Rating: 
Summary: Not at the level of 'Snow' but intriguing nonetheless
Review: Guterson's third novel is a departure from his first two, the very successful 'Snow Falling on Cedars' and 'East of the Mountains'. While also set in the Northwest, much of the similarities end there.'Our Lady' is set in the Olympic Peninsula, an area usually painted with mystical awe, but Guterson does not give the Peninsula the romantic, ethereal treatment received by the San Juan Islands and Eastern Washington, the settings for his first two books. Instead he paints a dreary picture of worn-out loggers, incessant rain and tiresome, threadbare characters that seem out of place and out of touch with the rest of civilization. Throw in a bit of an incredulous plot and Guterson has concocted a witch's brew of a story that put a heavy demand his writing talent. The story centers on Ann Holmes, a teenaged runaway who find her meager existence by picking mushrooms in the moss-covered floor of the Olympics. While rummaging in the forest, the rather simple and plain Ann sees a vision that she takes for the Virgin Mary. Thus the die is cast. Within 48 hours, people are hovering around Ann, following her as if she was a modern day Pied Piper. The ensuring scene would make P.T. Barnum proud. A couple of days later, the masses have swelled to a few thousand with an ancillary boom to the economy in the fictional town of Two Forks. Guterson peppers this main story with characters that are both directly and indirectly affected by Ann's vision. Tom Cross, an unemployed logger who now works as a guard at the local prison sees a chance to redeem his wretched life through Ann. He is the proverbial no-good, down-on-his-luck blue-collar straggler who can't seem to catch even a sliver of a break. Father Collins, the local priest whose stock has fallen into this desolate, backward corner of the world also sees some level of personal salvation in Ann's fate. It is difficult to assess the quality of Our Lady of the Forest. At times it is rambling as Guterson wanders from his prior simple and introspective prose. He becomes part lecturer, part ecclesiastical philosopher and strays from central themes. I almost put the book down after 100 pages as I became frustrated with his rambling and vacant style. However, Guterson makes a comeback and shows his talent. It would be very easy to write a book about Virgin Mary sightings in a biased and shrill manner. This doesn't happen. Guterson treats his characters with a tenderness and respect where many other novelists would heap scorn and ridicule on their behavior. While he does hold mild contempt for the followers of such an impressionable girl, he lets his reader sift through larger issues relatively independently. While I would rank his first two novels higher than Our Lady of the Forest, Guterson rallies in the end to at least give us a stimulating story.
Rating: 
Summary: Troubling, but beautiful...
Review: Was I the only reviewer who noticed that no one in the book-- not Ann's mother or grandfather, not the priest, not her "protector" Carolyn, not the thousands of vision-followers, not even the Virgin Mary saw Ann as a person but only as something to be consumed or used? Everyone is so self-absorbed that no one even sees Ann except the reader. Is this about Marianist vision or about the way modern American society treats its children? This was a fascinating book, but it broke my heart.
Rating:
Summary: Along with the Author...I lost interest
Review: Our Lady of the Forest runs in fits and starts. This story of young girl who is having visions in the primeval forests of the Pacific Northwest is initially compelling, but then gets more tangled and confusing as it goes along. This is a complicated feat because the novel does not concentrate on an extraordinary amount of characters or themes, yet somehow you find yourself losing your way. Anne, the "Joan of Arc" of the story, is a well drawn character who we are intensely interested in, despite Guterson's error of giving away most of Anne's tortured background right off. However, her friend, sceptic, and chief disciple is made out to be nothing more than a caricature of her own irony. There is no heart beating there, even though the author bestows her with heavy-handed secular motivations such as wanting to steal from the massive collections to fund her winter in the tropics. Indeed, all of the characters aside from Anne and Tom Cross, (an unemployed logger who is mean to the core, but obviously searching for healing,) are just mouthpieces to state religious and philosophical questions that anybody with even a freshman Introduction to Philosophy or Theology class already knows. Within the first few pages we get stuff from Aquinas, Pascal's wager, etc. However, the book doesn't go on to illuminate these ideas or fulfill their arguments. Rather, we get long digressions that ultimately prove frustrating, not in their content, but in their context. The community and the world in which Guterson has set his story is indeed fascinating, but perhaps the book is too short. I had a feeling that Guterson has too many things going on to be accomodated by the brief length. It seems as if the story ends too soon. The author conveys a deep passion for the area and some of the people, but unfortunately, not for the subject matter, and a result he loses not only his interest, but the readers as well. There is poetic brilliance and exposition in the prose, but the dialogue just seems so contrived and leaden, especially in the beginning sections. As a playwright, I am around dramatic texts all of the time and I am witness to the struggles and pains that playwrights take towards getting dialogue right, because, basically it is all you have. I think it would serve some novelists well to try and write a play or two. Guterson included.
Rating:
Summary: An incomplete work
Review: After finishing the last pages of this novel, I sat with book in hand and wondered if there was any character in the novel with what I would call a genuine faith: the priest is riddled with doubt about his calling and his place in God's plan, the envoy from the bishop is a legalistic cynic who practically sneers at the possibility that God would communicate with mere mortals, and all the pilgrims who flock to the town are one-dimensional characters viewed only through the eyes of Carolyn, the "educated" agnostic. The novel raises important questions about the veracity or possibility of supernatural "communications" from God, and in the voices of its characters, provides a treatise of the many sides to this question. But because there is no true voice of faith, the argument is slanted from the beginning and this is the source of my greatest disatisfaction with this work. I agree with the reviewer who said that the novel seems unfinished. While it may be unfair to compare this book to Snow Falling on Cedars, it nonetheless stands that Guterson is capable of more courageous conjectures, more nuanced layering than he has explored in this work. He alludes, but leaves unexplored conections between the heroin-induced religious rantings of Ann's rapist and her later visions; he imbues Carolyn with the intellect to read and understand weighty tomes and dissertations, but does not accompany this with a thirst for truth, or the undying curiosity that often accompanies such an intellect. How does the priest come to terms with his vocation? Why is Carolyn still essentially the same person one year after such tumultuous events? What of the anger of Tom Cross?--its resolution is mentioned almost in passing, and yet it is a major theme in the first 99% of the novel. Partway through the book, I expected Guterson to be addressing issues such as "Does God speak to us today, and if in fact He does, how can we tell the true messenger from the charlatan?" and "What is the nature of faith? How do we know that we know?" and "Is it possible to walk in the darkness and yet live from a center of abiding certainty?" These were the questions he seemed to be raising. I was disappointed that he did not address them more fully or thoroughly, but instead just raised the questions, and then left them hanging, without adding anything to the discussion. Indeed, the characters seem to be shouting the questions without being interested in pursuing the answers.
Rating:
Summary: EXTRAORDINARY MARIAN READING
Review: An avid reader it took me awhile to grasp the breadth of David Guterson's writing. Inasmuch that the theme itself touched me with Marian sightings, it was really key individuals' struggle for meaning and forgiveness that kept me reading this book from binder to binder in two days. Which I seldom do. Today reading "Snow falling on cedars", the power of Guterson's symbolism and how well he captures 3-4 individuals' life, regrets and dreams from multiple perspectives - really direct and indirect witnesses to decisive events in the past - I can't wait for the next major works of this author.
Rating: 
Summary: Even the Virgin Mary was boring.....
Review: This is an interesting group of reviews--the book at least inspired intense feelings one way or the other in most readers.
I have no problem with dark books or dark characters. I also have no problem with unresolved issues at the end of a book. However, this book was not merely dark or mysterious, it was gratingly slow, meandering, and banal.
I agree with the readers who felt Guterson, based on the wonderful "Snow Falling on Cedars," turned out a rushed and problematic book. His themes are obvious, and his efforts to illustrate them a little too close to the surface. It was as if he took his book outline and hung a lot of descriptive phrases on each character, but never got to the depth of them. That's not to say that his descriptive passages are not occasionally brilliant--but the sum total was a lot of words about not much going on. It was a great disappointment--after pages and pages of wishing he would stop fooling around and return his story to Ann--to actually see inside one of her visions, and find the Virgin Mary saying the same old stuff she's always said in visions. I appreciate Guterson's point that faith is by nature indefinable, and its messengers often seemingly unsuited to the task, but his story would have carried much more impact had he forgone the excess and included the nuances that we love in his writing.
Rating:
Summary: Not Likely
Review: Having lived in the Pacific Northwest a life time and in the church a life time, the main problem with this book is that it stretches belief. A Marian sighting in a Pacific Northwest logging town is surely possible, but it would generate a response of about ten people. Lots of good description of places and some of people. However, this isn't Rosswell, New Mexico people here in the Northwest aren't that gullable.
Rating:
Summary: Troubling, but beautiful...
Review: Was I the only reviewer who noticed that no one in the book-- not Ann's mother or grandfather, not the priest, not her "protector" Carolyn, not the thousands of vision-followers, not even the Virgin Mary saw Ann as a person but only as something to be consumed or used? Everyone is so self-absorbed that no one even sees Ann except the reader. Is this about Marianist vision or about the way modern American society treats its children? This was a fascinating book, but it broke my heart.
Rating: 
Summary: ONCE UPON A TIME A GIRL WALKED INTO THE FOREST...
Review: Our Lady of the Forest is not my usual cup of tea. How could it be? This book--part fairy tale, part social commentary, part rain-sodden film noir--is unlike any book I have ever read. A while back I tried to read David Guterson's Snow Falling On Cedars. I could not get into the book for some reason. I could not invest myself, emotionally or mentally, in any of the characters. I started out not caring and ended up not finishing the book. You can then imagine my trepidation when I picked up a copy of Our Lady of the Forest. However, I found myself intriguiged by the story description. Against my better judgement I gave the book a try. I found that Our Lady of the Forest is one book that is very hard to put down. Guterson rambled in Snow Falling On Cedars. Here he proves himself to be a master of spare, soul-reverberating prose and taught plot-lines. His characters are hauntingly simple but carry an immense weight and depth. His scenes, especially the climax, echo in the reader's mind for a long time after putting the novel down. The tale of Anne and her visions, and of the lives affected by them is one of the best pieces of storytelling I have read in a long time. Like the great Northern Forest in which it is set, it is vast--inspiring to the intellect--and stirring, even humbling, to the soul. I give this book my full recommendation.
Rating:
Summary: Our Forest of the Lady
Review: As a great fan of Guterson's previous novels, I was eager to read "Our Lady of the Forest." Page by page, the book has elements that please, particularly the descriptive treatment of the forest community and Guterson's literate dialog. But ultimately the book fails to satisfy. Ostensibly, the theme is the personal struggle to come to terms with religious experience. But Guterson makes it clear through this book that he has no first-hand religious experience to draw upon: no anguish of soul, no conversion, no sense of devotion, no spiritual witness, and ultimately no faith. We're left with a portrayal of Christianity so lifeless and banal that it might have been pieced together from NPR talk-shows. Please, Mr. Guterson, inform your next novel from your own experience, and people it with folks that you really know.
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