Entangled Life: The Illustrated Edition | Merlin Sheldrake | Book Review | Bodley Head & Vintage

 

[Review originally published on Bookmunch: View Post]

By his own admission, from a young age, Merlin Sheldrake’s superheroes ‘weren’t Marvel characters, they were lichens and fungi’ and from the incredible knowledge, research and insight that is reflected in Entangled Life, it is clear he isn’t just being dramatic.

The book was first published in 2020 in a traditional hardback format, and Sheldrake dazzled readers around the world. He revealed in fascinating detail the world of fungi, who wear so many hats that it would be almost impossible to name them all. They form the core of the ‘wood wide web’; they influence the weather; they can alter our minds; they even played a role in the decline of the Roman Empire we apparently like to think so much about. But it is the ever-present mycelium – the network of fungal threads underground – that steals the show, with just one teaspoonful of healthy soil potentially housing anywhere between 100 metres and 10 kilometres of these threads invisible to the naked eye. Sheldrake refers to mycelium, in turn, as ‘a body without a body plan’; ‘polyphony in bodily form’; ‘one of the first living networks’; and ‘a sticky living seam that holds soil together’.

Mushrooms and mycelium

There is a quality of joy in Sheldrake’s writing, turning phrases that sound like song, as when ‘trilobites ploughed silty seabeds using spade-like snouts.’ He is incredibly knowledgeable yet writes modestly, employing a casual throwing-in of almost inconceivable facts, such as ‘Globally, the total length of mycorrhizal hyphae [fungal branches, in crude terms] in the top ten centimetres of soil is around half the width of our galaxy’. Now read that again.

For those here to confirm their conspiracy theories after watching The Last of Us, stay tuned: various types of ‘zombie fungi’ do indeed exist, with some versions living within the bodies of insects, able to alter their hosts’ behaviour for their own benefit. ‘Once infected by the fungus,’ writes Sheldrake,

‘ants are stripped of their instinctive fear of heights . . . In due course the fungus forces the ant to clamp its jaws around the plant in a “death grip”. Mycelium grows from the ant’s feet and stitches them to the plant’s surface. The fungus then digests the ant’s body and sprouts a stalk out of its head . . .’

The text-only version of Entangled Life reads like a shock of pure electricity, giving insight into this most mysterious of organisms (and one must note the stunning cover design of the original hardback). Now, the illustrated edition, finished to an extremely high standard by Bodley Head, arrives to shelves just in time for Christmas and, although I’m not normally one to fall for sprayed edges or ‘special’ editions, I instantly fell in love with this. One hundred images add a whole new layer of enjoyment to this mind-blowing book, bringing all that rich detail to life in vivid colour. Fungi, lichens and mycelium glow on the pages, and their look is as surprising as their various abilities.

Sarcodes sanguinea

While one can see why the abridgement was necessary, it must be noted that this, in turn, is a somewhat different book from the original work. The images line up nicely with the content, but often we will have a line of thought per page, which makes the text lose some of its captivating narrative that wound its way through the unabridged version. This edition caters more to the casual reader: it is put-downable and pick-uppable at leisure, but is nevertheless a unique coffee table book (offensive as that label may be to this impressive work) that is actually worth reading. It is great to see a brilliant piece of non-fiction get this kind of royal treatment in a book world often biased towards fiction.

Seaweed Rising | Book Review | Rob Magnuson Smith | Sandstone Press

 

[Review originally published on Bookmunch: View Post]

Seaweed Rising by Rob Magnuson Smith is the type of book where the mood and plot both creep up on the reader like the many wet fronds of the seaweed that play a central role in this deeply disturbing, captivating dystopia.

We meet Manfred, a fifty-something teacher on the gloomy beaches of a Cornish village, where mizzle and fog mingle with the smell of dry vegetation circled by flies, salt-air crust lingers on the tongue, and everyone wants to get away. The splash and suck of the sea is constant: ‘It was a sound both relaxing and frightening, like the sleep-inducing cacophony of a pumping heart.’ Here begins his obsession with phycology, after discovering a huge kelp on the shore and relocating it to a bathtub in his garden.

Importantly, from the very beginning, nobody’s point of view seems rational: not Manfred, not his colleagues, not even Nora, our second central character whom he meets at the local farmers’ market. She is selling edible seaweed, of course, and a fatal attraction is forged.

To say that Manfred is convinced that seaweeds are rising is a rather simplified explanation; the brilliance of the novel lies in the fact that we never fully comprehend what it is that we should fear – or not. For the most part, we don’t know whom to believe. The points of view shift between that of Manfred and Nora, one quickly disintegrating into an unreliable narrator while the other seems to hold the voice of reason for slightly longer. As the story unfolds, we delve deep into psychosis, obsession, compulsion and suicide, and the impulse is spreading. So could algae be to blame after all?

The strangely cold and detached relationships between characters are weighed against the collective experience as the novel explores questions surrounding the potential apocalypse, whether caused by sentient vegetation or not: should we bring new life into the world if it is doomed to fail? Would it be better for the planet if humans disappeared altogether? As the characters travel across the globe, from the UK to Spain and the Arctic, signs of our imminent downfall are everywhere: meth addicts and alcoholics pepper the city streets, and the corporates are pushing into the most pristine landscapes with drills.

When compared to the strategic aim of the seaweeds – that is, to become the dominating species – humanity seems destined to fail. But children are conceived; alliances forged where there were none to be found. Rossman’s agrarian imperative, which argues that some of us have a genetic need to provide for our fellow humans, keeps cropping up. Whether we care enough is the ultimate question that the novel poses, and it lingers bitterly on the tongue.

Although referring to a glacier, Smith could equally be writing about the very planet we walk: ‘It was as if they had become entranced by an edifice so massive and beautiful – and simultaneously dying.’ We stood by and watched it happen.

Consider the Oyster | M. F. K. Fisher | Foreword by Felicity Cloake | Book review | Daunt Books

 

My edition of Consider the Oyster by M. F. K. Fisher found me on an aimless stroll in Hove, when I came across Cookbookbake, an independent specialist cookbook shop (& demonstration kitchen!). It's a gem, focusing on all things food, so besides cookbooks, they sell food writing and travel writing (best when combined), food-themed knickknacks and gifty things. In other words, bookish foodie heaven.

M. F. K. Fisher's name was familiar from Felicity Cloake's writing (who happens to be my culinary muse since her perfect recipe for a French ratatouille), and she in fact wrote the foreword to this beautiful, shiny, iridescent edition from Daunt Books, which I obviously couldn't leave. And then we haven't even discussed that it considers the oyster.

The thing about reading American food writing from the 20th century, but even contemporary pieces, is there is a glorious admiration, suggestion of expertise (that needn't necessarily be there), and most of all, love, that makes all these books feel like a hug. (I'm especially thinking Julia Child here, but consider of course Anthony Bourdain or even Stanley Tucci.) Could it be that, especially because most foods in US supermarkets are over-processed, over-sugared and mono-flavoured, American foodies assign a dreamy quality to all things proper food in their books? I live in the UK, where things are slightly better with the occasional farmer's market offering beautiful bounty, but where generally the ready-meal dominates, and even I can relate to this pedestal-placing of all things good food.

This collection of essays considers everything from oyster eating (and drinking) etiquette; the life of an oyster; anecdotes and remembered snippets of childhood. Much like her essay on oyster loafs that her mother used to eat at 'midnight feasts' at boarding school ('Those Were Happy Days'), reading Fisher's words, one feels as if these were one's own memories. 'There are stories that in their telling spread about them a feeling of the Golden Age,' she writes, 'so that when you listen you forget all but the warmth and incredible excitement of those other farther times'. And so, although I've never eaten a 'steaming buttery creamy oyster stew' with crackers in wintertime, those mellow flavours linger on my tongue as if I grew up with Fisher in California, and not landlocked Hungary, where oysters were more likely to be a metaphor than actual shellfish. 

Another nostalgia-infused essay, A Lusty Bit of Nourishment, touches on the restaurant to eat Oysters Rockefeller, Antoine's in New Orleans, and the 'inescapable charm of that simple, almost austere room, with mirrors for walls; with the blue gas lamps flickering through all the evening' where 'Huitres en Coquilles a la Rockefeller appear magically, prepared with loving patience for each eager diner as if he were the first and only gastronome' and may I just say, Anotine's still exists and is still serving Rockefellers and is now on my bucket list.

Look at that shine

Perhaps my favourite piece, My Country, 'Tis of Thee, amuses by looking at the various drinks we should or could have with oysters. Pouilly-Fuissé? Guiness? Whiskey? (Absolutely not whiskey, according to Fisher.) But 'Whether they were correctly drunk or not, I was.'

The book does contain recipes, and Daunt have kindly included a conversion table for British readers, and an index for recipes (which, if I may voice a complaint, was seriously needed in Taste by Stanley Tucci), but I don't see myself cooking up an oyster gumbo requiring two dozen (!) of these friendly bivalves, nor taking '300 clean oysters and throw into a pot filled with nice butter . . . ' as a quoted old recipe instructs – as much as I would love to.

Look, I could quote the entire book, because there is a lyrical quality to Fisher's writing that makes a simple supper of bread with sweet butter sound exquisite, and the whaft of oysters simmered in a white sauce reaches me through the pages. Her love of food, knack for writing, experience and indulgence makes this a delightful read, and especially if you like oysters. Note:

'The flavour of an oyster depends upon several things. First, if it is fresh and sweet and healthy it will taste good, quite simply . . . good, that is, if the taster likes oysters . . . Myself, since I was seventeen I have expected all oysters to be delicious, and with few exceptions they have been.' 

Piranesi | Susanna Clarke | Book review | Winner of the Women's Prize for Fiction 2021

 

A period of time spent at home means I have made a return to fiction. My true love will always be non-fiction books, but these last weeks I've been in desperate need of escapism and distraction. Enter Susanna Clarke with Piranesi.

Piranesi is one of those books that I've seen from the corner of my eye for a few years now, knowing nothing more than the fact the title sounded intriguing. Then I saw a TikTok (yes, I know, but see above re - desperate need for escapism) listing it as the one book the creator wishes he could read again for the first time. And so, with little else to do, I looked into it. 

The first thing that captured me in Piranesi was the beauty of its setting. This strange tale is set in a world made up of gothic halls filled with statues, glimpses of the sky dappling the marble floor, and the sea booming and swishing audibly at all times. A labyrinth, as it is eventually named. The imagery is strong, and although the first chapters of the book really take the time with world-building, I felt I would have happily read an entire book simply filled with these descriptions. Who needs a plot?

But there is one, subtly creeping into the world that Piranesi, our narrator, had carefully established for us: more surprising and intriguing than I could have guessed. Combine a potentially unreliable narrator with an unreliable side cast; occultism, magic, tides, the sea, and somewhat menacing, uncertain undertones for a perfect pace that builds throughout the book to a conclusion that is dramatic but not overly in any way - and an ending that doesn't undo everything the author took such care with.

Piranesi is one of those books that make you forget you're reading. The craft is incredible. Written in a first-person voice that a reader enjoys, but knows not to necessarily trust (somehow always making one feel just a little uncomfortable), we see things from this lonely narrator's point of view and with his understanding: a 'shining device', never clarified but presumed; or the 'thing like a slice of a larger cylinder cut down at an angle, with a yellow hose coming out of it'. We meet strange statues, from the woman carrying a beehive to the gardener or the minotaurs in the First Vestibule, and never know if we are to consider them as cast, or set. Clarke keeps us constantly questioning.

I couldn't resist the strange draw of the book. But so strange is it, in fact, that although I read it in just a few sittings, each sitting required a little bit of stepping back from my actual day, putting aside what I know, and clearing some headspace. Going 'back in' felt, each time, like sinking under the surface. It is a wonderful feeling, and reflective of the strength of the author's vision.

It is hard to write about Piranesi without giving too much away. I don't know that I've read anything that comes even remotely close to its strangeness, beauty or atmosphere. I craved more the minute I finished reading this book, reluctant - like Piranesi himself - to differentiate between worlds. A book that is the perfect mixture of an indescribable nature with a magic that extends way beyond its covers.