'How do we take in the beauty of our planet while processing the losses? What trees can survive in the city? Which animals can survive in the wild? How do any of us—humans, animals, trees—find a forest we can call home?
'In these moving, thought-provoking essays Sophie Cunningham considers the meaning of trees and our love of them. She chronicles the deaths of both her fathers, and the survival of P-22, a mountain lion in Griffith Park, Los Angeles; contemplates the loneliness of Ranee, the first elephant in Australia; celebrates the iconic eucalyptus and explores its international status as an invasive species.
'City of Trees is a powerful collection of nature, travel and memoir writing set in the context of global climate change. It meanders through, circles around and sometimes faces head on the most pressing issues of the day. It never loses sight of the trees.'
Source: Publisher's blurb.
'In her 2019 essay collection City of Trees, author Sophie Cunningham offers a very personal reflection on urban ecosystems, grief and culture that feels all the more timely and universal ahead of Adelaide Writers’ Week 2020.' (Introduction)
'The other day someone told me one of those amazing German compound words: Waldeinsamkeit. It means the feeling of being alone in the forest, in a calm and peaceful way—communing with nature, if you like.' (Introduction)
'Cunningham’s essays on love, travel and nature humanise trees and animals, mixing the Anthropocene with the romantic.'
'Cunningham’s essays on love, travel and nature humanise trees and animals, mixing the Anthropocene with the romantic.'
'When Peter Tompkins and Christopher Bird wrote The Secret Life of Plants (1975), many critics labelled their attempt to prove a spiritual link between people and plants as mystical gibberish, with a New York Times review chiding the authors for pandering to charlatans and amateur psychics. The review noted that although Tompkins and Bird made a fascinating case for plant sentience ‘suspended in the aspic of their blarney, it all looks equally improbable’. In the ensuing decades, more books have been published on the life of trees and their relationship to humans, some of which have sold well and been enthusiastically received by critics. Peter Wohlleben’s The Hidden Life of Trees: What they feel, how they communicate – discoveries from a secret world (2016) topped bestseller lists and earned him a flattering interview in the profile pages of The New York Times.' (Introduction)
'The other day someone told me one of those amazing German compound words: Waldeinsamkeit. It means the feeling of being alone in the forest, in a calm and peaceful way—communing with nature, if you like.' (Introduction)
'In her 2019 essay collection City of Trees, author Sophie Cunningham offers a very personal reflection on urban ecosystems, grief and culture that feels all the more timely and universal ahead of Adelaide Writers’ Week 2020.' (Introduction)
