In the Snow Forest: Three Novellas

These stories made me hurt and laugh all at the same time. I knew I would love them right after the very first sentence of the first novella. And who doesn't know someone at least a little like Gibbs? I just loved when he ripped off the rear view mirror. Classic! More, please. A novel, please.

The three novellas in this book are so rich and satisfying-I read them one to a sitting, not wanting them to end, savoring every word, losing myself in the snowbound landscapes, tied up in the characters' lives and desires. Each of the main characters is at a juncture-what's in their hearts doesn't quite match up with what's in their lives-and what they do when they realize this makes for great stories-and wonderful reading. The writing is clean and spare and beautiful. I'm looking forward to reading this book again and again.

Who knows how a fellow from Georgia found this wonderful book of the American West. . . . A lucky discovery, a book that speaks to anyone with a heart, a mind, a soul, regardless of home. The distinction that separates the story from the novella from the full-on novel seems irrelevant here. The three pieces that make up the book are as rich and deep as novels, as sharp and efficient as stories, and taken together, beautifully establish a fascinating vision of love, loss and a world that, like a flame, shimmers as it fades away. I've read it twice now-once, fast and furious, fighting alongside the vivid characters, and a second time, to appreciate the wise and witty words, and the wisdom of Parvin's ideas. And I'll read it again for Gibbs, "the big man who looked like trouble, even with his glasses," and for Darby and Harper, the doomed lovers who "marvel over the "intricate piecework of love," and for Lindsay, "old enough for things to have happened." The inside back jacket tells us that Parvin is at work on a novel. This reader can't wait.

I read Roy Parvin's collection of stories (THE LONELIEST ROAD IN AMERICA) a couple of years ago and loved them. They're big-hearted, strange and original, stories where landscape attains the status of character. I recommend them as much as any book within the last ten years. Now, with IN THE SNOW FOREST, Parvin makes even bigger, stranger and more original tracks. The three novellas in this book do what the stories do and beyond, the landscape as character, turns of phrase so lovely and deft it almost hurts; these novellas, though, elevate their sad protagonists to almost-mythhic status. I say "sad" and mean it. These are not comic stories (though they are, at times, very, very funny) but stories about people approaching that last ridge, waiting to see what lies beyond. And I say "almost-mythic," by which I mean Parvin doesn't settle for the easy ride of magic realism or even exaggeration, but lets the landscape shape his people, lets snow and wind and heartbreak and time tear at them and push them along on bumpy rides. And what waits at the end of each novella isn't AND THEN HE BECAME A LOCAL LEGEND. No, what waits at the end is just the end of a life, a simple human life. But with the subtle grace only a writer of the highest skill and most generous heart can find. That's the word for these stories: Graceful. As in both full of grace and grace of language.My recommendation? Buy Parvin's stories and marvel at them. And then buy this collection of novellas and get ready to be moved right over the last ridge.

I was drawn into these stories of displaced souls, and moved by the tersely poetic voice that tells them. Roy Parvin has a real gift for charting the hopes and despairs of his characters, and for describing oddly beautiful American landscapes.