User Reviews
Rating: really liked it
Absolutely stunning.
Rating: really liked it
How to catch a mole, life as a molecatcher. Written in the season of catching moles, instead of catching moles. I think the only certainty I can give you about this book is that by the end you will know a lot more about moles.
There came a day when professional gardener and molecatcher (and longtime vegetarian; “life is rarely as neat and tidy as we would like”) Marc Hamer decided he had killed his last mole. Finding himself in his twilight years, and being the sort to wander with a stub of pencil in his pocket to capture the words and phrases that conjure themselves in the air around him, Hamer decided to start writing about catching moles instead of spending his time in the execution of his ancient and arcane craft. Combining nature writing, philosophy, and memoir, How to Catch a Mole is a quiet story of a quiet life, and the match of style to substance makes for a gentle and engaging read; would that we all could craft such an extraordinary artefact from our ordinary lives. [Note: I read an ARC and passages quoted may not be in their final forms.]
Hamer begins with a prologue recalling his decision to retire as a molecatcher and then the meat of the narrative commences. Each chapter begins with the continuing story of his last days as a molecatcher, includes some facts and lore about moles, chronicles earlier events from his life (primarily his time as a homeless youth who learned to live close to nature), includes some ink and woodcut type illustrations (by Joe McLaren) and ends with a related poem. Hamer's voice and wisdom are the real delight here (this is no astonishing or action-packed biography) and I'll let him do most of the talking here by way of demonstration. A snippet of one of his poems:
My body is working
my mind is idling
man-shaped, pig-like
I'm snuffling, bent
I've leaving booted footprints
in the crystalline grass
and I want to swim
to hang motionless
alone in a loch
my back tattooed with clouds
with seagulls squeaky
wheeling overhead.
A sample of mole-related facts:
Moles are immensely strong. His massive hands, each of which have two thumbs, are as wide as his head. He has a thick knot of muscle in his neck and shoulders which is as hard as a pebble. I am a working man who lives by the spade and a mole's hands are stronger than mine: a living mole can easily peel my closed fingers apart and escape.
And mole lore:
I have heard stories of moles going deep, of a sexton seeing a mole running across the bottom of an empty grave – it's a story that I have heard several times, but never from anyone who has actually seen it. The world runs on fiction.
And an example of Hamer's nature-derived philosophy:
In quiet moments like this, there is a sense of completeness: nothing else is needed to make them whole and perfect. I start my work, looking down the field. I go quiet inside; the silence seems to pour out, filling any cracks or flaws in the perfection. Once you experience this feeling of simply existing you lose the need to ask why you exist.
And what he has learned at the end of the day:
I do not know what life is, but I know what it does. Molecatching has been a life that has brought me closer to the nature of my own existence, and what it means. It has allowed me to treat the wild outside as a precious home, instead of something one is cast out into. To feel directly connected to the breath of the air that fuels me, to the soil and the sun and the rain that feed me. It has made me fit and healthy and peaceful. That connection with the earth is now part of every cell of my body, but I need to rest.
How to Catch a Mole may not be every reader's cuppa tea, but I found it lovely, wise, and candid; a memoir that feels inevitable in the smooth meshing of its various parts.
Rating: really liked it
Choosing a career as a mole-catcher is unusual, to say the least. But then Marc Hamer has never followed any convention, rather he has forged his own path in his life. He has been homeless after his father decided he was surplus to requirements at the age of 16, worked on the trains and slept in hedges and on the beach, weeded gardens and finally ended up in this, a mole-catcher, his last career. Knowing where moles are is fairly easy, look for the conical piles of soil that appear scattered over finely tended lawns and driving the owners of the properties half-mad.
Finding these elusive creatures is much harder and takes years of experience and knowledge to locate the tunnels and set the traps. It was this knowledge that meant that mole-catchers could expect a secure and well-paid job. This solitary working life suited Hamer, spending time outside in the glorious Welsh hills sensing the seasons change imperceptibly on a daily basis and loving his life. After a lifetime of experience chasing and destroying these rarely seen animals, he made the decision to never do it again and hung up his traps.
Reading about the destruction of these poor creatures is not easy, however, Hamer somehow writes about it with a tenderness that doesn’t lessen the cruelty, but shows his small part in the cycle of life and death in nature. It is a part that he turned his back on, deciding after one incident to not continue the trapping of moles. I really like Hamer’s sparse writing too, he is not pretentious or flowery, rather he tells it how it is, celebrating the tiny details that others often miss, enjoying the wind and rain as well as retreating home for shelter, companionship and a tumbler of whisky for warmth. It feels like he is an integral part of the landscape and like all living things on this planet, just a transient blip in the geological deep time. I preferred the prose to the poetry, and all the way through it is beautifully illustrated by Joe McLaren.
Rating: really liked it
Sadly the stars only go up to 5
Rating: really liked it
3.5
This was such a wonderful book to read whilst in my small summer cottage, walking around in my garden each morning counting the new mole mounds that had appeared during the night. Those small animals are so clever and so difficult to get rid of (I haven't tried myself).
Marc Hamer gives an interesting overview of the mole as a species, of those little hard-working blind animals. And at the same time, the book is an ode to nature and a memoir of his time as a homeless young man just walking for months and months in nature, observing it, creating a life long bond with it.
He emphasises how important it is to just let nature be. Not to have your lawn manicured to perfection, not to use pesticides to kill insects and poison moles. They were there first and we should learn to live side by side with them. I wholeheartedly agree. On my own little patch of green, I try to leave many things untouched. So the soil would be more fertile and birds would have more interesting material to collect for their nests and to eat. This is how it should be ideally and Hamer argues it so well in his book. A great book for any nature lover and an eye-opener for a gardener who despises moles.
Rating: really liked it
A lovely, respectful take of a job that no one wants to do. You’d think reading about someone who kills moles for a living would be gruesome and upsetting, but Hammer shares a lovely respect of nature and beauty and appreciating the small moments in life. This is why I read nature writing 👌🏼
Rating: really liked it
I read the first 103 pages. Hamer opens, “I am a gardener. I have been catching moles in gardens and farms for years, and I have decided that I am not going to do it any more. Molecatching is a traditional skill that has given me a good life, but I am old now and tired of hunting, trapping and killing, and it has taught me what I needed to learn.” What follows is a gentle natural history of the mole, as well as a meditation on our connections with a nature and a memoir of a life lived largely outdoors, especially in the 18 months the author spent homeless as a teenager. The writing is fine, if a bit flat and repetitive, and by halfway through I hadn’t worked out whether this is about atonement or not. Each chapter ends with a free verse poem that isn’t distinguished from the prose by much apart from the line structure. The writing reminded me slightly of Paul Evans’s, or maybe that’s just my mind playing tricks on me because the two nature writers look a little bit alike. Lovely woodcuts by Joe McLaren.
Rating: really liked it
How to Catch A Mole by Marc Hamer
I will admit that I was skeptical about reading this memoir. Catching a mole, really! Was I surprised and delighted! Hamer has written a lovely book not only about his life in the outdoors but his philosophy on life that he has learned from being in nature. His language and poetry is artistic and beautiful and I was entranced. Although I don’t think I could live in nature as he did, I was envious of his experience and was grateful to be able to read his thoughts and memories about his life as a mole catcher. Absolutely wonderful! Please read !
Rating: really liked it
A charming, small, quick read. This book reads like a long cozy letter or monologue, and is interspersed with poems, natural history facts, and woodcuts. The narrative itself alternates between the author's youth and recent past, interspersed with meditations.
If that sounds like a recipe for self-published, disorganized, self-involved memoir disaster, that's because that's what this approach would usually lead to. Here, though, the author walks that tightrope and, though the writing isn't amazing and the poetry and woodcuts struck me as average, he takes us across safe and satisfied to the last few pages. I guess that's thanks to a rare sort of universally avuncular / pastoral tone that he's managed to strike and hold through the story.
I wound up really enjoying the author's vicarious company, who sometimes harbors a Walt Whitman or Huckleberry Finn streak, toned way down by strains of Wendell Berry and Gilbert White. Also, the natural history bits didn't come across as pedagogic in tone. Little tidbits of mole natural and social history came up almost as they would have during a conversation, so that they felt natural, and not like cut-and-paste encyclopedia entries. Also, the book as a whole avoided the feeling of forced quaintness by including some 21st century references when appropriate.
Rating: really liked it
Chances are, you will dig up your lawn and replace it with a flower meadow after reading this, and allow nature to do what it does.
Rating: really liked it
A book has never made me happier.
Rating: really liked it
Well, this was pretty much a perfect book—or it was until I knocked over my S’well bottle of iced tea and practically drowned the darling mammal on its cover.
I loved this! Ostensibly about critters known for tearing up cow pastures, stately gardens, and suburban lawns, it’s really a rumination on nature, life cycles, peripatetic independence, perambulation, gardening, mole-catching, writing haiku, and of sleeping under hedgerows. Now having given up the catching of moles, Marc Hamer has time to share his thoughts. Thoughts like decay being a good thing. Yes. Decay as a good thing! As in—don’t rake those leaves! Don’t mow your meadow during growing season! And don’t be afraid of either being ordinary or of falling apart! May I give you my two favorite quotes?
‘’Having worked all my life, created a family, discovered a home, I feel as secure as a working man ever feels, and I feel a sense of equality again with the crow and the toad and the hawthorn, with the rain and the wind. I am them and they are me. I lost my self-importance early on and do not want to differentiate myself from the world around me. I am just another animal, another tree, another wildflower in the meadow among billions of others, each unique in their own way, each just like the others in other ways, each one just another expression of nature trying to survive. There is something deeply magnificent in being just ordinary.”
And:
“ This is a small life, and everything comes to nothing in the end. I like that. I like the idea of smallness, and the wonder of basic human things. “
So. I recommend this slim, lovely volume to anyone who feels that he or she can be comfortable with a honest look at the ways in which nature recycles itself when given allowance to do so. What I don’t recommend is Googling ‘mole traps’.
Rating: really liked it
A quiet, wandering sort of a book on a man reflecting on his life in nature and killing moles. An interesting perspective I wouldn't have ever thought of to be interested in before. I learned a lot about moles too and would love to learn more.
Rating: really liked it
So I wasn't too sure what to expect from this book as it is about trapping and killing animals but I actually found it very interesting. And I think it is actually more about nature than actually about trapping moles.
And can I say that moles are cute? The author kept mentioning "mole hills" and since I had no idea what a mole hill actually looked like I had googled it. And found photos of moles poking their heads and arms out of a hill of dirt. Sort if like the little mounds of dirt that an ant makes but much bigger. And I thought "they are cute!" Of course I think most animals are cute. And being autistic I often like animals better than people. But unfortunately not everyone feels this way, especially when it comes to moles.
They apparently do a lot of damage. They not only ruin gardens and farms and that perfect lawn people desire but their holes can break a horse's leg! And since using poison is too dangerous you have to catch them the old fashioned way. Apparently the Romans were catching moles too!
Luckily this book is not sad or upsetting. At all.
It's not about death but about life. And I enjoyed reading the author's personal story of how he got connected to nature. How he became an animal like the other animals. Living outside and traveling from place to place, sleeping in piles of leaves or under hedgerows. How he became one with the birds or how he would wake up with all sorts of critters on him. It was tough at times but he was living in the moment. Nothing else really didn't matter. He was happy. He is not a people person. He prefers the company outdoors with the fields, river and the sky. I sure can relate to that! And so he was homeless in the great outdoors and just walking wherever his feet carried him, no real worries except what he was going to eat. So the majority of the book is about his time spent with nature and it is wonderfully described. The writing is very lyrical. Yet somehow he includes a lot of detail too. But its never dull or boring at all. It just flows so smoothly and I was quite hooked! He may be a man but he is a bit like a male Snow White with birds landing on his boots!
The book also includes the differences he notes in the wild world from back then to now. Big differences. But the moles are still there.
Before I started reading this I didn't know anything about moles. Had no idea what they ate. Or why people were catching them. But I found it all very fascinating. And they are actually very small, delicate creatures.
But nature is a chain. You cannot remove one bit from the chain and think it is going to be ok. And that chain starts with the soil and the bacteria in it. And leaf litter and worms. He explains it all in his book. And the texture of the soil is important too! Moles do not like compacted soil.
There are poems scattered throughout the book as well but I actually preferred the actual story / text bits. I am not really one for reading poetry. I do have a few favorite poems I learned as a kid but than again that is rare.
And something else I have realized while reading this is the fact I have never seen a mole hill. I guess they are not around here? I do have woods right here but maybe its the wrong kind of soil? But many years ago back in the 80s I do recall my grandfather trying to kill groundhogs with the "hose hooked to the tailpipe of a car" method that the author mentions in here. My grandmother used to yell at him for doing that, saying it was stupid. She said the groundhog would just run out another hole! But he would try it anyway. I also remember many years later I had actually seen a groundhog in my yard and had no idea what it was!
But I have never seen a mole... I think it would be neat to see one. But very unlikely. There are beavers on the river here but I have never seen them either...although others have. I do see a lot of birds and have a knack for getting close to them for photos. I do feel very connected with nature like the author describes in here. But I would never sleep outside. Of course he is a man so he can do that but what about ticks? He never brings up that subject but he does mention bees and wasps.
So if you love nature you will love reading this. It is not gloomy at all even if it is about trapping animals. I actually learned a lot from reading this.
Rating: really liked it
.It is a different book. A refreshing approach to stay away from capitalism, technology and productivity.
It is an effort to catch life raw when it is barefoot and then feeling it's contours and trying to be it's friend.
Main character is a mole catcher who is aging but spirits are still high.
His children are settled and wife is only companion who goes away temporarily.
Authors sets on a journey to live minamilistic life when he sleeps in nature, on parks, banks, tree and any othe place available. Writing is excellent and book is written directly from heart. There are a lot of biological and social and historical facts about moles.
It is fascinating to read. Parts detailing burrows of moles and when he has to kill a mole with hands is very touching and innovative.
You could almost feel things playing live.
A very good work if you are looking for raw and natural writing.
Thanks edelweiss plus and publisher for review copy.
