As a boy living near the Dee estuary, environmental writer Michael McCarthy first turned to nature – butterflies, then birds – when his mother suffered a series of breakdowns.
Watching flocks of waders upon the mudflats, he experienced a deep sense of joy that is the starting point for this beautifully-written book.
We are inherently bound to nature as it is to us, he argues – evolutionarily embedded in its ecosystems even as the urbanization and intensive farming of the modern world destroys wildflowers, insects, and birds.
Startling anecdotes illustrate the point, from the demise of London house sparrows to that of the eponymous ‘moth snowstorms’ – hundreds of thousands swirling in a summer night – so commonplace in McCarthy’s childhood.
Ending his story as he began it, with butterflies, McCarthy dedicates his love of nature to his mother. As much as joy, it’s a beautiful book about love, damage, and the possibility of redemption.
Book Review: The Moth Snowstorm – Nature And Joy by Michael McCarthy
