9A man decides he is old enough. A woman returns early from a lovers' retreat to a bottle of pills at home. And how should you explain the nuances of contemporary Paris to your mother, twenty - five years dead? Val rie Mr jen 's Black Forest is a book of mourning that isn't morbid or sentimental, but rather an elegant and wryly humorous brace against the void. With a paradoxically detached intimacy, Mr jen follows death's dark and twisted path through the lives it touches, wringing out every possible meaning--or non-meaning-- along the way. A writer at the height of her career who draws comparisons to Georges Perec and Nathalie Sarraute, Mr jen has cemented her status as an auteur with a singular voice, guiding us through the Black Forest of ghosts that populate her subconscious.