How to Catch a Mole
Wisdom from a Life Lived in Nature
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
In this evocative and heart-wrenching memoir, a hard-working Welsh molecatcher reveals his double life as a poet and a dreamer • “A wonderful memoir … hands down the most charming book I read last year.”—Margaret Renkl, The New York Times
“How to Catch a Mole is a small book of many things. In quiet, crystalline prose, it blends memoir, keen observations of nature, and ruminations about life, aging and death.”—Wall Street Journal
Kneeling in a muddy field in the Welsh countryside, clutching a creature that is soft and blue-black, Marc Hamer vows he will stop trapping moles—forever. In this earnest, understated, and sublime work of literary memoir, the molecatcher shares what led him to this strange career and what caused him to stop: from sleeping among hedges as a homeless teen, to toiling on the railway, to weeding windswept gardens in Wales and witnessing the beauty of every living thing.
Hamer infuses his wanderings with radiant poetry and stark, simple observations on nature’s oft-ignored details. He also reveals how to catch a mole—a craft long kept secret by its masters—and burrows into the unusual lives of his muses. Moles, we learn, are colorblind. Their blood holds unusual amounts of carbon dioxide. Their vast tunnel networks are intricate and deceptive. And, like Hamer, they work alone.
Beautifully written, life-affirming, and highly original, How to Catch a Mole offers a gorgeous portrait of one man's deep, unbreakable bond with his natural surroundings, and offers hope and inspiration for anyone looking to improve their relationship with the natural world.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This informative and effortlessly readable work from poet Hamer is at once an educational primer on the titular species, and a sensitive look at his own life in the unlikely profession of molecatching. Long employed by homeowners and farmers in Llandaff, Wales, to help them eradicate animals generally regarded as pests, Hamer explains that he stopped after becoming "tired of hunting, trapping and killing." However, he also shares a sense of gratitude for "a life that encourages a passion for nature, for its functional beauty and its violent brutal energy even for its decay." His writing conveys this passion with closely observed descriptions, such as of how moles dig tunnels, helped by their "dark, blue-black hair... soft and velvety brushes just as easily backwards, forwards and sideways." Hamer also peppers the narrative with personal history, referencing experiences with homelessness, when like a mole he "perfected hiding skills and went underground," surviving outdoors and avoiding contact with other people. Ultimately a reflection on humanity's fraught but sustaining relationship with nature and on life's "intertwining rhythmic cycles that thump along," Hamer's heartfelt work should have far wider appeal than its niche subject might suggest. With b/w illustrations.
