A rewarding introduction to the ancient company of hedgehogs.
Environmental writer Warwick draws a humorous bead on the small, brown spiny creature's place in the great scheme of life.
Hedgehogs are not rodents, the debut author informs us in this bright, learned skirmish with the beast. They are insectivores, more akin to shrews than porcupines. Then again: “When is a hedgehog not a hedgehog? When it is a gymnure or moonrat,” hedgehogs by any other name, but hairy rather than spiny and possessed of “pronounced anal glands,” redolent of sweat and rotten onions. (This passage suggests the book's depth of coverage.) With considerable verve, Warwick covers the hedgehog from basic fact to bizarre fancy. He applies a light, poetically descriptive touch to its behavioral and geographical aspects. He spends days looking for the creature in hedges (where else?), amidst dog violets, blackthorn and stitchwort along the fast-disappearing green lanes and bounded fields. Sometimes he surprises one and watches it tighten into a protective ball of spine and menace. After a brief gustatory interlude in which various road-killed hedgehog preparations are suggested, Warwick details his personal infatuation with the animal. He satisfies much of it in the company of people who have assumed the responsibility of caring for injured hedgehogs and reintroducing them to the wild. He also spends some time on a quest for an encounter with Hugh’s hedgehog (no relation), a rare species found in China. This segment, too, has its stratum of near-relentless comedy, but it also serves to highlight the hedgehog's plight and allows Warwick to turn serious. Hedgehogs' habitat is an anachronism, the product of a slower, more land-intimate time, and their numbers are declining, he writes, as he outlines a sensible, hands-on course of protection.
A rewarding introduction to the ancient company of hedgehogs.Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-1-59691-477-3
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2008
BOOK REVIEW
In these insightfully droll essays, Gierach shows us how fishing offers plenty of time to think things over.
The latest collection of interrelated essays by the veteran fishing writer.
As in his previous books—from The View From Rat Lake through All Fishermen Are Liars—Gierach hones in on the ups and downs of fishing, and those looking for how-to tips will find plenty here on rods, flies, guides, streams, and pretty much everything else that informs the fishing life. It is the everything else that has earned Gierach the following of fellow writers and legions of readers who may not even fish but are drawn to his musings on community, culture, the natural world, and the seasons of life. In one representatively poetic passage, he writes, “it was a chilly fall afternoon with the leaves changing, the current whispering, and a pale moon in a daytime sky. The river seemed inscrutable, but alive with possibility.” Gierach writes about both patience and process, and he describes the long spells between catches as the fisherman’s equivalent of writer’s block. Even when catching fish is the point, it almost seems beside the point (anglers will understand that sentiment): At the end of one essay, he writes, “I was cold, bored, hungry, and fishless, but there was still nowhere else I’d have rather been—something anyone who fishes will understand.” Most readers will be profoundly moved by the meditation on mortality within the blandly titled “Up in Michigan,” a character study of a man dying of cancer. Though the author had known and been fishing with him for three decades, his reticence kept anyone from knowing him too well. Still, writes Gierach, “I came to think of [his] glancing pronouncements as Michigan haiku: brief, no more than obliquely revealing, and oddly beautiful.” Ultimately, the man was focused on settling accounts, getting in one last fishing trip, and then planning to “sit in the sun and think things over until it’s time for hospice.”
In these insightfully droll essays, Gierach shows us how fishing offers plenty of time to think things over.Pub Date: June 2, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5011-6858-1
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Jan. 21, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
IN THE NEWS
An authoritative, engaging study of plant life, accessible to younger readers as well as adults.
A neurobiologist reveals the interconnectedness of the natural world through stories of plant migration.
In this slim but well-packed book, Mancuso (Plant Science/Univ. of Florence; The Revolutionary Genius of Plants: A New Understanding of Plant Intelligence and Behavior, 2018, etc.) presents an illuminating and surprisingly lively study of plant life. He smoothly balances expansive historical exploration with recent scientific research through stories of how various plant species are capable of migrating to locations throughout the world by means of air, water, and even via animals. They often continue to thrive in spite of dire obstacles and environments. One example is the response of plants following the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. Three decades later, the abandoned “Exclusion Zone” is now entirely covered by an enormous assortment of thriving plants. Mancuso also tracks the journeys of several species that might be regarded as invasive. “Why…do we insist on labeling as ‘invasive’ all those plants that, with great success, have managed to occupy new territories?” asks the author. “On a closer look, the invasive plants of today are the native flora of the future, just as the invasive species of the past are a fundamental part of our ecosystem today.” Throughout, Mancuso persuasively articulates why an understanding and appreciation of how nature is interconnected is vital to the future of our planet. “In nature everything is connected,” he writes. “This simple law that humans don’t seem to understand has a corollary: the extinction of a species, besides being a calamity in and of itself, has unforeseeable consequences for the system to which the species belongs.” The book is not without flaws. The loosely imagined watercolor renderings are vague and fail to effectively complement Mancuso’s richly descriptive prose or satisfy readers’ curiosity. Even without actual photos and maps, it would have been beneficial to readers to include more finely detailed plant and map renderings.
An authoritative, engaging study of plant life, accessible to younger readers as well as adults.Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-63542-991-6
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Other Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 7, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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PERSPECTIVES
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