A review by lubellwoo
The Tree by John Fowles

5.0

The Tree is a sprawling text exploring Fowles’s thoughts on huamnkind’s relationship to nature. The early part of the narrative contrasts Fowles’s affection for untamed spaces with his father’s nigh-Linnaean orchard, but it was the last third of the book that really brought it home for me. His final chapter is pure pleasure, hinting at something vast and wonderful. The text also highlights the absolute best of Fowles’s prodigious vocabulary (tor, wisht, tachist, clitter, Laocoön, polypodies, bulbul, brassards, fumitory, and lucubration, to name a few), while ranging across natural history, personal narrative, and scientific musing.