A book that explores how forests, the Wood, shape our lives and our stories? That delves into different types of woodlands and ties those places to faery tales that reflect them? What a remarkable, clever premise. I can only hope that someday someone does it justice, because From the Forest most assuredly did not.

I wanted very, very much to enjoy this book...and I couldn't even finish it. And it wasn't the long paragraphs of dry botany lessons. Or the intricate, detailed descriptions of twigs and buds and leaves and branches. Or the exclusive, and excluding, expression of British culture. Or the flat recital of historical events. Or the unnecessary and wholly unconvincing justification of the book's thesis. Or the sneering digs at Tolkien, Andersen, and even Wilde.

No. Though that is more than enough to have to wiggle around and slog through and clamber over, none of that was what finally made me sigh and shut the book. That is entirely due to the fact that From the Forest has no purpose. What could've been a clear, elegant expression of land and peoples and the stories that connect them is instead a cluttered jumble of repetitive, self-indulgent essays and faery tales that...somehow?...tie into them.

Maitland meanders from travelogue descriptions of the forests into memoirs of her own experiences, lapses into emphatic critiques of Things She Doesn't Like, somehow drags some history and/or botany into justifying her opinions, states (and restates and states again) that forests must mean important things for faery tales, and tosses out a story. All without ever saying anything important or insightful or thought-provoking or, come to think of it, about forests and people and faery tales.

She talks around those things quite adeptly and certainly seems to think they're important, but she never actually connects to them. Instead, she opines that beech trees are wicked step-mothers and birches are princesses and insists that Forest Law birthed tales of the heroic tailor, servant girl, and soldier, but these are very clearly her own interpretations. They do not open themselves to my own, or any other reader's, experience, and they do not, really, show what the forest might have meant to those long ago tale-spinners.

In fact, where the book does its best work is precisely in those elements which invite us to participate in experiencing the forest and the stories as those tale-spinners might have. Adam Lee's photographs are lovely and evocative, even absent all the colors Maitland mentions in her descriptions. And Maitland's faery tale retellings are frank and earnest and funny and poignant. It's unfortunate that the remainder of the book lacks the same humility and clarity of purpose. ( )

Interesting look at the forests of Britain and the history of fairy tales with some original retellings. ( )

In this book Maitland is looking at the role that woods and forests have played in our national identity, primarily through stories, by also as a source of employment, fuel and food.

the book is split into 12 chapters, with 12 sub chapters. Each chapter describes a visit to a different wood or forest that she goes to. She visits these woods all around the country, one each month, as they are significant in some way, either for the variety of the species, or they historical or cultural significance. In these she explores the links that woods have with fairy stories, and the types of characters in these stories.

The small sub chapters are modern interpretations of well known fairy stories that she herself has written.

I really enjoyed the main part of the book about the forests and the history and cultural significance that trees have in our national psyche. Less enjoyable were the fairy tales. She speaks in the final chapter about children and new citizens being given a little book of classic fairy tales, and I feel that if she was going to include these she would have been better including the originals. ( )

I won’t write an elaborate (and boring…) Introduction about how much I longed to read this book. It was one of my most coveted treasures from the moment I bought it and I wanted to savour it and underline the living daylights out of it.

Unfortunately, by the beginning of the fourth chapter, I couldn’t wait to finish it and forget about it. It was a shuddering disappointment, a book I never thought I’d actually hate. But I did and I am thoroughly saddened by this reading experience.

The Forest (I deliberately use a capital ‘’F’’) has played a vital role in the creation of fairy tales since the dawning of time. From Red Riding Hood and Snow White to obscure tales from every culture in the world, the mysticism, the strangeness, the threat of the Forest have provided ample material for legends of adventures, princesses and princes that are tested, disobedient children that need to learn what is right and what is wrong, impossible tasks that must be carried out and chances for a resolution where the good is rewarded. In this book, Maitland attempts to emphasize the deep connection between forests and fairytales through an interesting, no doubt, journey on 12 forests in Britain. Each month is dedicated to a specific forest. From March to February, we are guided to the influence of the flora and fauna of the British nature. The oakwoods, the beech woods, the May beauty of the New Forest, the connection between mining and the dwarves, the mystery of fungi. It sounds quite a blast, doesn’t it? Unfortunately, the only blast is the impossibly rude, authoritative tone of the writer.

Her sources are limited, practically non-existent. For the most part, her descriptions were repetitive and bland. At certain points, all of a sudden, they became so ‘’flowery’’ that my eyes were rolling by the minute. Footnotes after footnotes don’t work when there is no cohesion, when your voice is so abrupt, so authoritative. When you pass judgment on others. When your syntactic and grammatical mistakes are so obvious that even a 10-year-old student would avoid. When your personal and subjective notion on femininity, womanhood, tradition, and religion is shoved down our throats page by page. When you use a loud ‘’We’’ to ascertain and verify your personal beliefs and observations. No. When your retellings of famous fairytales are loaded with sexual connotations and cheap alterations. When you accuse Tolkien of ‘’sexism’’ because there was no female member in the Fellowship (!) This is cheap, uneducated ‘’feminism’’ to the extreme. When a father allows his children to go to the woods provided they have a cell phone with them and you accuse him of ‘’ denying’’ them their freedom and ‘’supervising them from afar.’’ When you don’t even know the origin of the word ‘’Magi’’ or ‘’spinster’’. When you write something like this: I am uncertain where these lepers came from initially.

No. Even references to Merlin, Macbeth and Angela Carter won’t be enough to save this. And if you don’t like beech trees, dear ‘’writer’’, leave them alone.

My reviews can also be found on https://theopinionatedreaderblog.wordpress.com/ ( )

Beautiful, thought provoking writing exploring the connection between the woods and fairy tales. She visits a number of woods across the UK including ones where urbanisation touches nature, where people struggle to manage woodland in a sympathetic way and where history and the legacy of industrialisation continue to be an influence meeting one of the last free miners. She also retells some of the less well known fairy tales and explores what they tell us about our relationship with the woods. Brilliant writing. ( )