FOREST DARK by Nicole Krauss

This is my least favorite Nicole Krauss novel so far.  Still, it’s certainly not the worst thing I’ve ever read.  The two main characters are both in Israel and undergoing life changes, but other than that, they don’t seem to have anything in common.  Moreover, their stories never converge, so that this is like two novels squashed together.  Their only definite overlap happens to be with a gold-toothed taxi driver who drops one character in the desert and picks up the other character on his way back to Tel Aviv.  This coincidence at least confirms that the stories are taking place concurrently.  Jules Epstein has retired from his New York law practice and has a sudden urge to give everything away.  He would also like to create some sort of memorial to his parents in Israel, even though his childhood was not exactly pleasant.  He crosses paths with a rabbi and his filmmaker daughter, but honestly, Epstein’s story did not grab me, although one of my favorite scenes in the book involves his doorman in New York.  The other character tells her story in first person and refers to herself at least once as Nicole (semi-autobiographical?).  She is a successful novelist but has gotten stuck trying to start her next book and is reexamining the state of her marriage.  She abruptly leaves her family for Tel Aviv after being contacted about a project there with a man named Friedman, who may have been a member of the Mossad.  The project turns out to involve Franz Kafka whose death from tuberculosis at the age of 40 was possibly faked.  She eventually has her own very Kafkaesque experience, which brings on even more self-reflection.  This book just did not resonate with me at all, and I found it hard to follow, especially given the almost dream-like quality of the storyline, or, I should say, storylines.