Two Trees Make a Forest. Jessica J. Lee
Praise for Two Trees Make a Forest
A New Statesman Book of the Year
“Two Trees Make a Forest is a finely faceted meditation on memory, love, landscape—and finding a home in language. Its short, shining sections tilt yearningly toward one another; in form as well as content, this is a beautiful book about the distance between people and between places, and the means of their bridging.”
—ROBERT MACFARLANE, author of Underland
“Jessica J. Lee shows in this book how a delicate interrogation of language and place can be critical to understanding where we are going.”
—BONNIE TSUI, author of Why We Swim
“A subtle, powerful exploration of the relationship between people and place, and a luminous evocation of an extraordinary landscape.”
—MELISSA HARRISON, author of All Among the Barley
“Both clear-eyed and tenderhearted, Two Trees Make a Forest is a profound and gorgeously written meditation on the natural and familial environments that shape us. Jessica J. Lee is a poetic talent keenly attentive to the mysterious and sublime.”
—SHARLENE TEO, author of Ponti
“Two Trees Make a Forest takes a twisting path through mountain passes, over tree roots, by spoon-billed birds, and into a family’s past. In this thoughtful memoir, Lee asks the reader to wonder, What makes a homeland? Is it language, family, landscape? I was left with a full heart and a longing to learn the name of each tree that lines my own past.”
—ROWAN HISAYO BUCHANAN, author of Starling Days
“There is so much loss in this family story—and in many family stories—and Lee has portrayed it with detail and restraint. Lee describes the complexities and anxieties of identity and language in a way that I know will have resonance with many readers, especially those with scattered families, disparate backgrounds. A beautiful, fully realized tribute to a family, and a brave, diligent search for understanding in the mist.”
—AMY LIPTROT, author of The Outrun
“Two Trees Make a Forest is a stunning book. It is full of family, longing, ghosts, and landscapes, all of which, in Lee’s deft and beautiful telling, invoke the complications of belonging to worlds both human and natural. Lee’s writing is alive equally to the details of forests and to the daily lives of her parents and grandparents. The narrative emerges out of Taiwan’s mists layer by layer, reminding us how place, experience, memory, and the bones of the earth remake one over time. A powerful meditation on the forces that shape our lives, from bedrock to the language we use to describe it.”
—BATHSHEBA DEMUTH, author of Floating Coast
Praise for Turning
National Post (Canada),1 of the 99 Best Books of the Year
One of Die Zeit’s Best Books of the Year
A Notable Selection of the Sigurd F. OlsonNature Writing Awards
Long-listed for the Frank Hegyi Award forEmerging Authors
“A sublime, philosophical slipping into the deep. Her book, Turning, is filled with a wonderful melancholy as she swims through lakes laden with dark histories.”
—PHILIP HOARE, New Statesman
“A brilliant debut . . . There is clarity and pleasure in the swim’s afterglow.”
—HARRIET BAKER, The Times Literary Supplement
“Turning is many things: a snapshot of Berlin seen through the prism of its lakes; the story of a broken and healing heart; a contemplation of identity; a coming-of-age story.”
—KATHARINE NORBURY, The Observer
“Bold and brave, she approaches her watery pilgrimage with a minimum amount of fuss. She doesn’t, for instance, allow the ice on Brandenburg’s lakes to get in her way, but takes a hammer to it . . . Lee writes like a siren, her silken prose blending with softly worn scholarship to enchanting effect. I challenge anyone to write more compellingly about Slavic suffixes or the formation of ice.”
—OLIVER BALCH, Literary Review
“A lovely, poetic, sensuous and melancholy book.”
—JOSEPHINE FENTON, Irish Examiner
“The redemptive power of these wild landscapes, the changes in the water, and in Jessica, combine to create an inspiring story.”
—The Daily Telegraph
“Jessica J. Lee’s first book is lyrical and profound, told . . . in stunning prose and with poetic flare; it’s poignant and moving and passionate . . . A lexeme masterpiece . . . Wafting sweetly even through the weighty bits, her musings as steady and tender in sadness as learned peace. Too intimate to be comfortable, but told with a piercing vulnerability so affecting you wind up feeling close to Lee anyway, side-by-side and stroke-by-stroke, solidarity in life and lake and existential slog, 52 times over, together better for it.”
—TERRA ARNONE, National Post (Canada)
“Lee is an elegant writer; precise in her description, thoughtful in her observation, and most of all interested in the world that surrounds her . . . Jessica J. Lee’s is a trip to the lake well worth taking, inspiring even this reluctant swimmer to reach for his swimming shorts.”
—PAUL SCRATON, Elsewhere
“[Lee’s] beautifully written memoir combines personal memories with geographic and historical observations that should resonate even for staunch landlubbers.”
—Metro
“I loved this beautiful book. It’s an attentive meditation on the pleasures and lessons of swimming in lakes, particularly in winter. Jessica J. Lee wears her bravery lightly and shares her knowledge with generosity. I recommend for outdoor swimmers or those who would like to be.”
—AMY LIPTROT, author of The Outrun
“Jessica J. Lee is a writer of rare and exhilarating grace. In Turning, she sounds the depths of lakes and her own life, never flinching from darkness, surfacing to fresh understandings of her place in the welter of natural and human history. A beautiful, moody, bracing debut.”
—KATE HARRIS, author of Lands of Lost Borders
“A deeply moving meditation on solitude, yearning, loss, and love. This lake of a book submerged and enveloped me. It is a truly beautiful offering.”
—KYO MACLEAR, author of Birds Art Life
“Lee’s language is sharp as ice on a frozen lake. It’s astounding how, to explore her past and her own shifting identity, she uses the land as a metaphor but tempers it with a view of yearning, the sight of someone once removed who can never really go back home again. Insightful, unconventional, moving, and inspiring, I think this book will appeal to anyone who has ever struggled across the darkness trying to find the light.”
—YASUKO THANH, author of Mysterious Fragrance of the Yellow Mountains
ALSO BY JESSICA J. LEE
Turning: A Year in the Water
This book is a memoir. It reflects the author’s recollections of experiences over time.
Copyright © 2020 by Jessica J. Lee
All rights reserved
Grateful acknowledgment for reprinting materials