Karen Nordrum from the Tamworth Branch recently enjoyed the non-fiction title How to Catch a Mole by Marc Hamer, a English gardener, poet and...molecatcher! Here is her review:

At once a reflective memoir and an ode to the outdoors, this collection of descriptive and engaging essays by English gardener and poet Marc Hamer narrates how this molecatcher found his strange career: from sleeping among hedges as a homeless teen to toiling on the railway, to weeding windswept gardens in Wales. It reveals not only how to catch a mole—a craft long kept secret by its masters—but also the seldom-seen and unusual lives of the author's muses.

Quote: “A feeling of belonging brings with it a desire to build something to mark one's connection, and then, having built - a garden, a house, a career, a tunnel system - one has to protect those things from intruders, violently if necessary. We try to create an illusion of permanence, but there is none.”

Reserve this title in a variety of formats here

Awards: The Wainwright Golden Beer Prize Nominee for Longlist (2019)

Read-alikes: Peter Wohlleben’s The Hidden Life of Trees and The Inner Life of Animals