Out of the Woods

by Luke Turner

A fierce, poignant and highly original memoir about sexuality, shame and the lure of the trees

'A brave and beautiful book, electrifying on sex and nature, religion and love. No one is writing quite like this. I'm so glad Luke Turner exists' OLIVIA LAING, author of THE LONELY CITY and CRUDO

'Refreshing, frank, edifying, courageous . . . I was quite emotional by the end. Luke Turner is a serious thinker and a unique and important new voice' AMY LIPTROT, author of THE OUTRUN

After the disintegration of the most significant relationship of his life, the demons Luke Turner has been battling since childhood are quick to return - depression and guilt surrounding his identity as a bisexual man, experiences of sexual abuse, and the religious upbringing that was the cause of so much confusion. It is among the trees of London's Epping Forest where he seeks refuge. But once a place of comfort, it now seems full of unexpected, elusive threats that trigger twisted reactions.

No stranger to compulsion, Luke finds himself drawn again and again to the woods, eager to uncover the strange secrets that may be buried there as he investigates an old family rumour of illicit behaviour. Away from a society that still struggles to cope with the complexities of masculinity and sexuality, Luke begins to accept the duality that has provoked so much unrest in his life - and reconcile the expectations of others with his own way of being.

OUT OF THE WOODS is a dazzling, devastating and highly original memoir about the irresistible yet double-edged potency of the forest, and the possibility of learning to find peace in the grey areas of life.

Genres: Nonfiction, Memoir, Nature, LGBT, Biography, Queer, Autobiography

288 pages, Hardcover

Published January 24, 2019

Reviews

[Liis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Out of the Woods is a memoir that spans generations, history and present of Epping Forest, and 3 decades of confusion, guilt and looking for answers to find peace, acceptance and love. Luke Turner grew up in a Methodist family as the son of a preacher. The conflict in his life started early on as Luke questions and hides his true self, his bisexuality and struggles with understanding the masculinity of teenage boys that surround him.

When faced with the deathly silent grief of the end of love, my instinct was to obscure it with a hurricane of distraction, day and night, from forest and London alike.

As Luke struggles through relationships, the sexual compulsion makes everything around him and within him crumble. In the midst of trying to find something- anything– that would make sense in the ongoing ripple in his life, Luke searches his soul, explores the nightlife, digs deep into the history of his family and how everything is tied to Epping Forest.

Whilst his coming of age brought along excitement with his sexuality, it also brought sexual abuse and danger. It takes time before he accepts that, indeed, he has been sexually abused and that what has happened to him- even though, it gave him a rush of adrenaline at a certain moment, was not right. Not right at all.

This book is so utterly atmospheric and beautifully written. The voice of Luke Turner is one that made me travel distances and ages and settings as I was with him on his journey, both physically and mentally through thick and thin and sadness and small joys and victories.

Intense focus in parallel with Luke’s life is set upon Epping Forest- with everything that Luke says about the forest- what it looks like, what it feels like, how it has evolved and the secrets and crime it hides, made me feel like I have seen the forest, visited it myself and felt it’s mystical power over humanity.

As I lay there I might die and be absorbed- the forest would not blink a moment but swallow up the nutrients locked inside me and carry on, uncaring and unknowing. I would be returned to the forest, to all of them, to the greates power that the planet has ever seen and will ever know.

Luke writes this memoir without holding a single part of who he is and what he has experienced back. His approach to telling his tale is evocative and honest and raw. I found Luke to be entirely appreciative of his family, the Epping Forest and his passion to unearth the history around both to find that something that ties family and forest together. He wants to know why and how and explain everything… But it’s never really that simple.

The decision to dynamite the foundations of a life will always throw rubble in unexpected directions.

I hope that these few quotes shared from the eARC version of the book have successfully demonstrated the depth of intricate detail and the power of observation with which Luke brings us his story.

As far as memoirs go, this one hits hard… I kept imagining that Luke could be anyone I meet on the streets passing by, someone who deals with a turmoil within them. A turmoil that makes their feet walk in certain directions to bring about change in their life for better or worse. By the end of this book, you will know Luke. You will know about his childhood, his family, his first sexual experiences that have shaped his life. You will know the compulsion that acts as a catalyst and eventually you will see him break the chains. It’s like witnessing a caterpillar – cocooned into (sometimes false) safety by any means possible- evolve into a butterfly. Into clarity and future.

I was impure, corrupt. There was always talk of people who had ‘gone off the rails’ and I didn’t want to become one of them. It didn’t and it doesn’t help that the more extreme and judgemental voices in Christianity might consider heterosexual adultery a sin and homosexuality an abomination: to be bisexual was to carry two damnations in one.

To finish off this review, I would like to send a thank you to Luke- a thank you out into the Universe as he might not ever see this review. Thank you for sharing you story without hiding even the tiniest sliver of yourself behind false pretenses. For being honest. For being brave. My heart beat along with this memoir and maybe, somewhere, some time, someone else will read this book. Someone who can relate on so many levels and perhaps find solace and peace and hope.

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

He was beginning to think that his relationship with Alice was the one but all too soon it unravelled. Left alone, the thoughts in his head that had affected him since childhood began to return. Depression, guilt, religious confusion, abuse and the conflicts of his bi-sexuality, they were back again. This time he had a place of refuge where he could go to, Epping Forest. It was a place that would draw him back time after time.

It didn’t provide all the solace and comfort he needed though, some of that he would find in the arms of men and women after his relationship finished. Epping Forest is a place of secrets, there is obviously something about it that attracts a darker personality and it has a reputation for a place that men could go to find partners, especially when homosexuality was illegal. However, rather than finding demons in the woods, Turner used that time spent in the natural world to excise his own and it gives him the inspiration to begin to investigate a family secret from a few generations ago.

The ancient timbers of Greensted know no hypocrisy or bigotry, but are prayers carved from nature, as sacred as hymns.

The blurb describes this as an original book, and throughout a lot of the book, I’d be tempted to agree. Turner writes with a wonderful eye for detail and even though this is a very raw, honest and open memoir you do have to be broadminded for this. He asks searching questions of himself about his sexuality and how society treats those that do not fit conventional stereotypes. But the understorey of his memoir is the forest, how it lifts his mood when he visits, so much so that he ends up volunteering there. It is a great companion to Strange Labyrinth which is Will Ashon’s take on the same place and shows how people can have a deep attachment in a very different way to a place.

[Laura · Rating 3 out of 5]

Luke Turner’s Out of the Woods uses Epping Forest as a backcloth for the exploration of his own confusing psyche: quoting St Augustine, he reflects that the inner world is ‘a limitless forest, full of unexpected dangers.’ As a bisexual man, Turner has often felt caught between two worlds, and as this memoir proceeds, we discover that the pull he feels towards spontaneous and risky sexual encounters can, he believes, be traced back to early abusive experiences with older men as a teenager. The forest itself feels like neither one thing or another; not a truly wild place, as it is so close to the suburbs of London (and Turner describes some of the decaying, yet expensive houses of these suburbs in vivid detail), and yet a place that has long been visited by the city’s inhabitants for behaviour that has been viewed as outside social bounds. Turner reflects on the men convicted for public indecency in the forest, and how it is still used as a male cruising ground; he finds out that his own ancestors had a child out of wedlock, and speculates that it was conceived in Epping.

This is one of those memoirs when I feel I have to distinguish carefully between the voice and the person. I have every sympathy for Turner’s struggle with his sexuality, and for what he suffered in his early years. As he rightly points out, bisexual men are still marginalised in a way that gay men are not: many people still persist in believing that they don’t exist or in stereotyping them as kinky, polygamous hedonists who can never be appropriate long-term partners – especially in heterosexual relationships.

And yet, despite the fact that Turner highlights these important issues, I did not feel that Out of the Woods succeeded as a memoir. I’m afraid I found it self-indulgent, and the writing often awkward and overwrought. Turner is front and centre all the time (no chance of missing his struggles with housing), and he fails to weave his personal experiences satisfactorily into a wider narrative about woodlands, sexuality, and state policing. I also found the lack of explicit recognition of male privilege a little frustrating; as I’ve said above, bisexual men face particular and serious prejudice, but at certain points in this memoir, Turner makes it sound as if they are the most radical, binary-breaking, properly oppressed group in history, which isn’t a label I think should be applied to any social group. And while Turner picks up on some interesting facts about woodland, such as the ability of trees to communicate with each other through networks of moss (see Suzanne Simard’s 2016 TED talk for more), there are much better books out there on the woods, notably Sara Maitland’s Gossip from the Forest. So for me, a really groundbreaking book about bi men has yet to materialise.

I received a free proof copy of this book from the publisher for review.

[Alex Sarll]

A memoir of bisexuality and Epping Forest – two things of which I'm generally all in favour, but which are off the menu for the foreseeable. Despite which, I'd spent a while reluctant to read this one, not least because I'd not long since read another Epping Forest midlife crisis book by someone with a background in music, Will Ashon's Strange Labyrinth, which had won me over among other things with how deliberately and knowingly bathetic it is. Whereas this, I'd got the impression, took itself much more seriously. That was not a misconception; it's clearly been written de profundis, and comes with all the problems attendant on that sincerity. One friend mentioned having seen it compared to Alan Partridge: Nomad, which in a sense is unfair – part of the cruel brilliance of Nomad is that after you've read it, every 'personal journey' book you read, certainly any by a male writer anywhere near the middle of life, feels at least a little bit Nomad. But there's definitely a straining for effect in parts of this, and a very pat 'dignity of manual labour' ending just like the ones which spoil Office Space or Jay McInerney novels, not to mention some hilariously contorted formulations like "Heterosexual and homosexual gay-porn sites", or "homophobic gay bashers", from which a kinder or more attentive editor should really have rescued Turner.

But of course, writing stuff like that in the first place is clearly an outgrowth of his long struggle with his sexuality, and so in that sense it's form following content. As he tells it, his life has been a rollercoaster of intense but often furtive gay encounters, interspersed with straight relationships which are in turn upended by what he describes as a compulsion. This began with a schoolboy flirtation with an attractive classmate, but then takes a dark turn when he ends up sucking off an old man in a public toilet at 14. Which, no argument, is a horrible thing to happen and no wonder it's left scars – but there's still something uneasy in the way he talks about how that was seven years under the gay age of consent at the time, as though that law hadn't itself been a barbarous relic which now, thank goodness, seems like an injustice from far longer ago. Equally, the chapter Teenage Lightning expresses unease with the Coil song of that name in particular, and the sexualisation of teenagers in general, despite the fact that mathematically, 'teenager' describes someone legal more often than not. And then elsewhere he talks about "the never-ending paedo panic that is a tabloid-inspired national hobby"! In short, for all that the book is presented as a journey and a reconciliation, he's clearly still working some stuff out, as witness also the use of phrases like "the wasted gift of my body to people who did not deserve it", which sounds like it could come straight out of an abstinence preacher's rhetoric.

This, though, is part of the theme: the way that pervasive homophobia can warp sexuality, at both a society-wide and an individual level, leaving distorted growths much like the mess Epping Forest has ended up with through pollarding being practised for centuries, and then abandoned. The abusive adults were clearly part of this, but so was the society which made gay desire into something hidden and sinful in the first place. Growing up in a deeply religious household was a big part of the problem, but so too was toxic masculinity in general, particularly as manifested in schoolboys. And dear heavens I recognised this bit, being the weird kid who likes Suede and hates PE in a school where popularity is largely measured on sporting prowess, who's much happier out in the local wilderness than trying to negotiate the baffling, thuggish creatures one's peers have become. Turner is very good on the contradictions inherent in fancying some men while also finding many male behavious entirely repulsive, all that bullying and 'banter' – though of course the experience of a girl realising she fancies the bitchy straight girls, certainly back then, probably had more similarities than differences. Towards the end of the book it becomes clear that the bits of Turner's experience I can recognise run even more specific: I was born in the same month as him, a year earlier, and also had an early reluctance to engage in the whole 'breathing' lark to which some have attributed my more distant tendencies in later life. Still, each time a new detail in common ticked past, I just found myself thinking once more, how come I'm so much less fucked up about all this than him? I could only draw two overlapping conclusions: for all that Turner is very complimentary about his parents, mine were a lot better. And/or, religion really does wreck people. Granted, I did have a brief interlude going to a Methodist youth group myself, just because it was a comparatively rare way to see friends in that awkward 'too old for playing out, too young for booze' interlude of life – but even then I had more sense than to take it too seriously, and would already delight in playing a subtly Luciferian role whenever the faith bit came along.
(Oh, and it should hardly need saying anymore where faith groups are involved, but obviously the leader of said youth group was subsequently to end up on a register. Yes, that one)

For all this stuff I recognised so well, though, there were oddly universalising bits elsewhere. Sometimes Turner does row back from these, as when he for a moment appears to be suggesting that everyone finds nocturnal forests scary – I find them overwhelming, true, but that isn't quite the same thing. More definite, and even less recognisable, was the passage where he talks about how bisexual men he meets tend to be with unknowing women who can't ever be allowed to know. Now, we move in overlapping circles, yet mainly bisexual men I know are in relationships with women who complain that the boys are not gaying up anything like often or visibly enough. And this disconnect kept coming back to me whenever he talks about self-destructing his relationships because of his cottaging compulsion. Could he not explore something between promiscuous singledom and monogamous coupledom, find a girlfriend who considers the sordid excursions a bonus? If not, presumably that itself is another manifestation of the faith damage, continuing to tie yourself in knots while ignoring an obvious solution.

All of this may sound like I didn't like the book, but I think I'm frustrated with the backdrop it's struggled out of more than the thing itself. Most first books have their imperfections, and one wrestling with this much baggage is bound to show some drag from them. It still manages to make some very good points too: when Turner talks about the decline of London in terms of the city being infiltrated by the deathliness of Middle England, I'd never thought of the problem quite that way, but it's perfect (and, of course, even more pronounced now everything that made the capital different is as thoroughly shut as the most boring provincial meat market). There's some excellent prose here, and while some of it is in standard nature writing territory, it's none the worse for that: "Across Epping Forest the beeches turned incandescent, the gnarled old pollards were no longer grotesque beasts but intricately carved candelabra holding up the season's fire". A lot of the most powerful passages, though, are regarding the sex, where Turner always succeeds in making it hot, or horrific, or some tangled mixture of the two, according to his intent. Or funny, of course: "a bisexual man seems to be having his cock and eating it". And simply mixing that in with the nature stuff is a radical act, one which has pissed off some number of more prudish nature writing fans. Which is, in and of itself, a good thing. Apart from anything else, what is nature if not the results of fucking, frantically going about the business of doing some more fucking? Above all, I love the line "Bisexuals are perceived to be a threat to heteronormative culture, louche, priapic and oversexed, greedy males for whom any hole's a goal." Well, one tries one's best.

[Natalia · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pretty good read, with a lot of vivid, picturesque descriptions and pop culture references and pretty instructive on a somewhat independent protagonist of the book i.e. the Epping Forest in London. However the plot ends up not being all that interesting - there isn't really anything happening throughout the book; it is kinda insightful story of a human's journey through his ruminations, experience and coming to terms with one's identity. With that the book is somewhat elusive in its onirism, balancing on the brim of subconscious, uncognizable and intangible. Not really all that queer or woke of a book, it is more of a rather personal account of one's self-discovery and in that t reads pretty well.

[Stagger Lee · Rating 4 out of 5]

A really wonderful book, deeply personal and painful, but also full of redemption and hope. Sexuality and religion and identity and trees. Lots of trees.

Highly recommended.

[Jo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Turner has struggled with his identity as a bisexual man since his teens, feeling that it was something to keep hidden and that bisexuality was not as accepted as homosexuality. He tries to come to terms with it all by returning to nature and spending time in Epping Forest, a place he's always loved. This was a slow moving memoir with some beautiful descriptions of nature interspersed with graphic memories of male-to-male sexual encounters.

[Zoë Siobhan Baillie · Rating 4 out of 5]

So much to love and relate to in this book that totally turns the "sad person goes for a walk outside" genre*on its head. Recognised much of myself in the bisexual misfit listening to Suede in the commuter belt, and the adult struggling to understand destructive sexual compulsion years down the line.

Questions all the binaries between nature and the urban/anthropocene, between healthy and unhealthy sexual desire and expression, manages to tease out all these discussions about fluidity without ever slipping into being in any way pretentious. Brilliant book.

*A genre of which I am very fond

[Ray Mathew-Santhosham · Rating 4 out of 5]

Turner's tumultuous journey to reconcile his faith and bisexuality was deeply moving in its snapshot of the queer experience as it relates to the solace of nature. Turner also explores the history of a forest in England notorious as a hookup spot for queer men who are fearful of expressing their desires openly in the real world. As a lesbian, I was excited to understand more of a perspective I am unfamiliar with but adjacent to and I can say without a doubt that reading this comforted the part of me that wishes to see narratives that reflect my queer experience.

[granolabars · Rating 4 out of 5]

V interesting read with themes of sexuality and religion tied into the forest. Lots of it went over my head but I did enjoy it

[Francesco Billi-Timon · Rating 2 out of 5]

Flaccid.

[Andrew Spink · Rating 4 out of 5]

The publisher's blurb promised a book about someone brought up as a strict Methodist who discovered spirituality in woodland. As you could roughly apply that description to myself, this was a 'must read' book for me. The form of the book is at the same time both its strength and its weakness. It is very personal, revealing a lot of intimate details about the author's inner struggle to come to terms with his own nature in the context of a religious upbringing which provided a morality which he could not adhere to and his experience of nature which, at least some of the time, did not provide the spiritual experience that his religious background had taught him to expect. The author's sexuality, and his struggles with it, is placed centrally in a dominant position in the book. On the one hand his honesty and transparency about his experiences gives a startling insight into his life, but on the other hand, the emphasis on what he was doing at that moment rather than a deeper reflection as to what those experiences said about his issues on a more psychological level left me wondering a bit about the layers underneath. The intense subjectivity of the writing is all very well, but I was thinking a lot of the time whilst reading it that an objective observer might have had very different things to say about his mental state. And what has he left out? Nevertheless, this was certainly a book worth reading and you don't have to have such struggle with your identity as the author to benefit from it.

[Kate · Rating 4 out of 5]

"I was impure, corrupt. There was always talk of people who had ‘gone off the rails’ and I didn’t want to become one of them. It didn’t and it doesn’t help that the more extreme and judgemental voices in Christianity might consider heterosexual adultery a sin and homosexuality an abomination: to be bisexual was to carry two damnations in one."
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Thoughts ~
This is a beautifully written, bold coming-of-age memoir of a bisexual man coming to terms with his sexuality, his past and his families history all in one with a sprawling ancient forest as the backdrop.

A thought-provoking read, Turner opens up about growing up in a religious household as a preacher's son. The confusion that stemmed from this, and traumas he has suffered. And of course the impact nature and the forest have had on his life. This is an original memoir and form of nature writing that I quite enjoyed. Turner's honesty and insight about being a bisexual man vs a gay man in society offered a lot of thought as did his take on spirituality, sexuality and masculinity in today's society.

I am obviously not an own voices reviewer for this book so I suggest seeking thoes reviews out but I did enjoy this one and I wont forget it anytime soon.

Thank you @greystonebooks for sending me this book opinions are my own.
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[Hannah O‘Neill · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book offers an exploration of binaries like the nature-culture divide and hetero-vs homosexuality, and dives into the POV character's indecisiveness with regard to religion and his Christian upbringing. I gain some insights on questioning the idea that nature can heal us and purify us from the ills of urban life and rather accepting it as an entity in itself that is neither good or bad. Even though I might not fully agree. I appreciate the topic of male bisexuality. BUT and now comes a big BUT: SORRY but I really struggled to connect with the characters. Maybe it was intentional but who even is the main character? You never really learn anything about him. Then there is the guy in the forest - what about him? And all of a sudden this revelation about this ancestor who got pregnant without marrying, what was that all about? Help me I am confused and the pages of landscape description didn't help!!

[Brett Benner · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was with this for the first seventy five page or so as author Luke Turner waxed poetic with some lovely writing about London’s Epping Forrest (that brought to mind Richard Powers, “Overstory”), and his attachment to it as a child growing up in a conservative household of a minister and his wife. But as it began to devolve into his struggle with his bisexuality, and a sexual compulsion that stemmed from abuse, it began to muddle for me. I wasn’t sure any longer if I was reading essays or a coming of age novel. Turner is certainly a good writer. I just lost interest in the subject and fought to get to the end.

[Andrew · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a very intimate memoir in which Luke Turner goes into some very dark places associated with the continuing conflict in his life of his sexuality. The book explores his life as a bi sexual adolescent boy and man while at the same time he balances it with his love of Epping Forest which through the story of its history and its present day threat, beauty and source of sexual encounters mirrors the life story of the author.
The book touches on early adolescent sexual encounters with boys at school in an atmosphere where homosexuality can result in ridicule and bullying, it then allows Luke to tell about his sexual abuse at the hands of older men at an age where he needed protection rather than exploitation. The book looks at two important relationships with women who provide his with security and promise of a settled heterosexual life but it is an almost self destructive addiction to encounters with men that destroys these relationship and Luke's consequent guilt loneliness and shame is palpable which make more a hard read. I also liked his non judgemental and loving portrait of his religious parents and the story of the man of the woods who he encounters and from whom he draws solace
I will not go into more greater detail about the book as it rewards reading and certainly it is a book that must have been difficult to write.

[Ariel [She Wants the Diction] · Rating 2 out of 5]

It's not me, it's you.

Was so looking forward to this account of a bisexual man who goes on a journey of self-discovery in the woods. Nature + bisexuality? You know I'm here for it. But here's where it started getting a little weird:

The trees of Epping Forest have a fantastical appearance thanks to centuries of pollarding, the process of forest management whereby trees are cut on a regular cycle for firewood or building materials. Once cut, the tree sends up new growth from an increasingly distorted trunk, or hole. Pollarding prolongs a tree's life, but the continuous cutting makes them take on grotesque forms - cows' udders, a pair of buttocks climbing into a hollow, old men's balls, a phallus between thighs, great, heavy, warty growths, welts like parted vulva.

He also, at one point, used the word "faecal" to describe the scent of the forest air and I just - I just can't. I was also getting a lot of "back to nature" and fetishy primitivist vibes, and it's just not for me.

[Katedurie50 · Rating 3 out of 5]

There were things I really liked about this book - the love and respect he has for his parents and the warmth with which he describes his childhood, as well as the generosity with which he speaks of his Methodist heritage, often at odds with his sexuality. I also rather liked his view of Epping Forest as 'conflicted and twisted and strange' rather than a beloved place. But there was more about his bisexuality than I'd expected (though I admired the frankness, the reader was spared nothing) and I found painful to read the sections about experiences which he much later came to realise constituted abuse .

[Ella · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the most beautiful books I’ve read to date. Some parts hit a little close to home… but in a somebody else understands and got through it kind of way.

The ending was amazing and kind of showed that you have to accept the hurt and pain you’ve been through to move on. I think the ending was kind of showing that the past shapes you and what is happening in the present will too and it’s what you do with those facts that matters.

[Schopflin · Rating 3 out of 5]

This isn't a book to love or be inspired by. As the author says, Epping Forest wasn't a nature cure for him, but a place where he was haunted by demons. I didn't come away feeling convinced of any story arc but much of the writing is powerful. He is especially good in writing about his experience of religion and that's maybe the book I would like to read.

[Rebecca]

DNF @ 5%. Attempts to fuse nature and sexuality in a way that’s reminiscent of Hidden Nature by Alys Fowler. The writing didn’t draw me in at all.

[Marshall Percy Haughton · Rating 5 out of 5]

Exquisite, enlightening, heartbreaking.

[Kim Stallwood · Rating 4 out of 5]

A compelling and well-wrtten account by the author of his struggle to learn who he is and his family together with his relationship to Epping Forest in London.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

This has to be one of the most original memoirs I have ever read - enhanced, perhaps, by the fact it was written by an ex student from a good few years ago and largely centres on an area of land which is only a few minutes from my house. There are certainly no punches pulled in its depiction of mental health issues, confused sexuality and connection with the ancient land of Britain and its mystic past. The use of language is rich and varied with some highly unusual figures of speech which reveal renewed depths to the writing. On occasion it was necessary to reread some sentences to get their full import - but this was part of the book's power. It is exciting to engage with such an original voice - though I have to say I'm glad I taught English and not Chemistry!

[❄️BooksofRadiance❄️ · Rating 3 out of 5]

So not what I thought it was was.

[Ryan Bodell · Rating 2 out of 5]

Far too much about fucking forests for my liking.

[Scott Neigh]

Memoir. Place, desire, compulsion, shame, relationships ending and beginning, abuse, family history, faith. And especially place. The place that it is, especially, is Epping Forest, a 2400 hectare former royal forest in the UK that straddles the border between London and Essex. It is other places too, but particularly there. The author broods and reflects. He is deeply introspective, quite clever, depressive, prone to crisis. I really liked the writing. It was, perhaps, a bit over the top in a few spots towards the end in its efforts to refract everything through the lens of his musings about Epping, but those jolts out of the flow were few and mostly I was delighted to be carried along by it. I don't have any analogous obsession with a particular place myself, but I enjoyed his, and it sparked some quite interesting reflections on place and belonging that I may turn into a piece of writing of my own at some other time. I appreciated his interest in family history, though I'm not sure I seek quite the same kind of meaning from it as he does. His journey with respect to the faith he grew up in was an interesting contrast to the more common (and often almost stereotyped) story of Christian parental rejection of queerness and consequent queer rejection of Christianity – rather, his journey involved a long, painful process of sorting out the evangelical and far-from-radical but emphatically compassionate socialist Methodism of his parents from the harsher fundamentalisms lurking not far distant that (with certain other experiences) informed his shame, while never feeling particularly drawn to reject either parents or God. And his journey with shame, bisexuality, and relationships is a powerful part of the book. I have some mixed feelings about how it is resolved, mind you – not, to be clear, with the facts of his path to healing, which is of course *his* and deserves nothing but celebration, but the way it was handled as an element of story, which did far too little to counter the strong narrative pull towards a sense that wellness equates with normative ways of living. Anyway, for the most part a delightfully written and thoughtful memoir, and I'm keen to see what he does next.

[Robin Newbold · Rating 2 out of 5]

Misery lit has boomed in recent years and Out of the Woods gives another spin on what seems like the perenially popular genre. No wonder publishers rush to sign up such tomes that seem to sell by the shedload, no matter how spurious the premise. This time, author Luke Turner has thrown in some tree hugging, adding a dose of bisexuality, along with a sprinkling of good old Christian guilt. Voila all the ingredients for another best-seller/movie tie-in for a reader's chance to experience someone else wallowing in misery and their redemptive "journey" to the other side.

Turner apparently writes for the music and pop culture website The Quietus and OOTW would probably have worked better as a 1,000 word article in one of the glossy Sunday supplements, with accompanying gloomy photos of the woods he likes to meander in. Instead, we have a 60,000-word "memoir" that sprawls aimlessly like some of the paths through Epping Forest our hero chronicles.

It is not to decry someone's mental health and Turner's descriptions of being abused as a teenager in public toilets by creepy old men are heart rending but I am not sure it all hangs together as a coherent narrative. There is some pyschobabble, in fact pages of it, about how being in the woods helped Turner get to the root of who he really was/is, while also enabling him to reconcile with his religious family - his dad is a preacher.

Nevertheless, a lot of the tale comes across as self-pitying as he loses one girlfriend after another to seek anonymous sex with men in the bushes. Kudos to Turner for finally finding himself and ending up with a long-term girlfriend, natch, but I never ended up liking the protagonist enough to really care.

[J M-B · Rating 3 out of 5]

This exercise in life-writing exerts real appeal through its honesty in addressing the author’s ambivalence towards masculinity (his own and that of others, where it is usually prefixed by the adjective’toxic’), Christianity, male gay culture and the urban experience of wilderness.

From his perspective as a bisexual man, Luke Turner recounts his uneasy transitions between heteronormative culture and the male gay enclaves, such as Grindr, cottages, clubs and cruising sites, and the desperation he feels in both settings as a person who feels his sexuality is both out of control and subject to exploitation and victimisation. Luke Turner positions himself outside the binaries of sexual orientation construed as distinct identities and i, for one, had expected some examination of whether sexual orientation is best understood as ‘identity’ or as activity; is it what one is or what one does? The essays collected by Mark Simpson in “Anti-Gay” (in particular, the one by Peter Tatchell, ‘It’s Just a Phase’) offer an historicized analysis of that binary which is both a challenge to identity politics and a little gift of hope to non-binary, emphatically Q behaviours. The author of this work is, through his editorial role in the excellent website, ‘The Quietus’, undoubtedly aware of these discussions but fails to address them perhaps because they formed no part of his emotional response to the tensions he ultimately resolved through his engagement and re-engagement with the local woods which offered a dark-room for his sexual, religious and historical investigations. Worth reading - although i found the style - actually, the very sentences - clunky and unpleasing.

[Helena · Rating 3 out of 5]

An incredibly vulnerable memoir about a man dealing with his bisexuality. I bought the book because it was set in my local Epping Forest but appreciated the insight into the author's journey.

That said I have some thoughts / feelings too.

Firstly, I wasn't a fan of the structure of the book. The chapters are short and the author goes down different avenues in them, often returning to the same points in different chapters. I think maybe the structure was meant to emulate how if you were lost in the woods you'd try to find your way out in different directions and sometimes you'd circle back to the same point. But this made this frustrated as a reader. So often I'd get settled or want him to dig deeper into a point he's trying to make but then the chapter would end and we'd be onto something new, only to return to the same undeveloped point a couple of chapters later.

Secondly, another thing that threw me out of the story was the chapter set in the penine way, when the whole book is so based in the Epping Forest. Later on when we go to Germany I was more prepared.

I appreciated learning more about the history of the Epping Forest, and of the history of London forests as they relate to gay men. Those were some of the most interesting parts.

The second half of the book did get more tiresome however as the author started to repeat the same issues and stories.