Finally finished. This and Mythago Wood by Robert Holdstock were given as favourite books by Robert Macfarlane in a newspaper article. Couldn't stomach Mythago Wood but I did finish The Forest of Hours - and enjoyed quite a lot of it - but I'm left wondering what the point of it is. Didn't really teach me anything, no arc of plot, a very faint emotional journey. So in the future I shall stick to reading Rob Macfarlane's own books which are wonderful. ( )

Finally finished. This and Mythago Wood by Robert Holdstock were given as favourite books by Robert Macfarlane in a newspaper article. Couldn't stomach Mythago Wood but I did finish The Forest of Hours - and enjoyed quite a lot of it - but I'm left wondering what the point of it is. Didn't really teach me anything, no arc of plot, a very faint emotional journey. So in the future I shall stick to reading Rob Macfarlane's own books which are wonderful. ( )

It was a scrawny little troll, unknowing and guileless, and not much given to thinking at all. There was little more than fluttering, like the wings of jays, going on under that tussock of hair.

Skord is a creature of the forest – not a troll as I thought of trolls, and not very fantastic except that he has the gift, shaman-wise, of sending his consciousness into other beings (which he does by habit just for the trip), and he lives for the five hundred years of the novel. There are giants in the forest too: these are slow-lived and eon-slow of thought. Like Skord, they are more likely to be victims of humans, as humans develop from medieval to the industrial age. The forest is that of Sweden’s wild Skule, and as much a presence in the book as the sea in Moby Dick – both the real-as-real depiction and getting metaphysical about it too.

Skord, who cannot help but mimic what he hears and sees, learns from humans, interacts with them and slips into their world. This is the story of his knowledge gained of that world, his corruption by it, his possible escape from it and salvation? It’s the alien eye turned on us and on our history. The book is dark and grim, with gentle gleams. Skord is more acted upon than acting; he witnesses how strange we are, without any concern to judge us – he can be disturbingly detached, at our abysmal behaviour. Yet it is his empathy with vulnerable things, often animals or children, lives he can identify with, that is his grace. I experienced this as an anti-human book. Whether it is or not I don’t know, it remains enigmatic to me. It is a creatures’ book, however.

It has been translated into drop-dead gorgeous English. The translator, Anna Paterson, must have brought such art to it herself, even if the Swedish is this lovely.

In the end it may be too dark for me or for my comfort, but after two reads now this has got to be one of my most-admired books, certainly of recent ones. The woman is a genius. I’ll have to try her crime novel, Blackwater, that is above and beyond your usual crime novel, they say. Alas with a different translator, but again, a remote forest setting. ( )

After about 30 pages of the troll Skord wandering around the forest, I was extremely bored. A couple of weeks later I decided to give it another chance and it improved immediately. Maybe it was the fact that Skord started interacting with the humans who passed through the forest and learnt to understand their language so there was actually some plot to get my teeth into, or maybe I was just in the wrong mood when I started it. The most interesting parts were towards the end, when he was experimenting with alchemy. ( )

A novel about a spiritual being living with and around humans over a period of five hundred years. Fascinating Swedish novel with a lot to say about the way we are made and how we relate to each other and the world. ( )