“The Forest in the House” by Alena Mornštajnová: A Gripping Tale of Lies and Tragedy

It is a joyless narrative, a walk through the valley of shadows, from where the footpath does not lead upwards. The road to hell is paved with good intentions, they say. Then where does the path lead, which is accompanied by insidious and crooked intentions?

The author builds the story on the model of an ancient tragedy. In the beginning, little is enough, basically just one lie, namely the presence in a house full of other people’s lies, and everything seems inevitable. The narrator is a schoolgirl, “cácora”, as her mother and grandmother call her, but already as an adult. The author sometimes leaves this distance and narrates without later adult experiences, directly through the eyes of a then nine-year-old girl.

Alena Mornštajnová tends to be strong in connecting small personal stories with big histories. The novel Hana from 2018, with which she broke through at a mature age, depicts the Holocaust and the typhoid epidemic in her native Valašské Meziříčí in the mid-1950s. The previous year’s prose November is then a dystopia speculating how the fate of Czechoslovakia would develop if the communists suppressed the protests in November 1989.

In other works, however, Mornštajnová concentrates exclusively on the inner state of the heroines, as in the novel. Yes, in terms of time, The Forest in the House is primarily set at the turn of the millennium, the writer mentions, for example, devastating floods, but the absence of mobile phones or social networks plays a role in the composition of the plot. If an adult “cácora” is looking for someone from a broken family, she uses the Spoluzaci.cz website, which was popular at the time. Respect for contemporary realities is a constant for Mornštajnová.

While earlier she was willing to show the development of several generations in a relatively thin book, in two-thirds of Les in the house we follow the everyday life of the heroine or anti-heroine around the time when she is in the third grade. Only the time jump to high school and into the later years accelerates the narrative. Too bad it didn’t come a little sooner.

Mornštajnová did not write a thriller, although the plot is dark enough. It plausibly depicts the underbelly from which the distorted personality of the main character is formed. It is sometimes a little long-winded, but still manages to keep the reader interested in a being who can perhaps be understood, but in no case can’t keep his fingers crossed.

For example, the development of “Cácory’s” relationship with her best friend Monika is remarkable. Also, the motif of the forest, which threatens to engulf the girl and in front of which a chair must be placed at the door of the room at night when it cannot be locked, has a chillingly captivating effect. Just like the “forest” point, when it turns out that the forest really goes for its prey.

“The darkness…turns your living, hot pain into an icy-eyed specter. Of course, we are not quoting Mornštajnová, but the author of psychological novels, Božena Benešová, who lived from 1873 to 1936 and whose heroines often struggled with misunderstanding and selfishness. If we want to place Mornštajnová in a literary context, a parallel is offered with Benešová, who, by the way, is a native of nearby Nové Jičín. Alternatively, with another writer born in the 19th century, Růžena Svobodová, and other authors of female psychological prose.

Even they did not break literary conventions and went beyond the existing canon mainly by emphasizing the individual perception of a woman who found herself in trouble. More than a hundred years ago, it was necessary to defend the very right of a woman to fight for her destiny. Today, thanks to Alena Mornštajnová, we can remember the devastating consequences of such a fight, including the impact on the fate of the female protagonists.

The forest in the house unfolds strictly chronologically, has a clear number of easy-to-remember characters, is told in a very accessible way – while the most complex word that appears in it is “bolid”. So it’s an easy read throughout. But the plot itself is definitely not like that. Not to mention the display of “live, hot pain”.

The cover of the novel Forest in the House. | Photo: Host publishing house

Mornštajnová perfectly captures the environment of lies, half-truths and silence. It’s just a pity that he doesn’t believe enough in his story, he sometimes needs to explain everything. “You shouldn’t lie, that’s a well-known fact. And yet people still lie. My life was built on lies from the very beginning. They piled on each other, some hurt me, others protected me,” writes the narrator. “And so I learned that too, I got used to lying and considered it a normal part of life.” At the same time, these passages are unnecessary, the reader noted this in the story, it had already clicked for him a long time ago.

With 600,000 copies sold, Alena Mornštajnová is clearly the most popular contemporary Czech writer. She achieved this position without slipping into questioning ethical principles or historical causalities. Although some with undisguised disdain – perhaps stemming more from her success – refer to her as a distinctly female author, she never helps herself to the more pleasant side of things.

The forest in the house does not offer even a glimmer of hope. Everything is wrong from the very beginning. This apathy does not offer any healing ointment.

If there’s one thing where Mornštajnová really stands out, it’s not focused storytelling or depth of immersion, but raw empathy. He can “listen” even to downright repulsive beings from the pages of his books, while never mistaking this perception for approval or acquiescence. Here lies a clear dividing line. A line that needs to be constantly emphasized in today’s tense society. It is here that we can glimpse the main positive of her latest book.

Video: People forget how helpless they used to be, says Mornštajnová