Book Report: The Forest

36. Riccardo Bozzi, with illustrations by Violeta Lópiz and Valerio Vidali, translated from the Italian by Debbie Bibo, The Forest (2018) (1/3/19)

I learned about this book on Maria Popova's Brain Pickings as well. She quotes the biologist David George Haskell: "The forest is not a collection of entities [but] a place entirely made from strands of relationship." Bozzi's The Forest, she writes, embraces this "relational, existential mesmerism" of forests, artistically, emotionally, spiritually.

I was intrigued by the poetry of her description, and by the illustrations she featured. Despite the introduction, however, I was unprepared for the sumptuousness of this beautiful and unique volume, both physically—from the vellum-wrapped cover to the full-page embossed faces, the colorful, organic illustrations to the die-cut holes inviting the reader to look more closely—and philosophically.

The story is simple yet mysterious: We are presented, in spare words, with "an enormous, ancient forest, that has not yet been fully explored." Facing these words is the first embossed face, of a baby boy, whose eyes allow a glimpse of feathery green beyond. The words and colors lure us onward, into a grove of young pine trees, and there is another baby, this time a girl. As the stiff pages unfold—sometimes out into gatefolds, like hidden treasures—we venture deeper into the forest with these two. We meet fellow travelers, explorers who carry packs, kneel to gaze into watery pools, climb rocks, dance around fires. "Some choose to help each other out, while others prefer to push on alone." The babies become young children, then adolescents, then adults. These explorers leave traces of themselves along the way, and all eventually encounter a steep, difficult climb, with a sheer ravine at the end. The final spreads are ethereal, consisting of a lot of blank white, disappearing lines of embossing, and then new hints of color, as everything comes full circle.

Here are a few of the spreads: