Mr. Fowles's essay [which accompanies Frank Horvat's photographs in The Tree is] delightful and varied, a ramble among trees he has known, from his father's overformal orchard to the last fragment of British wilderness. The real subject of this arboreal excursion is not trees at all, but the importance in art of the unpredictable, the unaccountable, the intuitive, the not discernibly useful. Mr. Fowles is not opposed to practicality or to scientific analysis; he is merely reminding us that, in life as well as art, there are other routes to satisfaction.

Phoebe-Lou Adams, "PLA: 'The Tree'," in The Atlantic Monthly (copyright © 1980 by The Atlantic Monthly Company, Boston, Mass.; reprinted with permission), Vol. 245, No. 4, April, 1980, p. 129.