Publishers WeeklyIn this lovely, inventive book, Maitland (A Book of Silence) pursues the psychic juncture between forests and fairy tales. This may sound maudlin or overly fanciful, but the author's research is diligent, her analytical skills sharp, and her prose lean and compelling. Each chapter begins with a walk taken by Maitland in a northern European forest (Airyolland Wood, in Scotland, and the Forest of Dean, in Gloucestershire, England, are among those she visits) and an essay, in which she deftly juggles ecological history, the "'anthropology of woodland,'" and exegesis of beloved fairy tales. Each alternating chapter is a retelling of a fairy tale ("Rumpelstiltskin," "Tom Thumb," "Hansel and Gretel," and others) and these, thankfully, are neither precious nor obvious.
