A compulsive, mesmerising and wildly imaginative novel in the vein of Pan's Labyrinth and Station Eleven, following four people as they struggle to survive in a world where nature fights back - from the award-winning author of The Girl with Glass Feet.
There came an elastic aftershock of creaks and groans and then, softly softly, a chinking shower of rubbled cement. Leaves calmed and trunks stood serene. Where, not a minute before, there had been a suburb, there was now only woodland standing amid ruins
There is no warning. No chance to prepare.
They arrive in the night: thundering up through the ground, beating at the air with their branches, transforming streets and towns into shadowy forest.
Buildings are destroyed and power lines felled. Broken bodies, still wrapped in tattered bed linen, hang among the twitching leaves. Something creeps and whispers overhead. A wolf begins to howl
Adrien Thomas has never been much of a hero. But when it becomes clear that no help is coming, he has little choice but to venture out into this unrecognisable world. The trees reach to the horizon, seemingly the work of centuries rather than hours. But Adrien's wife Michelle is across the sea in Ireland and he has no way of knowing whether she is alive or dead and whether the trees have come for her too.
When Adrien meets Hannah - a woman who sees the arrival of the trees as a sign of renewal rather than destruction - and Seb, her teenage son, they persuade him to join them. Together, they pack up what remains of their lives and set out to find Hannah's forester brother, to reunite Adrien with his wife - and to discover just how deep the forest goes.
Their journey through the trees will take them into unimaginable territory: to a place of terrible beauty and violence, of deadly enemies and unexpected allies, to the dark heart of nature and the darkness inside themselves.
About the Author
Ali Shaw is the award-winning author of The Girl with Glass Feet and The Man who Rained. He grew up in Dorset and graduated from Lancaster University with a degree in English Literature. He has since worked as a bookseller and at the Bodleian Library. He now lives in Oxford, with his wife and baby daughter.
Industry Reviews
The Trees does for trees what Hitchcock did for birds. You have been warned' * Irish Times, 'Books to Watch Out For in 2016' *
Strange and brilliantly unsettling, it's a vivid look at a world gone to the wild * Mail on Sunday, 'The Best New Fiction' *
A strange and vivid journey into an ancient forest that has taken over the world with force. The Trees is a thought-provoking meditation on what it means to be wild. Death, darkness and eerie creatures lurk among the branches, but it's the human characters that surprise the most ... Ali Shaw once again weaves a fantastical and haunting story * Eowyn Ivey, author of The Snow Child *
Shaw's climax is like nothing else, crescendoing with almost CGI levels of spectacle as Tarantino meets Middle Earth * Financial Times *
Brilliant ... Masterfully written and utterly enthralling ... Dark and beautiful **** * Grazia *
Violent, beautiful, devastating and utterly enchanting - a triumph * Scotsman *
The Trees is a stunning and vivid examination of the relationship between humans and the environment ... Shaw masterfully brings every detail of the book to life. A wonderfully imaginative story, but also a compelling social commentary * Herald *
'A fairy story for people who can still envisage a future that isn't completely bleak' * Stanley Donwood *
A compelling adventure * Marie Claire *
Simultaneously bewildering and yet somehow hauntingly familiar, forcing us to consider how the natural world has become an elusive stranger to us all ... A complete triumph for Ali Shaw ***** * Western Mail, Book of the Week *
A gripping journey to the heart of wilderness ... The Trees is a rarity and an absolute must-read * Yorkshire Post *
An English ecological version of The Road * Guardian *
Imaginative and original * Sunday Post *
