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Gossip from the Forest

Sara Maitland

3.61 · Rating details · 895 ratings · 163 reviews

Fairytales are one of our earliest and most vital cultural forms, and forests one of our most ancient and primal landscapes. Both evoke a similar sensation in us — we find them beautiful and magical, but also spooky, sometimes horrifying.

In this fascinating book, Maitland argues that the two forms are intimately connected: the mysterious secrets and silences, gifts and per ...more

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Hardcover, 256 pages

Published November 1st 2012 by Granta Books

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Mar 14, 2020 Amalia Gkavea rated it did not like it

Shelves: books-about-books, british-culture, scotland, britain, european-culture, fairy-tales, england, non-fiction, united-kingdom, wales

I won’t write an elaborate (and boring…) Introduction about how much I longed to read this book. It was one of my most coveted treasures from the moment I bought it and I wanted to savour it and underline the living daylights out of it.

Unfortunately, by the beginning of the fourth chapter, I couldn’t wait to finish it and forget about it. It was a shuddering disappointment, a book I never thought I’d actually hate. But I did and I am thoroughly saddened by this reading experience.

The Forest (I d I won’t write an elaborate (and boring…) Introduction about how much I longed to read this book. It was one of my most coveted treasures from the moment I bought it and I wanted to savour it and underline the living daylights out of it.

Unfortunately, by the beginning of the fourth chapter, I couldn’t wait to finish it and forget about it. It was a shuddering disappointment, a book I never thought I’d actually hate. But I did and I am thoroughly saddened by this reading experience.

The Forest (I deliberately use a capital ‘’F’’) has played a vital role in the creation of fairy tales since the dawning of time. From Red Riding Hood and Snow White
to obscure tales from every culture in the world, the mysticism, the strangeness, the threat of the Forest have provided ample material for legends of adventures, princesses and princes that are tested, disobedient children that need to learn what is right and what is wrong, impossible tasks that must be carried out and chances for a resolution where the good is rewarded. In this book, Maitland attempts to emphasize the deep connection between forests and fairytales through an interesting, no doubt, journey on 12 forests in Britain. Each month is dedicated to a specific forest. From March to February, we are guided to the influence of the flora and fauna of British nature. The oakwoods, the beech woods, the May beauty of the New Forest, the connection between mining and the dwarves, the mystery of fungi. It sounds quite a blast, doesn’t it? Unfortunately, the only blast is the impossibly rude, authoritative tone of the writer.

Her sources are limited, practically non-existent. For the most part, her descriptions were repetitive and bland. At certain points, all of a sudden, they became so ‘’flowery’’ that my eyes were rolling by the minute. Footnotes after footnotes don’t work when there is no cohesion, when your voice is so abrupt, so authoritative. When you pass judgment on others. When your syntactic and grammatical mistakes are so obvious that even a 10-year-old student would avoid. When your personal and subjective notion on femininity, womanhood, tradition, and religion is shoved down our throats page by page. When you use a loud ‘’We’’ to ascertain and verify your personal beliefs and observations. No. When your retellings of famous fairytales are loaded with sexual connotations and cheap alterations. When you accuse Tolkien of ‘’sexism’’ because there was no female member in the Fellowship (!) This is cheap, uneducated ‘’feminism’’ to the extreme. When a father allows his children to go to the woods provided they have a cell phone with them and you accuse him of ‘’ denying’’ them their freedom and ‘’supervising them from afar.’’ When you don’t even know the origin of the word ‘’Magi’’ or ‘’spinster’’. When you write something like this: I am uncertain where these lepers came from initially.

No. Even references to Merlin, Macbeth and Angela Carter won’t be enough to save this. And if you don’t like beech trees, dear ‘’writer’’, leave them alone.

My reviews can also be found on https://theopinionatedreaderblog.word... ...more

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Dec 04, 2012 Sienna rated it it was ok

Shelves: kindle, 2013

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 o 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. ...more

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Dec 21, 2014 Andrea rated it it was ok

Shelves: natural-world

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 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. ...more

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Apr 14, 2019 Fiona rated it it was amazing

Shelves: favorites, history-non-fiction, nature-writing

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 conc 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!
...more

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Jul 11, 2015 Sharman Russell rated it really liked it · review of another edition

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.

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Nov 22, 2013 Sally Howes rated it it was amazing

Shelves: owned-read, book-vipers-magic-square-2014, reviewed, read-myth-and-legend

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 s 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." ...more

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May 26, 2014 Josie rated it did not like it

Shelves: non-fiction

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 hipp ...more

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Oct 27, 2016 Arie rated it really liked it

Shelves: faerytales, gorgeous-covers, non-fiction, post-grad, nature-non-fic, pūrākau, favourites, forests-ngahere-trees, re-writes, scotland-ireland

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 ...more

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Jul 02, 2013 Kichelchen rated it it was ok

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 evidenc ...more

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Feb 24, 2013 Christine rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Shelves: literary-criticism-biography, myth-and-lore-criticism-history, minority-and-women-writers

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.
...more

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Jan 15, 2013 Mark Hartzer rated it liked it · review of another edition

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. ...more

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Nov 23, 2012 Sian Lile-Pastore rated it really liked it

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 tha ...more

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Jan 20, 2018 Skye rated it liked it

Shelves: faerie-tales, non-fiction, 21st-century, nature-writing

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 e ...more

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Oct 19, 2012 Paul rated it liked it

Shelves: natural-history, books-read-2013

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 significanc ...more

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Dec 30, 2019 Ashley rated it liked it · review of another edition

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 i 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.
...more

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Jan 01, 2015 Lynn Spencer rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: nonfiction

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 th ...more

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Sep 01, 2013 Barb in Maryland rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: dnf

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 ...more

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Nov 17, 2012 Liz rated it it was amazing

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. ...more

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Nov 04, 2017 Allyson Shaw rated it liked it · review of another edition

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 femi ...more

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Jan 16, 2020 Katie Greenwood rated it really liked it

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 abou ...more

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Mar 17, 2018 Kay rated it really liked it

Shelves: fairy-tales-and-studies

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 variou ...more

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Oct 06, 2012 Kim rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Shelves: science-and-nature, mythology-and-folklore

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 an 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. ...more

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Feb 19, 2013 Bradley rated it did not like it

Shelves: dnf

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 ...more

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May 17, 2018 Devi rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: myth-and-folklore, non-fiction

I again find myself with a book that I came into with high expectations and little payoff. I believe this book is best suited to people from the UK or who have very strong physical connections to the UK. I felt the author was disinterested in an international audience given her writing style. I was willing to overlook all that as I tend to have heavy fondness for most things British despite never having visited there. However, I could not get on with the authorial voice at all. I did finish the I again find myself with a book that I came into with high expectations and little payoff. I believe this book is best suited to people from the UK or who have very strong physical connections to the UK. I felt the author was disinterested in an international audience given her writing style. I was willing to overlook all that as I tend to have heavy fondness for most things British despite never having visited there. However, I could not get on with the authorial voice at all. I did finish the book, did read every single word in the main body of the book. I knew at about the 35 page mark that I wasn't invested but I plowed on, pausing again that 100 page mark to consider the merits of DNFing it. But that's not really my style so I pushed on.

This book is certainly for someone. I know people who have enjoyed this book which is part of what made me expect to have a better relationship with it. However, I felt the author got bogged down in specifics that didn't interest me in the non-fiction portion of most chapters. It wasn't uncommon for me to want a chapter to be shortened by several pages because I thought there was too much extra information that didn't enhance my reading experience. The other problem is that I didn't enjoy any of the author's fairytale retellings. I can't say exactly what it was that I didn't like beyond the authorial voice, something that is a matter of taste rather than something that could have been fixed in the editing process.

Another major issue for me was having the wrong expectations going in. The first chapter is set up in such a way that I thought the author would be travelling with her son and discussing fairytales before sharing a fairytale at the end of each chapter. While, there is a fairytale retelling at the end of each chapter, the main chapter body is about her considering the science and history of forests and (to a lesser degree) their relationship with the stories we've set in and around them. At no point beyond the first chapter does another person's voice seem to ring out. It's mostly the author giving us facts, figures, and history so it lacked that personal element I had so greatly wanted.

In the end, what I had hoped would be a sweet, homey chat in the woods turned out to be somewhere between popular science and popular history non-fiction. If I had known that beforehand, I would not have bought the book. ...more

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Jul 16, 2013 Ellen rated it liked it

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 ada 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.

...more

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Jun 08, 2015 Scribal rated it really liked it

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 n 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.
...more

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Aug 11, 2013 Rosario rated it really liked it

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 ...more

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Dec 21, 2014 Moira Clunie rated it really liked it

Shelves: spirituality, books-about-books, on-storytelling, travel

a rich, speculative exploration of forest-fairytale symbiosis: how they've grown together in britain, and how the structure, narrative and characters of fairytales are deeply woodsy in ways that are familiar but not always named. i loved the sense of time and space that unfolded in this book: its growth over a year of walks through different forests, as seasons changed. each chapter dives into a different aspect of the central idea: the history of british forests and forestry, how the fairytales ...more

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Mar 06, 2019 Mary Judy rated it really liked it · review of another edition

This is one to be savoured, not rushed through. Maitland takes us on an intimate and historical journey through the forests and woodlands; and through the months of the year. Each chapter; a portrait really; is painted through the eyes of a familiar (or some maybe not so familiar) fairytale and looks inside our connection to them; why we see the forest in the ways we do, how the inherent mystery and emotions are linked to the 'deep, dark woods' through the stories we have told throughout time.
It ...more

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Nov 27, 2012 Daren Kearl rated it really liked it

A great mix of fact and fiction, Maitland explores ancient woodland, the history and management of forestry and is passionate about encouraging children into exploring and playing in the wild. She also links the development of fairy stories through the growth of woodland and presents her own versions of Grimm tales. Interestingly there may be a resurgence of interest in fairy tales, what with Philip Pullmans new version recently published and film versions of Snow White and Hansel and Gretel. As ...more

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About Sara Maitland

Sara Maitland

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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.

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“The whole tradition of [oral] story telling is endangered by modern technology. Although telling stories is a very fundamental human attribute, to the extent that psychiatry now often treats 'narrative loss' -- the inability to construct a story of one's own life -- as a loss of identity or 'personhood,' it is not natural but an art form -- you have to learn to tell stories. The well-meaning mother is constantly frustrated by the inability of her child to answer questions like 'What did you do today?' (to which the answer is usually a muttered 'nothing' -- but the 'nothing' is cover for 'I don't know how to tell a good story about it, how to impose a story shape on the events'). To tell stories, you have to hear stories and you have to have an audience to hear the stories you tell. Oral story telling is economically unproductive -- there is no marketable product; it is out with the laws of patents and copyright; it cannot easily be commodified; it is a skill without monetary value. And above all, it is an activity requiring leisure -- the oral tradition stands squarely against a modern work ethic....Traditional fairy stories, like all oral traditions, need the sort of time that isn't money.

"The deep connect between the forests and the core stories has been lost; fairy stories and forests have been moved into different categories and, isolated, both are at risk of disappearing, misunderstood and culturally undervalued, 'useless' in the sense of 'financially unprofitable.” — 6 likes

“Forests to the [early] Northern European peoples were dangerous and generous, domestic and wild, beautiful and terrible. And the forests were the terrain out of which fairy stories, one of our earliest and most vital cultural forms, evolved. The mysterious secrets and silences, gifts and perils of the forest are both the background to and source of these tales....

Forests are places where a person can get lost and also hide -- and losing and hiding, of things and people, are central to European fairy stories in ways that are not true of similar stories in different geographies. Landscape informs the collective imagination as much as or more than it forms the individual psyche and its imagination, but this dimension is not something to which we always pay enough attention.” — 5 likes

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