The Hidden Life of Trees

by Peter Wohlleben

The Hidden Life of Trees CoverIt’s amazing how seemingly little things can really ruin something. While I’ve spoken previously about how a synopsis with a poor focus can hurt a story before it even starts, the foreword written by Tim Flannery from The Hidden Life of Trees made me feel that it at least warrants a bit of discussion. I took issue with the fact that Flannery seemed to be basically copying interesting facts from the first twenty-odd pages of Wohlleben’s text, not only showing that a foreword can be unhelpful by adding nothing to the text, but that it can also detract from the text by making the start artificially repetitive. This would obviously be a problem with any book, but it worsens with this one due to how repetitive the text turns out to be without Flannery’s help.

Perhaps I should take a step back––and take a less combative tone while I’m at it. Wohlleben is a German forester who manages an old-growth forest in the community of Hümmel. The Hidden Life of Trees consists of his observations regarding social networks within the forest “community,” including how members communicate, cooperate, and compete, and how trees outside this natural environment lose out when deprived of the intricate systems at work within the forest. It’s all interesting stuff, to me, at least, but the problem is in the presentation. Wohlleben’s voice is stiff and dry throughout, and I get the feeling that he generally disrespects his readers, or at least doesn’t trust readers to understand his explanations. Of course, it’s plausible that the translator is at fault more than the author––and this, if true, would go to show another thing that can work to ruin a book––but it was so apparent to me that I actually found myself to be offended on more than one occasion. (Of course, keep in mind that I have no actual evidence to support a claim that the translation is, in fact, at fault, and I offer my sincerest apologies to Jane Billinghurst if the original German text happened to also be this dreary.)

And it’s unfortunate that the writing’s occasionally suspect, because I probably would have loved the book otherwise. As crazy as some of Wohlleben’s concepts and theories seem at times––especially if you look at the forest as not truly “living” in a similar sense to us––a perspective like his is likely essential if we want to truly understand the natural world around us.