Fiction Review: Brother and Sister Enter the Forest

One of this year's Booktopia selections was Brother and Sister Enter the Forest by debut author Richard Mirabella. I enjoyed reading this emotionally complex novel about family relationships and trauma and talking with the author about the story's origins and themes.

Willa lives a quiet life on her own, working as a nurse, casually seeing a man named Luke,  and occasionally checking in on her mother. In her spare time, she makes intricate dioramas, with miniature people (often her brother and her) arranged in scenes. Her brother, Justin, shows up at her door one day. They haven't seen each other in several years, and Justin looks bad, both homeless and unwell. Against her better judgement, Willa lets Justin stay with her. The narrative moves back and forth between the present day, as Justin and Willa try to readjust to each other, and the past, when they were both teenagers living with their mother. Back then, as a gay teen, Justin didn't have many friends but was seeing a slightly older man who'd recently graduated. Willa had one best friend back then, and her home was a refuge. Willa and Justin's mother was not a warm person, and her relationship with Justin was especially strained. Now, as adults both damaged by some sort of trauma in their past, Willa and Justin struggle to negotiate their relationship with each other and to make connections with others.

These two narrative threads--past and present--alternate, as they weave together the story of this brother and sister. The reader knows that something terrible happened to Justin as a teenager, something that left him both physically and emotionally damaged, but we don't know exactly what that trauma was until past the halfway mark. This creates suspense and a sense of foreboding in both the past and the present. Willa and Justin have a very complicated sibling relationship, tinged by this long-ago trauma that affected the whole family. They don't fully understand each other and feel somewhat like strangers, but with a shared past that leaves them feeling both compassionate and resentful. They each reach for healing and wholeness as adults, and they each make progress but without fully getting there. This is a complex, poignant story of tension and tenderness, family and friendship, and trauma and healing.

275 pages, Catapult

Dreamscape Media (audio)

This book fits in the following 2023 Reading Challenges:

 

Mount TBR Challenge

Diversity Challenge

 

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