From the Forest: A Search for the Hidden Roots of our Fairytales

by Sara Maitland

Fairy tales are one of our earliest cultural forms, and forests one of our most ancient landscapes. Both evoke similar At times they are beautiful and magical, at others spooky and sometimes horrifying. Maitland argues that the terrain of these fairy tales are intimately connected to the mysterious secrets and silences, gifts and perils.
With each chapter focusing on a different story and a different forest visit, Maitland offers a complex history of forests and how they shape the themes of fairy tales we know best. She offers a unique analysis of famous stories including "Rapunzel, Hansel and Gretal, Snow White, Little Red Riding Hood, Rumplestiltskin," and "Sleeping Beauty." Maitland uses fairy tales to explore how nature itself informs our imagination, and she guides the reader on a series of walks through northern Europe's best forests to explore both the ecological history of forests and the roots of fairy tales. In addition to the twelve modern re-tellings of these traditional fairy tales, she includes beautiful landscape photographs taken by her son as he joined her on these long walks.
Beautifully written and impeccably researched, Maitland has infused new life into tales we've always thought we've known.

Genres: Nonfiction, Nature, Folklore, Fairy Tales, History, Mythology, Travel

368 pages, Kindle Edition

First published November 1, 2012

About the author

Sara Maitland is a British writer and academic. An accomplished novelist, she is also known for her short stories. Her work has a magic realist tendency. Maitland is regarded as one of those at the vanguard of the 1970s feminist movement, and is often described as a feminist writer. She is a Roman Catholic, and religion is another theme in much of her work.

Reviews

[Sienna · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book at the intersection of forests and fairy tales has so much potential. It alternates between authorial forays into nature and re-tellings of familiar stories, and contains a meander through the not-so-wilds of Epping Forest with Robert Macfarlane, author of my favorite read last year. There are some wonderful tidbits on history and storytelling and the environment. Did you know that most land plants are dual organisms? Fascinating. I should love it. But I don't, and the title hints at one of the main reasons for my antipathy.

Gossip from the Forest is heavy on conjecture and disappointingly light on research, favoring speculation over thoughtful analysis. Lines like this frustrated me:

Based on no real evidence beyond anecdote, I believe that the beech is the species that people are most likely to be able to identify on sight, and the one which is most often named as their 'favourite' tree.

Maitland's knowledge of British woodland seems to derive almost exclusively from Oliver Rackham, and with respect to the Grimm brothers she acknowledges her debt to the work of Jack Zipes. I've no doubt that both are authorities in their respective fields, but this book would have benefited from an exploration of their footnotes and works cited. Why not dip into JSTOR or Project Muse or drop by the local library to see what folklorists and anthropologists and ecologists and archeologists and sociologists other -ists are saying about forests and fairy tales, or hit up the Internet Archive for not-so-recent views on the wildwood. Maybe this is my inner academic talking, or writing, but if I have a question or a hunch I want to see what other people have to say on the subject to gauge whether my idea is rooted in ignorance or naivety or is really something worth pursuing and sharing.

There's a lack of precision here that bothers me, as when Maitland argues that the "whole tradition of story-telling is endangered by modern technology." What she means (I think) is the oral tradition of storytelling. But this statement neglects the role, for instance, of said technology in record-keeping and sharing. I'm reminded of a college friend who spent her childhood moving from one tiny Central American village to the next. Her linguist parents created makeshift records on which they recorded the dialect unique to each place. Homemade turntables! I think they'd find it a bit easier now. Last month, I used an iPod to record my grandfather's experiences with atomic testing in the middle of the last century. This is all to say that, sure, modern technology is changing the way we share stories. So did the development of written language and the invention of the printing press. I'm not convinced that our desire to tell and hear stories will die out as a result, though, just... change.

We also get claims about scholarship — "Feminist criticism has interpreted fairy stories as inherently sexist" — with no supporting footnotes. (I can't count the number of pleading notes for references I wrote in response to various assertions. "Reference?" soon turned into "Do some effing research!") What footnotes Maitland has written often veer into weirdly personal territory or continue to omit external sources, as in these successive points from Chapter 3:

4. I say 'almost because I was also influenced by having spent a very happy weekend here many years before in a little cottage deep in the woods, with my friends Sabine Butzlaff and Alan Green.

5. In the very earliest version of Robin Hood, he was not in fact a nobleman at all, but a 'yeoman'. His steady elevation through the ranks of British culture for 600 years rather emphasises my point.

Writing an enjoyable, thoroughly readable work of popular history while maintaining a reasonable degree of scholarly analysis is a delicate balancing act, but it's not impossible. Maitland's friend Macfarlane, for instance, wears his erudition lightly. But it feels as though Gossip from the Forest was written over the course of a relatively short period, cringing beneath the ever-lengthening shadow of an inflexible deadline and unable to pursue any of the interesting avenues it passes by. Maitland may be a skilled, talented writer — I highlighted a number of beautiful lines and passages — and is probably a really lovely person. I feel terrible writing such a grumpy review. It's just that, for me, the issues mentioned above combined with poor editing and some awkward phrasing made it impossible to feel any hint of the magic I'd expected from such a book. You may have better luck. I hope so.

[Andrea · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is well written, often lyrical. It is full of fascinating information I didn't know about the forests I love, a richness of lore about trees and their ongoing, shifting relationship with human beings. It's interspersed with delightfully re-told (but unreconstructed) fairy tales, as well as more about fairy tales themselves. It was sometimes close to five stars.

Still, it consistently referred to a 'we' that I found profoundly alienating. Disturbing. I would read along happily about coppicing and then jolt awkwardly, hitting a wall of unshared assumptions. Partly this had to do with its middle-classness, but more disturbingly to some idea of Germanic Britishness having some kind of deep ancestral connection to forests and the fairytales that she claims comes with them. I don't think it was really thought through, but it could go some ugly places. With an English mother and a passport I suppose I could lay claim to some of this feeling if I tried hard, but I don't want to. I don't want to belong to a European 'we'. I look around Brixton and see no place for it, and I'd be glad to see it go forever. Forests are wonderful and magical without that. You can see the obvious ties to some of the fairy tales she describes, but I don't think we need to make everyone read fairytales for them to appreciate the forest, or want to care for and keep it. I understand the plea, but I think I'm rather with some of the feminists on my lack of love for stories that make us ache to be beautiful on the outside so we can be loved, where princesses can kill off their suitors and still be desired, where a man will cut off the head of his faithful horse to feed some talking ravens and be rewarded. I do like kindness and hard work, but in most of those stories there's too much other shit to put up with.

I also quite like the monstrous, the grotesque, the ugly, the weird, the things that don't fit that fairytales seem to put in their place. Usually violently.

The other odd thing, tied in to this almost royal 'we', is a weird determinism she grants to landscape. She says at one point 'Efficient slave cultures need open land: it has to be difficult to run away.' I almost stopped reading right there, maybe I should have. Her example is Egypt, and I think she must not have kept up with the new research showing that those massive wonderful stone creations along the Nile were almost certainly not in fact built by slave labour. Nor does she seem to have grasped Britain's long history of slave owning based in British cities and colonised tropical areas, such as once-forested islands deforested to plant sugar cane, and the once forested American South. They had their share of slave-labour demolition as well. A casual statement like that really has no place in any books at all.

The more I write, the more I worry...these issues of identity and blood and tales and forests struck me most in the beginning but they were fuzzy, I've given them more clarity here and so they disturb me more. Perhaps I've got it wrong. I skimmed through them as I almost always finish what I have started, and came out the other side. I enjoyed much of the middle. I have new forests I can't wait to visit. But I don't think I got it wrong. Maybe this should have been three stars or none.

[Fiona · Rating 5 out of 5]

Once upon a time, a gossip (see OED) was 1) one who has contracted a spiritual relationship with another by acting as a sponsor at a baptism (God + Sib - akin, related); 2) a familiar acquaintance or friend. Especially applied to a woman’s female friends invited to be present at a birth; 3) idle talk, trifling or groundless rumour, tittle-tattle. Sara Maitland loves etymology and this is only one of the many examples in this book. She uses it as an example of how the trivialising of women’s concerns distorts language.

Once upon a time, our ancestors followed the rise of forests as the ice age receded. Forests and woodland are therefore part of our shared heritage. In each chapter, one for each month of the year, Maitland walks in a different forest or woodland and also retells a fairy tale. In this richly detailed book, we learn about the history of our forests from the Norman introduction of afforestation, the converting of land status to royal ownership so that it could be used for hunting, to the creation of manicured estate parks and ornamental woods, both of which were moves to change the purpose of woods from working and living spaces to places of leisure. The latter began to appear in the 19th century around the same time as Grimms’ fairy tales became popular. In the later 20th and 21st century, the Forestry Commission and The Woodland Trust, amongst others, have successfully reintroduced the idea of forests being used for leisure activities. In addition to a history lesson, this is also a discussion about ecosystems and is full of information about tree species, flowers, fungi, mosses and the creatures that live in the forests.

Woven deeply into the narrative is the story of fairy tales, particularly the Grimms’ brothers. It’s not a psychoanalytical or feminist theory of the origins or hidden meanings in these tales, it’s an exploration of how they can teach us about the social history of the times in which they were created - not so much about the times in which they were written as this was much later. She looks at the underlying themes which run through the original, not the sanitised Disney or Victorian versions, of these tales. Forests were places in which people lived and worked and these people are always the ‘goodies’ in fairy stories. They are nearly always stories about people trying to get rich or achieve happiness by doing very little for it and always have happy endings, no matter how sinister or vile the journey is. She argues that these tales would have been told around the fireside to ordinary people living hard lives in feudal societies, ruled over by lords and kings who were seen to do nothing much except hunt occasionally. They weren’t told as children’s stories but were for everyone’s enjoyment. There isn’t always a moral lesson but there is usually a purpose to the story, such as alerting everyone to be wary of strangers. The forests are sometimes scary places but more often are not, judging by the number of abandoned children who live in them undisturbed and unharmed for years. They are sometimes ridiculous - purely a fantastical entertainment. Birds and animals - even the head of a decapitated horse - can speak. Manikins (little men) can spin gold and gold coins can come out of a donkey’s ass! Too deep an analysis takes away from the purpose of these tales which was to entertain and, sometimes, to educate.

I find Sara Maitland to be an extraordinarily intelligent writer. Her nature writing is beautiful and her passion for nature is palpable. In closing, she issues a plea to parents and teachers to take children into the woods, to teach them about their ecosystems and to allow them to experience being in nature. She says that you can’t learn about woods by reading about woods. You can only learn about woods by going into woods. She’s right. Too few children have the freedom to do this any more. If they did, she argues that they would be healthier and happier, and would learn to understand the need to protect our natural habitats. If they did that, we would all live happily ever after - sorry, couldn’t resist that!

Easily a 5 star, if not a 6 star, read. I loved it!

[Sharman Russell · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dipping into this book was like sitting on a creek bank and dabbling bare feet into the cool water. Pleasant and refreshing. Only the creek was in my own house and somehow my Kindle was involved.

[Sally Howes · Rating 5 out of 5]

In GOSSIP FROM THE FOREST, Sara Maitland asserts that while many scholars study the similarities between the myths, legends, and folk tales of different cultures, not enough attention is paid to their differences, which are often influenced by the landscapes that gave them birth. Focusing on the fairytales that originated in Northern Europe, Maitland believes that: "The mysterious secrets and silences, gifts and perils of the forest are both the background to and the source of these tales." It seems apparent that GOSSIP FROM THE FOREST is a book not about generalities but about specificities and uniqueness. Each chapter explores a specific theme by recounting Maitland's own experience in a specific forest at a specific time of year, and ends with her own radical revisioning of a specific fairy story. This structure had the potential to make the overall book feel too formulaic, but the author's skill, playfulness, and unique flair for storytelling rescue it from this fate. Every chapter is so very individual and so very beautifully written that the book is never boring; instead, it is full of hidden gems and delicious surprises.

GOSSIP FROM THE FOREST is a delightful mixture of the personal and the academic. In essence, it is our friend Sara Maitland telling us about her life and all the different kinds of knowledge she has collected along the way, offered in a tone of intimate and thoughtful conversation. While it is true that this book focuses on the magic and mystery of forests, it is no mere whimsical journey through folklore. It also displays a confidently knowledgeable engagement with scholarship in ecology, paleontology, psychology, anthropology, and economic history. Put bluntly, Sara Maitland really knows her stuff! But she never gets too caught up in academia, instead skipping effortlessly and even joyfully from natural history to folklore and back again, making this wandering through the woods a singularly entertaining as well as informative affair.

The fairy stories Maitland deals in are the original versions (or as near as possible to them), definitely NOT the contemporary "Disneyfied" versions with which the current generation of children is most familiar. The original versions (a la the Brothers Grimm, Charles Perrault et al.) that GOSSIP FROM THE FOREST explores often involve children undergoing horrific and terrifying trials but always overcoming them through simple level-headedness and good sense. Maitland suggests an interesting correlation between contemporary censorship of the original fairy tales and excessive supervision and coddling of children that denies them free time in wild places like forests - time during which they can have adventures and learn self-reliance. Maitland's retellings of fairy tales at the end of each chapter are sometimes very radical retellings indeed, but always in keeping with the theme of the chapter. She says that: "The stories are so tough and shrewd formally that I can use them for anything I want - feminist revisioning, psychological exploration, malicious humour, magical realism, nature writing. They are generous, true and enchanted." Her own unique versions of the fairy stories are always thought-provoking and sometimes stunning. The story of the woodsman who saves Little Red Riding Hood from the wolf will stay with me for a long time.

Maitland shows that fairy stories are inherently subversive, and I was excited to find that GOSSIP FROM THE FOREST gives credence to a concept that has long fascinated me and become the cornerstone of why I am passionate about stories: the concept that intellectually radical ideas first see the light of day not in philosophical texts but in popular tales. As Maitland says: "These are radical, not conservative, tales; stories about overcoming distressing poverty and alienation, subverting the normal social order and achieving a new life of comfort and security."

The author has a very elegant turn of phrase that somehow seems to complement the beauty of the scenery in which the book is immersed. Her retellings of fairy stories exhibit a strangely endearing spectrum of language ranging from childlike innocence to adult themes and expressions. Her writing style, especially in some of the fairy stories, can be quite breathtakingly beautiful. Whether she is being humorous, frank, playful, or earnest, she wields words effortlessly, weaving them into delicate cobwebs brightly spangled with dew. One of my favorite passages reads: "She had aligned herself to the silence of the forest, the deep energetic silence of growing things, of seasons turning and of the soundless music of the stars. In spring it was lovely; in summer it was happy; in autumn it was fruitful; and in winter it was grim."

As the book progresses, it becomes clear that, as if by magic, fairy stories largely evade scholarly encapsulation. Where fairytales came from, why they mean so much to us, and even how they can be defined are questions whose answers remain as stubbornly elusive as, well, fairies. GOSSIP FROM THE FOREST elegantly, thoughtfully, enchantingly shows us that: "... forests, like fairy stories, need to be chaotic - beautiful and savage, useful and wasteful, dangerous and free."

[Josie · Rating 1 out of 5]

I was reading this book in public when a stranger came up to me and asked me what I thought of it. "Well," I said tactfully, in case she liked it or was actually the author's niece or something, "I think I would prefer it if she'd done a bit more research..."

It turned out my random stranger hated this book too. Bonding over a good book is nice, but mutual bashing of a bad book is infinitely more fun. So we had an enjoyable conversation where we both agreed that Sara Maitland is a barefooted hippie and that Gossip From The Forest is nothing more than Maitland's vague nonsensical ramblings on how beautiful bluebells are, and how terrifying mushrooms are. I'm not even kidding:

I had come to tackle my sense of terror through another phenomenon of the forests -- much smaller, more commonplace, and absolutely real -- which can also give me the same strange shiver of fear as the dream of wolves and as the fairy stories themselves, a sense of being in the presence of something eerie: fungi.

Seriously? It's a fucking mushroom. Get over yourself.

ANYWAY. The only saving grace of this book was that I did like most of the retold fairytales. But since the bulk of the book is Maitland's own opinions presented as facts... yeah. :| Also, her constant references to evil stepmothers really got on my nerves. I thought it was generally accepted that a lot of evil stepmothers were actually mothers in the original tales?

[Arie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't know why it took me so long to finish this one. It's beautifully written, informative yet succinct, and even lyrical at times. I found it absorbing, engaging, even read aloud excitedly (to whoever poor sod was nearby at the time) at more than a few points. And then I hit the last few chapters and stalled completely, and it seemed to drag from there. Nothing had changed, maybe it was a case of "it's not you, it's me" - or maybe you truly can have too much of a good thing?

Regardless, it's a fantastic book. I'd actually love to hear it aloud sometime (instead of inflicting my own readings on other people, that is).

[Kichelchen · Rating 2 out of 5]

First of, I absolutely adore Maitland's updated fairy tales. However, that is about as good as it gets. I don't think I have ever read a book so badly written. It is a lot down to bad editing, a lot of spelling mistakes, repeated or omitted words, which makes it look very unprofessional. In addition to that, she claims a lot of things without providing evidence (ex. she mentions the influence of goats in fairy tales and on the development of 'kid' as an affectionate word for children, no evidence) and she gets other things completely wrong. The French Revolution didn't start in 1787, but in 1789, she misquotes Tolkien (whom she consistently misspells as Tolkein), and there are a lot of redundancies and cross-references throughout her book that just make it a very tedious read.
I must say, I am glad I got this book on offer, it is really not worth the whole 20 pounds. I do hope there is a second edition coming out soon to at least get rid of all the mistakes. A shame really, that the fairy tales are overshadowed by the unprofessionalism of the rest of the book.

[Skye · Rating 3 out of 5]

A great concept - exploring the relationship between woods and fairy tales. Maitland has introduced me to many woods (and books about woods) which I look forward to exploring. Unfortunately, it was poorly edited, had a tendency to repetition and limited research leading to some factual errors. I was most irritated that, while writing almost exclusively about British woods, she completely ignored British fairy tales in favour of the Grimm's collection. A nice introduction, rather than a work of erudition.

[Christine · Rating 1 out of 5]

Sara Maitland can write beautifully about nature. Some of the passages in this book describing trees are wonderful.

However, it is not really about the sub-title. And quite frankly, just read Zipes who Maitland draws heavily on. Most of her "facts" are guesses and sometimes she is just plain wrong. I'm sorry but there are books out there about the forest in the fairy tale besides this one.

[Mark Hartzer · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wanted to like this more than I did, but despite some fine insights and pretty good writing, there was just too much stupid.

First, this is set in Great Britain. I get it. But extrapolating all forests from there is just not possible. Forests are determined by climate, soil conditions, topography, etc... Maitland is of the impression that a forest cannot be 'healthy' unless it is managed by people. Frankly, that is conceited to the extreme.

Second, pollarding or coppicing is NOT good for trees. Maitland is of the idea that a tree that has not been subject to this sort of butchery is not going to be 'ancient' because it has not undergone centuries of care. Good grief.

Third, Maitland pulls 'facts' out of thin air with no supporting documentation. I was particularly irked at her suggestion that the term 'kid' as in children derives from young goats. Really? Evidence please?

Finally, her propensity to let dogs off the leash led her and her idiot companions to blandly announce the dachshund puppy was was mauled by another roaming dog with '...a good deal of human and dog blood shed,...' and then continue with her story leads to the inevitable conclusion that she is a total wanker. (Also, trespassing and cutting down trees that don't belong to you are crimes.)

While I liked the premise regarding fairy tales and forests, I cannot get over the inescapable fact that Ms. Maitland is a twit.

[Paul · Rating 3 out of 5]

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.

[Sian Lile-Pastore · Rating 4 out of 5]

this is my kind of book - it's all about forests and their link with fairy tales, but it's also about our links with forests and with nature in general. I also really enjoyed (perhaps even a little more) Maitland's previous book A Book Of Silenceand I love how she gets completely absorbed in a subject and examines it from all angles.

She's losing a star though for what I assume to be her support of 'controlling' (ie killing) deer in forests...

my only other mini gripes are that I didn't feel that the photographs added anything to the text. She says she added them because all books on fairy tales have to have pictures, but in that case, I think some wood cuts or something would have gone down a treat. I could also have done with a bibliography or a further reading list - although the notes were great.

made me think and made things a little more magical.

[Ashley · Rating 3 out of 5]

For want of a good editor, this went from great to mediocre. Don't get me wrong, there's lots of fascinating insights and an undeniably unique thesis, but they are hampered by waffling indecision on genre, (Memoir? Narrative non-fiction? Academic essay?), voice (first, second, and third person all intermingling), and scope (including original retellings). Perhaps she was overly influenced by her source material, as her book is undefined and overgrown with a touch of strange.

Maitland's central idea is that "fairy tales" (by which she means Grimm's collected tales; it rather irks me she consistently metonymizes the two. It's fine if you want to focus on the Grimm collection, but please stop acting like these are the only legit fairy tales.) arose from distilled wisdom of countless generations who lived in and among the deciduous forests of norther Europe; moreover, both the tales and the forests are endangered by our increasingly "nature deficient" modern lifestyles.

Each chapter opens with Maitland visiting a particular forest in the UK, then pivoting into a natural history lecture on a particular flora or fauna in the region or on the area's history, which leads her to meditate on some trope or aspect of a Grimm's tale, and concludes with an original retelling. Sometimes this is rather coherent and tightly focused; for example, chapter 7 visits a coal mine in the Forest of Dean, talks at length about the history of mining in that area as well as mining dwarves in fairy tales, and then concludes with a retelling of Snow White from the dwarf perspective. Sometimes it's rather loose and rambling, as in chapter 3 that focused on the New Forest, a history of Crown managed forests which gave rise to Robin Hood, and then retold Rumpelstiltskin, which has nothing to do with any of that.

Maitland talks with the confident air of an amateur expert, and notably lacks serious scholarly research. Irritatingly, she goes on for 150 pages and several usages before deciding to define "pollarding" and "coppicing" halfway through the book. But, she shares some rather fascinating insights--the two I remember most clearly are her contrast between magic in fantasy and in fairy tales and the relationship between human evil and retributive justice in the original Grimm's stories.

Unfortunately, her caliber as a storyteller is only so-so; Hansel and Gretel and Seven Swans were both stellar, as were Rapunzel and Red Riding Hood. The rest are dull, preachy, confused (medieval or modern? make up your mind), or just ineffably flat. This reaches an embarrassing climax in "Dreams of the Sleeping Beauty," where Maitland is so obviously proud of her unimpressive poem. As a whole, the retellings didn't add as much as she hoped it would. Nor did the black and white photography, to be perfectly blunt. In short, Maitland's writing itself could've used some pruning to really flourish.

[Kim · Rating 1 out of 5]

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.

[Sara · Rating 1 out of 5]

I've given up on this book. The reasons are these:

1. Maitland's view is rather exclusive (read: she has her opinion, it's the right one, anyone who disagrees can leave)

2. The "search" that she goes on is rather more a chronicling of the history of the specific forests she visits with a smattering of how forests used to be treated in the past. Her writing is not at all interesting or though provoking. Dull, dull, dull.

3. I was half interested in this book because of the link to fairy tales. Maitland includes "fairy tales" at the end of each chapter, relating them to the wood she just visited. These are her re-tellings, I suppose because they are worded rather weirdly, some of them are not even the fairy tale at all but a continuation and full of the philosophical matter she has just expounded on in the previous chapter, and some are just skewed in the way she'd like to see the story. It comes off rather as her shoehorning her own opinions into fairy tales so that they match her connecting them to a particular wood.

4. According to Maitland, there's nothing fatally harmful in forests for children. Let your children run wild and free in a forest and for goodness sake, do not give them a cellphone because that defeats the purpose of them being ALONE, the only proper way for children to experience nature. Children need "unsupervised time" where they can wander free without any adults near them. This is, according to Maitland, perfectly safe and, "the number of children murdered by strangers per year has not increased since the Second World War" (p. 98) and that children are more likely to come across harm in their home than wandering free. Forests, according to Maitland, are "relatively safe terrains for exploration," (p. 100) and, though I'm no expert, I feel I should disagree because anything can happen in a forest that could be dangerous. She considers only a snake bite (I guess there aren't that many poisonous snakes in Britain) and even then, not potentially deadly. "There are few cliffs to fall off and small chance of drowning. They present challenges but not, on the whole, serious danger," (p. 100). Maybe it's because I live in America and I know our forests to contain quite a lot more than that, but I feel she's really downplaying the myriad ways someone could be harmed in the forest. I digress. The point is, I think she has a very limited view and I just can't get behind it.

And there you have it. Couldn't finish it, I just had to pass it by.

[Lynn Spencer · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars I love fairytales. I think I probably read all of Andrew Lang's Fairy Books growing up and have read a great many other collections besides. I've wondered about the origins of some of these stories, but hadn't found a really satisfying book on the subject. This one definitely comes closer than Bettelheim's famous (and somewhat scandal-plagued) book, though still not entirely compelling for me.

Maitland theorizes that many of the fairytales recorded by the brothers Grimm are different than others because of where they came from. The villagers of northern and central Europe lived in and near forests and she believes that these forests shaped their imaginations in ways that wouldn't have happened for peoples dwelling on the shore on in deserts. I found the idea interesting, and I wanted to see where the author took it.

Each chapter opens with the author's journey to a particular forest, and then is followed by a retelling of a fairytale. The portions narrated by the author were of varied interest to me. I definitely picked up some interesting tidbits of forestry and history as well as some analysis of how forest life may have influenced particular stories. However, it all gets mixed into a bit too much of the author's own navel-gazing and I have to admit that portion of things rather put me off. It felt self-absorbed rather than interesting.

The retold fairy stories are a mixed lot. I enjoyed most of them, including a vision of Hansel and Gretel living as adults, marked somewhat by their encounter with the witch in the forest. However, a few of them do fall flat, including the account of Sleeping Beauty that ended the book - and bored me senseless.

[Allyson Shaw · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's possible I'm too close to this subject matter to enjoy this book having studied literary fairy tales and modern shcolarship of the same while I was a young graduate student.. I did learn some "fun facts" about British forests and forestry but Maud, did this book need an editor. It was repetitive and slow going. Each section about a specific forest ends with a fairy tale--each more like an ill conceived draft than a finished story. It struck me that she brings no folklore, archeology or feminist analysis (which she seemingly dismisses early on) into the mix-- either they don't matter to her or possibly she is relying on her a manufactured sense of wonder and a personal approach to replace these juicier disciplines that would really round out the book? This really leaves the heart out of the matter for me entirely. The real problem was the provincial "we" of the book with its middle-class Britishness. The little asides about citizenship and how naturalised immigrants should all be given a book of fairy tales to help them (us) become acculturated. I'm an immigrant who has lived in the UK for over a decade--to live here is my birthright, and I have jumped through countless economic, social and bureaucratic hoops to prove it. This proving will never be done, as this book attests. What does a love of forest or fairy stories have to do with any of this nonsense-- surely these are not *British* things? It is safe to say this book made me grumpy.

[Katie Greenwood · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is perhaps one of the most 'out of my comfort zone' books I've ever read. It was brilliant.

I say out of my comfort zone because nature writing has never been something I choose to read. It's just not my thing. However, this one was. Gossip From the Forest I have been describing as quasi-non-fiction. It's split into chapters focusing on different woods around the UK and then a fairy tale retold taking inspiration from that previous forest. Hence, quasi-non-fiction.

I learned an awful lot about woods and the process of sustainable forestry. What I was really interested in was how Sara Maitland linked the forests of today with the fairy tales of years gone by. It was as though she walked into a time capsule and was able to perfectly explain how those woods still contain the magic of fairy tales. Then the stories she retold were so unique whilst still adhering to the nostalgia fairy tales hold.

A truly brilliant collection of stories and nature writing.

www.a-novel-idea.co.uk

[Barb in Maryland · Rating 2 out of 5]

I finally threw in the towel at about the 3/4 point. I so wanted to like it and I was very interested in the premise.
Maybe if I had read it a chapter a day (or every few days) I wouldn't have become bored...
The pure forestry bits were fascinating, especially the bits about the New Forest, Epping Forest and the Forest of Dean. However, it took the author several chapters to explain key terms such as 'pollard' and 'coppice'; I had to resort to dear ole' Wikipedia for definitions. Her theory about the ties between forests and the fairy tales of Northern Europe was also interesting; but the author nattered on just a bit too much, telling us the same sort of thing over and over.
The retelling of individual fairy tales was hit or miss for me; some of her versions seemed to be the antithesis of the point she had been trying to make. (and so often the POV character of her version did NOT get the happy ending which, in her version, they deserved).

Big disappointment.

[Nightshade · Rating 1 out of 5]

One of the most shallow and rambling books I have ever read, which like fairy gold appeared to be deep and resonant but over time turned into nothing but dirt and dust. Perhaps I will write a longer review but for now suffice to say I am deeply disappointed in this book, Maitland's very odd natterings on and the lack of congruity between her re-written fairy tales and the British Forests she visits.

[Liz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just finished this engrossing book on wild woods and fairytales. Beautifully written it alternates Maitland's retelling of Grimm tales with meditations on specific British woodlands and their relation to folklore and culture. Thoroughly recommended.

[Finch · Rating 1 out of 5]

Didn't finish at barely 70 pages. This book feels as though the author went into it with an argument to make and even though she pretty much just travels parallel to the point she's desperate to make, she's all too willing to drive right off the cliff to get there. I don't think it's fair to base your entire argument off Just the Grimm fairytales, especially not when half your arguments are undone by looking at other Germanic fairytales and folklore. I don't know, maybe I'm too stupid for the point the author is trying to make, but none of her arguments resonated beyond making me frown severely at the book and read bits out to my friend in absolute bafflement.

The retellings of various fairytales are also irritating - I understand what you're doing, that you're adhering to the tradition of retelling fairytales to fit your audience and to have your voice, but with Rumplestiltskin? Arguing that the miller's daughter was a villain through and through as though the point of the original wasn't already that she was greedy and shortsighted and more than a little foolish and had to learn better? I'm tired.

[Kay · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sara Maitland used an exploration of the woods of the British Isles as a way to examine our relationship with fairy tales. Interweaving history, botany, geography and ecology, she offers fascinating connections and insights not only concerning fairy tales, but also the relationships between the Isles, woods and society. I can be a magpie with knowledge, I love collecting fascinating disparate facts so I reveled in the book. The writing is lovely especially in the descriptions of traveling various forests. I so want to visit the forests she described. Interspersed are Grimm fairy tales which are delightful in their own right.

[☽ · Rating 3 out of 5]

this book made a big deal out of identifying fairytales through their discrepancies across individual cultures and then only talked about germanic fairytales for the rest of the book... i liked all the parts about traipsing through nature, and i sometimes liked the retellings of fairytales at the ends of the chapters, but the connections between the biohistory of the woods and the substance of the tales were tenuous at best

[G. Lawrence · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautiful book containing fairy tales and forest walks,what could be better? Fairy tales retold with wit and feeling, and the lyrical respect for the forest is palpable. Highly recommend

[Bradley · Rating 1 out of 5]

Firstly, this is a DNF (did not finish) for me. So it is 1 star by default.

So the review is not of the complete book, it is only in regard the parts I read and consequently the reasons I failed to finish it.

Sara Maitland visits a different type of forest in the UK every month for a calender year. A traditional fairy tale inspired by the forest follows.

The fairy tales are not faithful reproductions. Sara having explained that coming from an oral tradition the tales would have always been evolving in the hands of good story tellers so as to engage the target audience more thoroughly.

The wood is not really used as physical location more a mental jumping off point in trying to unravel the complex mechanisms and origins of the fairy tale as a form.

At times the ideas in the text are dense and repetitive. Like being lost in the woods, looking around to see everything the same but different. More than once I was lost and unsure of the point being made.

Clarification is difficult as there is no agreed upon definition of what a fairy tale is or which version of them is the truest account or if there ever was such a thing.

I am left wondering if this general muddle is my failing or the books.

The descriptive forest passages almost universally fail to conjure any magic or emotional depth of the place.

As example.

"If you pick them*, their stalks are long and flacid, dripping a limp dampness onto your hands from white silky stalk bases"

If you flick forward 300 pages and track down the note pertaining to the asterisk, you are rewarded with the word "Don't". Why this great bit of advice has to be searched for when the bad advice has been given prominence is beyond me.

Sara continues,

"And yet...in full bloom, in their wide pools of blueness, they create an ineffable atmosphere of everything that is loveliest about our ancient forests."

Why the note, and many others, could not made part of the main textual flow or omitted entirely is unclear.

How on earth did words like "blueness" and "loveliest" managed to survive to final print?

Sara is describing bluebells.

The fairy tales began too look like an easy way to fill a few pages without a lot of effort and once that thought crept in, it all began too look like it had been woven from the same cloth as the emperor's new clothes.

It began to feel like a good idea poorly executed.

It was at this point I started skimming and shortly afterwards realised life was too short. Reading a selection of fairy tales in my own local woods being a better use of the time saved.

[Ellen · Rating 3 out of 5]

On one hand, I loved this book. On the other hand, I was disappointed by it. Why did I have such a mixed response? Well, here goes.

The book is subtitled "The Tangled Roots of Our Forests and Fairytales", which certainly intrigued the folklorist in me. Divided into 12 chapters by forest, Maitland discusses different forests in England and Scotland, including Airyolland Wood, the Forest of Dean and my own (well, I do reside in it) New Forest, and then follows each forest's chapter with her own adaptation of a fairy tale, usually fairly well known ones, such as "Rumpelstilskin" or "Rapunzel".

So far, so good. The problem derives from Maitland's analysis and the tenuous connection of each tale to each forest. I thought at first that Maitland actually had uncovered a link between, say, The New Forest and Rumpelstilskin. Alas, that is not the case, and considering how much she talks about snakes in the New Forest, I'm surprised she connected "The White Snake" with Saltridge Wood.

Whilst I enjoyed the new adaptations (the writing is excellent indeed), I wanted more from Maitland's writings about the forests and fairy tales in general. Perhaps because I reside in the New Forest, I was surprised by how few of the New Forests' own myths and legends weren't present in the chapter, which was expanded by discussions of Forest Law leading to Robin Hood -- and another forest. Perhaps Maitland only visited the New Forest briefly and didn't research it in detail? It made me wonder about the validity of her research in other chapters as well. Lines such as "Feminist criticism" without reference to the specific feminists making such comments made me cringe a little. I tell my A-level Lit students that whilst it's a requirement to use literary critics in their exam responses, even though they can't have any notes nor texts with them, they can't get away with such a broad statement. They must memorise names of critics. As writing this book shouldn't have been done under exam conditions, I shouldn't think it would have been that challenging to be more specific about the "feminist critics".

In other words, this book was good, but it could have been so much more.

[Scribal · Rating 4 out of 5]

Second review after mulling it over for a week or more: I've started a project that will include a lot of thinking about woods and nature, tales and the spirits of place. I read Maitlands book hoping/expecting to find "my" haunted forest. Never in my bookwormy, nerdy, long life has a book about a subject dear to me made me feel so American!! This was not my experience of woods at all! And these were not the tales and fairies that lived in "my" woods.

Maitland says "we" worry about other people not wild animals in the forest. Yes, near cities, but in the Rocky Mountain pine and spruce forests I do worry about mountain lions and bears, and lightening, and flash floods. She says it's the Grimm stories that "we" relate to. I always found them flat and affectless. "My" fairy tales were hidden in the illustrations by Arthur Rackham or Fritz Wegner; hinted at in epic poetry and in the margins of mythologies.

As I said below the historical practices of forestry in Britain were fascinating to me. I was raised by a forester/tree scientist/woodcarver who took me on my first forest walks in frozen flooded pine plantations when I was very young, and I appreciated Maitland's easy explanations of older practices in the contexts of her forest walks. (Interestingly I've read many reviews of the book and this part is the only part that ever gets any criticism. I thought it had the most specific "placeness" of anything in the book).


First Review:
This book seeks to connect fairytales and forests in a deep, imaginative, childlike way which is a wonderful concept. The description of forest practices as currently observable in British forests and the fairytale retellings are very good.

I found the author's personal responses of fairytales and forests to be that: personal. They weren't often ones I shared and were hardly compelling as evidence for a theory. Related to that is the very odd choice to address only the Grimm collection of tales..rejecting Celtic mythology offhandedly because it is "of the sea," for example.

I enjoyed reading it.

[Rosario · Rating 4 out of 5]

Maitland's thesis is that fairy tales and forests are intimately connected, with fairy tales clearly originating in forests, told originally by forest dwellers, and uniquely shaped by this. She makes some excellent points when comparing how fairy tales such as those collected by the Brothers Grimm's differ from traditional stories from other traditions, such as those from desert peoples or peoples who lived by the sea. I was convinced.

Gossip From the Forest contains 12 chapters, each covering a visit Maitland made to a forest, one per month. The chapters start by describing the wood in question and tying that to a certain factual theme, whether it's the history of afforestation (in the UK sense of converting land into Royal Forests), the tradition of Freeminers in the Forest of Dean or the activities of the Forestry Commission. That was all interesting enough (if a bit dry in a few cases), but then the fascinating stuff starts when Maitland begins to bring in fairy tales into the narrative, by relating each theme she develops to a particular aspect of fairy tales, whether it's the role of women, childrearing, or the perception of those who work in forest vs those who don't.

I absolutely loved that, but not as much as I loved the fairy tale retellings that follow each chapter. A couple of them are relatively straightforward, but the best were those in which Maitland takes a bit of an off-beat approach. we see Hansel and Gretel decades after they defeated the witch, still somewhat haunted by those events. We see that, seen from Rumpeltilskin's point of view, he's not the villain of the piece, and the tale of the little Goose Girl is much, much better when we see it retold from the point of view of the King who will then become her father-in-law.

Good stuff!

MY GRADE: A B.