About this item

"An extraordinary book; I've read no other like it. Thank goodness Marc Hamer stopped killing moles and sat down to write." - Sy Montgomery, author of The Soul of an Octopus At once a highly original memoir and an ode to the outdoors, this unexpected - and delightfully strange - book reveals, at its core, a rare vision of the natural world. Kneeling in a muddy field, clutching something soft and blue-black, Marc Hamer vows he will stop trapping moles - forever. In this earnest, understated, and sublime work of nonfiction literature, the molecatcher shares what led him to this strange career: from sleeping among hedges as a homeless teen, to toiling on the railway, to weeding windswept gardens in Wales. 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.



About the Author

Marc Hamer

Marc writes about the natural world, the animals and plants, the wind and the rain, the rivers and lakes, the streets and towns and the people that live in these places. He was homeless for a number of years and spent his time sleeping outdoors in the countryside, under hedges, in woodlands and at the margins of fields, employed in a hundred different jobs, from cooking in a chicken shop to building drystone walls and catching moles. For many years he has worked as a gardener. Through all this time he has asked the question, 'Why'? what is it all about, 'Why live?'. 'What is our true nature?' Marc writes about this in his recent book 'How to Catch a Mole - And Find Yourself in Nature'Marc has written for many years, he is an old man and has with this book released his words into the wild. Marc's work is published by the great literary publisher Harvill Secker / Vintage in the UK, Greystone Books in North America and the USA and a dozen or so publishers in Western and Eastern Europe.



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