy books about the fae with me as the main character, were they based on real events" stories. I don't mean this condescendingly, I just mean that you probably recognize the trope.
*Lessons with Miss Gray - Another Miss Gray story, also ties in with The Wings of Meister Wilhelm. A group of young girls start to get magic lessons. This one was very interestingly written in first person plural. CW: abusive parents
CW: Terminal cancer. Two of the stories ("Lily, with Clouds" and "In the Forest of Forgetting") specifically revolve around this, but a lot of the stories have characters whose mothers/spouses died of cancer.
A list of all the stories, with the stories I particularly liked marked with a *, and my favourites marked with **
* The Rose in Twelve Petals: A Sleeping Beauty retelling, enjoyed it.
Professor Berkowitz Stands on the Threshold: One night, a professor finds himself in a mysterious place and has to make a decision. Not for me.
*The Rapid Advance of Sorrow: A faction from the city of Sorrow takes over. Interesting, good concepts.
Lily, with Clouds: An estranged sister, who has terminal cancer, comes home.
**Miss Emily Gray - Probably my favourite! Historical, a girl gets a new governess.
In the Forest of Forgetting - Terminal cancer as walking into the woods.
Sleeping with Bears - The protagonist's sister is marrying into a family of bears, this is the wedding.
*Letters from Budapest - Now this one was interesting! A man receives a letter from his brother, detailing his time at art school and his search for a mysterious artist.
The Wings of Meister Wilhem - Starts as a slow story about learning the violin & building a plane, but takes a surprisingly nasty turn. CW: antisemitism, racial slurs
**Conrad - A sick kid gains a new nurse, another Miss Gray story, I love these!
A Statement in the Case - An American is questioned about what happened at this Ukrainian immigrant's shop with his mysterious wife.
Death Comes for Ervina - An old ballerina on her deathbed takes a look back at her life.
**The Belt - A shoemaker's daughter marries a rich man, who has a strange request. Yes, another story with a fairy tale feel! This one reminded me a bit of how I felt when I read Red as Blood and White as Bone, the first of Goss' works I read.
Phalaenopsis - At an unusual monastery, a man considers an orchid.
Pip and the Fairies -One of those "my mother wrote children's fantasy books about the fae with me as the main character, were they based on real events" stories. I don't mean this condescendingly, I just mean that you probably recognize the trope.
*Lessons with Miss Gray - Another Miss Gray story, also ties in with The Wings of Meister Wilhelm. A group of young girls start to get magic lessons. This one was very interestingly written in first person plural. CW: abusive parents
June 29, 2020
I had previously read some stories of Theodora Goss’s, and I knew of her novels about “the daughters of literature’s mad scientists,” which intrigued me. I’d also appreciated the references to academia in some of her work, since characters in grad school are relevant to my interests. This book, collecting stories published in Realms of Fantasy, Polyphony, Alchemy, Strange Horizons, and elsewhere, as well as two new stories, was wonderful. One of the stories, “The Rapid Advance of Sorrow,” originally published in Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, I had read before, but I no longer know where.
I really like Goss’s style, which strikes me as somehow traditional and old-fashioned in that the writing is lush and lyrical (isn’t beautiful language out-of-fashion in some quarters?), not experimental (for the most part). It feels like straightforward storytelling done very well, so that it’s extremely compelling. I feel like I’m unfairly casting her as unoriginal in some way because she does do interesting things with the boundaries between reality and fantasy. But I’m trying to describe something about her writing here. It’s not cerebral or too demanding of the reader (not that there’s anything wrong with being or not being those things); it revels in beauty and human emotion. And even as her stories feel traditional, they also feel fresh.
I was intrigued by Miss Emily Gray and her eponymous story because I seemed to remember a Miss Emily Gray in Goss’s story in The Starlit Wood. I checked; I was right. Then as I kept reading In the Forest of Forgetting, I came upon this character again in “Conrad,” and then once more in “Lessons with Miss Gray.” I liked how this immortal witch (?) kept making appearances through Goss’s body of work. I wondered about the recurrence of (different) characters named István and Eleanor (never terribly sympathetic, the Eleanors).
My two favorite stories–and they might be my favorites because they’re related–were “The Wings of Meister Wilhelm” and “Lessons with Miss Gray.” The former was especially lovely, and in the latter I was happy to meet certain characters again and learn more about their lives. I also found the point of view in “Lessons with Miss Gray” quite interesting: the story is narrated in the first person plural, that is, “we,” but there is no “I”. Initially I thought I’d find out which girl was the individual narrator of the story, but there isn’t one: all the girls are referred to individually in the third person, but the narrator is still “we.” I liked this device because it gave a sense of a collective character, a sum of the four central girls.
I really like Goss’s style, which strikes me as somehow traditional and old-fashioned in that the writing is lush and lyrical (isn’t beautiful language out-of-fashion in some quarters?), not experimental (for the most part). It feels like straightforward storytelling done very well, so that it’s extremely compelling. I feel like I’m unfairly casting her as unoriginal in some way because she does do interesting things with the boundaries between reality and fantasy. But I’m trying to describe something about her writing here. It’s not cerebral or too demanding of the reader (not that there’s anything wrong with being or not being those things); it revels in beauty and human emotion. And even as her stories feel traditional, they also feel fresh.
I was intrigued by Miss Emily Gray and her eponymous story because I seemed to remember a Miss Emily Gray in Goss’s story in The Starlit Wood. I checked; I was right. Then as I kept reading In the Forest of Forgetting, I came upon this character again in “Conrad,” and then once more in “Lessons with Miss Gray.” I liked how this immortal witch (?) kept making appearances through Goss’s body of work. I wondered about the recurrence of (different) characters named István and Eleanor (never terribly sympathetic, the Eleanors).
My two favorite stories–and they might be my favorites because they’re related–were “The Wings of Meister Wilhelm” and “Lessons with Miss Gray.” The former was especially lovely, and in the latter I was happy to meet certain characters again and learn more about their lives. I also found the point of view in “Lessons with Miss Gray” quite interesting: the story is narrated in the first person plural, that is, “we,” but there is no “I”. Initially I thought I’d find out which girl was the individual narrator of the story, but there isn’t one: all the girls are referred to individually in the third person, but the narrator is still “we.” I liked this device because it gave a sense of a collective character, a sum of the four central girls.
December 3, 2020
Theodora Goss is a master storyteller/writer. Her stories approach perfection. I would give the book five stars, but most of the stories are in a genre that I am not fond of, so I had to drag myself through the first several stories the book. Most of the stories are set a in the recent past, or a century or two back, with European sensibilities, somewhat similarly to her Athena Club series, which I rated five stars but which is still not my genre. The difference is that in these stories, writing is more literary and allegorical, even mythical, than I like. The later stories in the book were more to my taste. The last story, "Lessons with Miss Gray," about a group of girls who take magic lessons, has an interesting narrative perspective. It's first person plural ("we") but each of the girls included in that "we" is referred to in third person. I am not sure if I've seen that before, but it worked well and made the story seem even more quirky.
October 8, 2019
This book was okay. It held my attention as it was interesting and well written in many parts. Several of the stories inter-lapped as well which I thought was a creative touch. I say it was okay because I didn't care for a few of the stories and the ones that I liked I didn't really feel were anything special. I wouldn't say it's a super easy read. It's definitely a book that you have to pay full attention to in order to really understand what is going on in the stories and there were a few typos that threw me off. Overall though, I think it was worth the read especially for short story and fairytale fans.
April 26, 2018
Solid 'meh'. This author and I just don't mesh. Some stories were too surreal to the point where they had little to no plot and felt pointless. Some stories that had plot were just...predictable? I mean, when your allegory is broadcast so obviously that I can pick up how it's going to end halfway through, that's a bad sign with me. And in the few stories that had okay plots, the language just didn't grab me. It felt drab and gray and just...nah.
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