I have mixed feelings about The Forgetting Tree. On the one hand, the prose was lush and poetic. I felt like I was in a melancholy fog right along with Claire as I was reading it. On the other hand, I could not relate to Claire or Minna at all. I think they both were mentally-ill in some way. I never found Minna to be a mysterious enigma - I found her to be crazy and mean. I couldn't understand why Claire was taken with her - sometimes I felt like it was mostly just because Minna was black and Claire hadn't been around too many black people in her life. That made me uncomfortable, but that is also just my interpretation of Claire and could be totally off base.

This may be one of those cases where I am too practical for a book. I just wanted Claire to fire Minna and get on with her life. I kept wondering why no one else in her family was intervening - I think it was pretty clear Claire needed some kind of mental help. My problems with the plot got in the way of my enjoyment of the beautiful writing. The descriptions were wonderfully written, I just didn't care for a lot of what was being described. I think there are people out there who will love this book, I'm just not one of them.