Four Seasons

A kind of calculation of loss, Michael Forstrom’s lines are rigorously plain, compressed by discretion rather than withholding; that is, he’s choosing what not to say, and the cesurae speak volumes. An impressively controlled and deliberate sequence of views—life taken apart by time—patient, taut, elliptical. 
-----------------------Matthew Stadler

When I first read Michael Forstrom’s Four Seasons, it was just Winter, a cancer tale—an empty swing, the arc of a combative ghost. I wanted to offer an ebony bell—a carved ibis with a low, subtle tone to appease the late poverella. Immersed now in the full cycle of this love story, the passing seems reconciled, almost peaceful. Forstrom’s calm clarity ushers readers through a body’s complex desire: red lips wanting to be painted (spring), naked calf in a flustered undressing (summer), a dying mouth repeating what the children say (autumn). This novella’s pacing mesmerizes. The betrayed widower, as caregiver, is in control but not controlling; he is an enduring witness, offering just enough. Elegant justice. Four Seasons is a sanctuary, a carillon carved from stone by hand.
-----------------------Lori Anderson Moseman

This strange, lovely book—which is about loss and memory and love and language and longing and the desire, in spite of all concomitant complications, to speak, to quietly articulate, to explain—burns clearly, brightly, devastatingly in my mind. There is something of Breton’s Nadja in it, but a Nadja caught in the fierce, clarifying snows of New England and stepped even farther out on the cracked diving-board of time. Four Seasons is powerful and delicate. An achievement of the highest order.
-----------------------Laird Hunt