Unfortunately, Reasons She Goes To The Woods does not fulfil the promise of its opening sections. One major issue is the form of the novel. I think restrictive forms can often be very good for writers - Eleanor Catton certainly made it work in The Luminaries - but by choosing to tell Pearl's story not only in brief vignettes but vignettes that all have to be more-or-less the same length, Davies has saddled herself with an impossible task. This almost works when Pearl is a small child, as the brief sections mirror the short attention span of a three- or four-year-old, but the natural lengthening the reader expects as Pearl grows into a teenager is necessarily absent. Rather than sinking deeper into Pearl's world, the reader feels increasingly alienated and confused. Secondly, I found that Pearl herself became a less interesting character as she grew older - although perhaps she was imprisoned in the novel's form. The originality of her depiction as a small child gives way to something that feels much more familiar; an amoral, unforgiving, judgemental and rather Freudian girl caught between childhood and adulthood. Especially near the end of the novel, I had the sense that Davies was grasping for fairy-tale resonances, but - having never had much patience with Bruno Bettleheim's Freudian readings of fairy-tales, as I discussed in my review of Sara Maitland's Gossip From The Forest - I felt that this all fell rather flat.
I can't see this on the Baileys shortlist, largely because it promises so much more than it delivers. However, the quality of the writing was evident throughout, and I'll be seeking out more of Davies's work.
