OUT OF THE WOODS
BY LUKE TURNER, WEIDENFELD & NICOLSON, £16.99 (HB)
When Luke Turner was a child, he was fascinated by a painting of Epping Forest in his grandmother’s house, featuring a man walking into its forbidding beauty. Years later, Turner is living near it, still fascinated by its “secret places, gnarls and whorls”, when his relationship falls apart and he ends up living on friends’ floors. Compelled to return to the dark heart of these woods, he takes us on a journey into his past, through his fond family upbringing but also deep-buried dark memories, depression, and to his bisexuality, which starts to come out (pun intended) with an appropriate wildness. Out Of The Woods is the opposite of a gentle, romantic, nature memoir. Shy readers should prepare themselves now: Turner reminds us that forests are also the landscapes of outsiders, of covert sexual acts (which he describes overtly), fairytale terrors and real-life murders.
But this is also a deeply moving book, as Turner grapples with his gentle Methodist upbringing and adult desires with equal tenderness.
His nature writing is stunning too. “Warmth billowed out of the treeline”, he writes of one unseasonably warm September day when he is finally feeling at peace, “as if the forest had been storing it overnight”, and we’re there with him. Here is nature filling our souls, and shaping our lives. Jude Rogers, arts journalist