The Living Forest
By Joan Maloof and Robert Llewellyn
£30 Timber Press
The forest in the title of this large-format volume spans a whole continent, but it is not Europe. Rooted firmly and exclusively in the USA, this book fills whole sections with cicadas and coyotes, bears and turtles. Salamanders tread underfoot and leaves come in unfamiliar shapes.Writer Joan Maloof sets off at a purple pace, as if trying to match the epic scale of Robert Llewellyn’s photography. Thankfully, the narrative settles into an elegantly phrased forest school for adults. And there is much that transcends the Atlantic divide, for scientist Maloof is especially imaginative in describing how a tree works and how a forest functions.
The main event, though, is photography that truly deserves the word awesome. Llewellyn’s images capture the landscape’s grandeur. Long after the narrative runs out, the pictures keep coming in this book. Derek Niemann Wildlife writer