Mostly I really enjoyed this. I'd struggle to call it a novel to be honest. The first third was a series of character portraits/introductions/short stories which were probably my favourite bit. They were pretty much all engaging, well-written and tugged on your heart strings. Excellent for dipping in and out of on the tube, BBC Proms queues, BBC Proms intervals, etc. I don't read a lot of short stories as a general rule but I felt like I could have read a whole book of those alone. All featured trees, some quite overtly and others as a more subtle background factor (though always important). 

The rest of the book is a continuation of those stories as the characters' lives begin to overlap and intertwine, converging around the theme of tree/forest conservation and eco protest. All the different characters' viewpoints gave a massive opportunity to show the breadth of roles that trees can play in people's lives and the ways they can learn to understand and appreciate them. I particularly enjoyed Patricia's and Adam's stories. Adam approaching tree huggers for his psychology thesis to understand how they're deluding themselves so fervently and ending up joining them was really making the point that the people not out protesting are the delusional ones, although honestly I felt like I could have done with being hit over the head with that conclusion a bit more blatantly. And I won't spoil it but I thought the ending of Patricia's story was perfect and I did not see it coming. I also appreciated Doug's realisation that what he'd thought was helping the trees could actually be making the situation worse - very common experience for anyone attempting to do some good in our super complex globalised capitalist society. The fact that the characters' stories didn't all end up merging properly was what made it feel not really like a novel to me, but not necessarily an issue - just a different reading experience.

Now for some things I didn't like. First of all, the supernatural stuff. I'm aware that this is partly a me problem - can cope with fantasy set in a fantasy world with whatever kind of magical powers you want but magical realism I usually absolutely hate. But in this instance I genuinely think it was an issue with the book beyond just my distaste for that type of thing. For a book that was otherwise filled with the amazing biology of trees and generally succeeded in instilling awe based only on actual scientific facts, to have a character being spoken to by trees just felt silly, unnecessary and like it undermined everything else. Also the fact that she was clearly supposed to be the imaginary child of Ray and Dorothy was just bizarre. The truth is powerful enough to stand alone; why muddy it with all that mystical crap? The other issue I had was the sexism. I'm only exaggerating a little bit when I say all the female characters apart from Patricia seemed to exist mainly for the interesting male characters to lust after or fall madly in love with, and didn't really have much personality of their own. Even Adam's PhD supervisor barely featured apart from him wondering if she'd fuck him. Didn't really notice it while I was reading it but reflecting afterwards it's an issue that definitely stands out to me.

But despite all that, I think I'd still recommend this, especially if you like trees!