PositiveCyn\'s Workshop Review... the book’s detachment makes it more often funny than sad ... The lack of space between the vignettes seems intentional, as well. It is hard to follow where one stops or starts. Some are about the after-effects of the death, others about life before. A few address both. It all lends Black Forest a dreamlike quality. Mréjen’s rolling sentences add to that surreal feeling ... Black Forest is off-kilter, putting the reader in a strange space. All of this is in the service of making readers think about death. It seems Mréjen’s goal is to break her audience away from what the narrator her mother calls \'the cult of the carefree.\' Grounded, concrete observations counterpoint the dreaminess of the novel, breathing life into it. Mréjen’s writing pops when she writes about the widower that cannot bring himself to cancel his deceased wife’s mailing subscriptions or the young woman whose anxiety forces her to text everyone after a dinner party to apologize for her acceptable behavior.
