White Beech

An eco-love letter about saving and reviving trees on her farm in Australia * The Times *
A powerful account of Greer’s attempt to reverse the calamitous environmental impact of Australian history on one patch of land ... Greer remains a winning, funny, indomitable figure throughout, and it is fascinating to follow her as she works through so much of her messy, complicated relationship with Australia * Evie Wyld, Financial Times *
A beautifully written book … Simple, effective descriptions of everything from pythons to pademelons, filled with telling detail, and no little amount of love and respect * Independent on Sunday *
We love: White Beech ... Her new book is written not by a passionate young feminist but by a woman in her seventies who has lost none of her energy to speak out for causes ... I am sure listeners will find her love of her motherland, and for her sister, both touching and revealing * Psychologies *
In 2001, the 62-year-old Greer took on the “irresistible” challenge of rehabilitating 60 hectares of a dairy farm in south-east Queensland, which after a century of logging, clearing and downright devastation had been abandoned to its fate. Seduced in particular by the few remaining white beech trees, this is her memoir both of this extraordinary project, and of her love affair with the forest and her native Australia * Bookseller *
Searching for somewhere to archive her papers, in 2001, Germaine Greer was taken to an abandoned dairy farm in Queensland. White Beech: The Rainforest Years tells the story of her decade-long battle to rehabilitate the damaged forest of white beeches and other trees she found there. Working with her sister, a botanist, she puts all her remarkable passion and a lot of money into the project * Conde Nast Traveller *
An extraordinary travelogue: a love letter to Germaine Greer’s birth country and an intense biography of the land * Catholic Herald *
A hymn to botany as a discipline and a vehicle of heritage ... Even when she’s lyrical, her botany is rigorous * New Statesman *
Wonderfully vivid descriptions of the forest ... The book is full of lovely lists of the wildlife that has returned * Eithne Farry, Sunday Express *
Passionate and eccentric... A lifetime of activism, bloody-mindedness, academic punctiliousness, men-baiting and solidarity has produced a wonderfully unexpected book * Sunday Times *
A splendid love letter to the recipient of her affections ... Beautifully crafted descriptions that dot the book like jewels * Observer *
There is nothing touchy-feely about Germaine Greer’s vision of perfection ... It is a love affair with nature the real, nature as battleground, beautiful in its violence * Evening Standard *
Greer is a talented wordsmith and her vivid descriptions transport readers into a habitat that thrums with noise and movement and life ... White Beech is a book to be read, considered and discussed * Geographical *
She has thrown as much intelligence and energy into her blessed plot as into this lively, loving, rollicking account of her ecological adventure * Saga *
Never doubt Greer’s brilliant power of language. White Beech drips with lavish, sensual, technically demanding words, used uncompromisingly ... as maverick and unyielding as its author ... poetic and moving * The Times *
Greer is as enraptured and as protective as a lover when describing the richness of the rainforest * Guardian *
Wonderfully idiosyncratic … I loved it. It’s a tale of a fabulous obsession, and it is maddeningly brilliant * Sunday Telegraph *
I love her, even when she says mad things * India Knight, Red *
Germaine Greer in one of the cornerstones of feminism and she has a sense of humour, which I think is absolutely essential * Jo Brand, Red *
I can’t overstate the impact that Greer’s work has had on my own writing. Her weaving together of personal narrative, pop culture analysis and rigorous academic scholarship has been tremendously influential * Naomi Wolf, Red *
Germaine is a one-off. I haven’t always agreed with her but she has consistently fought for women. We owe her a tremendous amount. Best of all, she never cares about being popular. She’s fearless * Janet Street-Porter, Red *
Germaine Greer helped ignite the touchpaper of women’s liberation. She’s an intellectual force, often great fun, and a firecracker – whose sparks fly in many, sometimes unpredictable, directions * Kirsty Wark, Red *
A much-anticipated memoir ... four decades after her controversial ideas first started shaking things up, she is still going strong ... few thinkers have had such an impact on women’s lives * Viv Groskop, Red *
At 76, Greer remains almost as outrageously outspoken, and frequently as wickedly funny, as she was when she changed millions of lives with her feminist classic, The Female Eunuch, in 1970 * Irish Times *