![]() ![]() So begins a journey that sees Mina and her older brother Jossel leaving their family for the New World. Specifically, the story being told is the titular story of the forest in which 14-year-old Mina Mendel, wandering through the forest as if a child in a fairy tale, encounters a group of young Bolsheviks and, eventually, secures a kiss from one of them. The Story of the Forest is, however, also a novel about stories and story-telling and, specifically, the way in which family stories are passed down through generations, and the mutations that they undergo along the way. Following several generations of the same Jewish family over the course of a century, the novel follows their moves from Riga to Liverpool and, later, to London. Linda Grant’s latest novel The Story of the Forest is, at it’s heart, a family saga. But what of the stories from the old country how do they shape and form the next generations who have heard the well-worn tales? ![]() The adventure leads to flight, emigration and a new land, a new language and the pursuit of idealism or happiness – in Liverpool. It sounds like a fairy tale but it’s life. ![]() It’s 1913 and a young, carefree and recklessly innocent girl, Mina, goes out into the forest on the edge of the Baltic sea and meets a gang of rowdy young men with revolution on their minds. ![]()
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