The Wood of Suicides, Laura Elizabeth Woollett
The Wood of Suicides, Laura Elizabeth Woollett
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The Wood of Suicides

Author: Laura Elizabeth Woollett

Narrator: Devon Hales

Unabridged: 6 hr 56 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 12/13/2022


Synopsis

One might compare Laura Woollett to Shelagh Delany, whose play, A Taste of Honey was produced when she was eighteen years old. How rare it was to see such strong, mature, and sophisticated writing by a teenager, for few of them think that way! Yet Woollett began The Wood of Suicides as a teenager herself. Gifted writers that young are aberrations, in the best sense, for only a rare one can write original and spellbinding work at such a young age.

Woollett's narrator, Laurel Marks is a stunning, repressed seventeen-year-old schoolgirl. She also has a weakness for older men most of all her father, whom she'll do anything to impress. After his sudden death, Laurel is sent off to a boarding school where she shortly latches onto a new love-object: her English teacher, Mr. Hugh Steadman.

Following an encounter in the woods, a flirtation develops between the two, marked by hopeful highs and suicidal lows, on Laurel's part. Their romance is eventually consummated one November afternoon, in the arbor where they first met. But Laurel's middle-aged teacher proves to be a more violent lover than she ever anticipated. Like the doomed chase between Daphne and Apollo, Steadman pursues and Laurel recedes.

Woollett charts the course of their obsession with an unswerving eye, describing their unbridled desire for one another and the reckless and tortured course on which they have embarked and of Laurel's unshed grief for her father, whose absence will be either her salvation or her undoing.

About Laura Elizabeth Woollett

Laura Elizabeth Woollett is the author of the historical novel Beautiful Revolutionary and the short-story collection The Love of a Bad Man, which was shortlisted for the 2017 Victorian Premier's Literary Award for Fiction and the 2017 Ned Kelly Award for Best First Fiction. She was chosen as one of the 2015 Melbourne Writers Festival’s “30 Under 30.”


Reviews

Goodreads review by Noël on April 05, 2014

The Wood of Suicides features the pursuit and seduction of a middle-aged high school English teacher by a 17-year-old student with father issues. Those that like a more literary read with plenty of poetry, slower moving relationships and psychological character studies will enjoy it. Though a lot of......more

Goodreads review by Jackson on July 18, 2020

If you read this book, stop when you reach the Epilogue. You have reached the novel's conclusion. The Epilogue is an add-on that detracts from an otherwise impressive novel. If the Epilogue had been omitted, The Wood of Suicides would have merited five stars and the following review alone would have......more

Goodreads review by Jessica on February 19, 2015

I received this book for free through LibraryThing's Early Reviewers. Wow. I loved this book. Both Laurel and her teacher were really strange, but in a good way. Laurel was a very fascinating character. I also really loved the author's style of writing. Very poetic. This book also held my interest th......more

Goodreads review by Shannon on January 13, 2018

I can honestly say that I loved the narration of this book. Laurel's intellectual musings were a joy to read (I'm strictly speaking of the prose though, because this book is certainly not a "joy.") Much as I enjoyed reading her narrative though, the caveat to that is that I found her voice to be a p......more

Goodreads review by Taylor on March 06, 2019

In the slew of books about student-teacher relationships, this one is dark, epic, and delivers exactly what it promises. It's hard to read, only in that the narrator isn't always the voice you expect. It's a tight, short, gut punch of a book, and I can't wait to read more of Laura's work.......more