About this item
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 JournalKneeling 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.
About the Author
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.
