Annie Proulx: ‘I’ve had a life. I see how slippery things can be’

At 80, Annie Proulx is as acute (and prickly) as ever. As her latest book, Barkskins, is published, Lucy Rock visits her woodland home to talk trees, Trump – and why she’s bored with navel-gazing novels

Annie Proulx loves trees. For the past 10 years she has studied them, written about them and travelled the world looking at them. Recently she moved to a house set in a forest of lofty red cedars. It was here she discovered that not all trees love her.

“I’ve been sick since I’ve arrived,” she tells me as we settle into comfy grey sofas at her home 20 miles outside Seattle, Washington. “Finally we figured out that, ironically, I’m really allergic to red cedar, which is all around me. It brings on asthma and other symptoms. It affects my whole immune system, so I have to pull up stakes and go somewhere else where it won’t follow me.”

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