Scan barcode
A review by theknitpick
Gossip from the Forest: The Tangled Roots of Our Forests and Fairytales by Sara Maitland
Did not finish book.
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.
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.