Praise for The Tree

“[Fowles] combines such moments of youthful exuberance with mature intellectual inquiry to create a book that belongs alongside the finest wilderness-rambling narratives, texts such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Reveries of the Solitary Walker, Thoreau’s Walking, and Edward Abbey’s sandstone sorties in Desert Solitaire… a moving meditation… Fowles deftly wrangles these contradictions, but above all, his prose sings of the uncertainty, danger, and thrill that he has felt when alone in the woods… The Tree is a book to be pondered—tossed in a backpack or tucked into a jacket pocket, to be consulted in the nearest outcropping of real, wild nature, or even, though not ideally, under the well pruned trees of your local park.”
—The New Yorker Book Bench

“For a casual walk in the forest, or an overnight bivouac in the depths of a favorite armchair, I’d recommend John Fowles’s beautiful essay The Tree…. So much so-called nature writing seems designed to prompt hushed piety—and instead ends up putting the reader, or at least this one, to sleep. But The Tree seems just as likely to start loud and interesting arguments.”
—Jennifer Schuessler, New York Times Paper Cuts

“It’s a great book—part essay, part memoir, part nature writing—and it’s the perfect little thing to roll up in your pocket and take with you for a lunch in the park. It’s like having a laid-back, wide-ranging conversation with one of the greatest novelists of the 20th century.”
—The Stranger

“The Tree defies easy definition and even genre. Whatever else it happens to be—memoir, philosophy, natural history—the book is a kind of forest, and Fowles a masterful field guide. He shows us the hidden place where the woods and literature converge.”
—Brad Kessler, author of Goat Song

“The Tree is the fullest and finest exploration I’ve ever read of how the useless delights to be discovered in nature can ripen into the practice of art.”
—Lewis Hyde, author of The Gift

“A striking display of empathy for nature and the most original argument for wilderness preservation I have encountered.”
—Washington Post

“For years I have carried this book… with me on travels to reread, ponder, envy. In prose of classic gravity, precision, and delicacy, Fowles addresses matters of final importance… His theme is the relation and the opposition between human notions of control and codification—as exemplified by his father’s neatly pruned fruit trees and the nomenclature of Linnaeus on the one hand—and manifestations of the singular, the surprising, the wild, the imagination… on the other.”
—W.S. Merwin, Los Angeles Times Book Review

“Never before have I read such a passionate, yet intellectually sound argument made in defense of the natural world.”
—Richard Marcus, Seattle P.I.

“The Tree is a powerful, absorbing and beautifully written meditation on the connection between man and nature…. A magnificent and perfectly poised argument for a form of conservation that is even more pertinent now than when it was first published.”
—Carl Wilkinson, Financial Times

“A revelation.”
—Paris Review Daily

“The Tree is part memoir, part explanation and part warning—one of the most beautiful, succinct and prescient pieces of writing we have.
—Susan Salter Reynolds, Los Angeles Times

“Please read this book. It says the most important thing, and with a lovely succinctness. Step off the narrow path, so cleverly engineered for you, into the deep cathedral of the woods—here there are no engineers and the true self abides.”
—Lydia Millet, author of Love in Infant Monkeys

“[John Fowles] is a master of style, evident in the ease with which he transforms the abstract into the highly tangible, without sacrificing any of the subtleties.”
—Christian Science Monitor

“Delightful…. The real subject of this arboreal excursion is not trees at all, but the importance in art of the unpredictable, the unaccountable, the intuitive, the not discernibly useful.”
—Atlantic Monthly

“A text of unusual beauty and perception.”
—Publishers Weekly

“Fowles’ language is strong, green, discursive, related throughout to his own life and memories.”
—Vogue

“Gritty and entertaining.”
—Sunday Telegraph (UK)

“Magnificent… mystical.”
—Daily Telegraph (UK)

“A gentle plea for wilderness and an argument for art and the imagination.”
—Chicago Tribune, Editor’s Choice

“Mr. Fowles apparently believes that life is short enough that nothing he writes should be less than his best.”
—New York Times Book Review

“When I received this fantastic book I was absolutely blown away by the life-changing words. This is the thirtieth anniversary of this wonderful nonfiction look at how the natural, ‘wild’ world affects our human lives… this small yet, intricate, look at how this fantastic author ‘saw’ life, and the relationships that made up his own existence, should truly be a permanent fixture on every human’s bookshelf… poignant words of this wonderful author…”
—BookPleasures.com

“Fowles’ work is so far reaching and important that it is hard to believe that it is only the 30th anniversary of this book… Fowles’ work here is of the timeless variety… The Tree is a perfect one-sitting reading experience that rewards multiple readings. Fowles’ language is elegant and eloquent… If you read or write, then The Tree will give you an additional toolkit with which to understand both how to do what you do and why to do what you do as well… HarperCollins have done themselves and their readers a favor with The Tree. Knowing it is a book you will want to keep, they’ve packaged it beautifully…The result is a book that is worth keeping, for reading and for loaning to those you know also read or write, or both… Here is a book that will literally change your mind for the better.”
—Bookotron.com