Despite being a firm fiction fan, Chris Deerin stumbled upon a slim volume of essays in 2022 that he can’t stop thinking about.
As 2022 drew to a close, I noticed that many of the “best of the year” lists repeated one particular author’s name and book.
Katherine Rundell was already known to me as a prize-winning children’s author; I had read one of her novels, The Explorer, to my youngest daughter a few years ago. A tale of four children battling to survive and return home after a plane crash in the Amazon, it stood out amid the badly written, celeb-branded dreck that comprises so many modern children’s books.
It was careful and precise with language, grim as well as funny – a sort of Famous Five meets Heart of Darkness – and, crucially, didn’t speak down to its tween readers.
Rundell’s talents stretch beyond kindling young minds, however. The book that grabbed so much attention last year is entitled Super-Infinite, and is a biography of the English metaphysical poet John Donne, who, across the late 16th and early 17th centuries, also found time to be a lawyer, a naval adventurer who fought beside Raleigh, an MP, a rake, and the Dean of St Paul’s Cathedral.
I haven’t yet read Super-Infinite. But, early in the new year, as I was scanning my piles of unread books for something diverting, I noticed that a publisher had sent me another work of Rundell’s.
The Golden Mole And Other Living Treasure by Katherine Rundell
I can’t think of anyone who wouldn’t be enchanted, fascinated, & deeply concerned by this bestiary of the world’s most extraordinary & endangered animals.
Illustrations: @talyabaldwin @FaberBooks pic.twitter.com/1oZkXGua9R— Nina Stibbe (@ninastibbe) October 25, 2022
The Golden Mole comprises a series of short essays on various species of animal, some commonplace, some rarer. It is one of those books I would have placed to one side, thinking I might come back to it, but probably wouldn’t have.
Well, thank goodness the author’s name was in my mind, so that I picked this slender volume up. It has affected me more, and I suspect more lastingly, than almost any other work I can think of.
A literary wonder
Rundell’s essays make a convincing case for why we should never approach the animal kingdom with anything less than awe and wonder. She also explains how our way of living has already forced countless species into extinction, and how many more are in a highly precarious situation. Others are daily being hunted into non-existence.
There is an obvious danger that a book like this could feel preachy, and leave the reader emotionally flattened by its mawkishness and relentless recitation of downbeat statistics. But Rundell is far too clever a writer to allow this to happen.
The Golden Mole is, instead, a literary wonder – a treasury of astonishing, uplifting facts about the brilliant creatures of this world and their evolution, from hermit crabs to wolves to narwhals.
The swift, for example, flies enough in its lifetime to traverse to the moon and back two and a half times. It remains on the wing for at least 10 months of the year, even sleeping in mid-air.
Dolphins whistle to their young in the womb for months before the birth, and for two weeks afterward – the others in the pod remain quiet so as not to confuse the unborn calf as it learns its mother’s call.
The wombat, cute as it is, can outrun Usain Bolt, and can attack backwards, crushing its enemy with its bone-hard backside
The wombat, cute as it is, can outrun Usain Bolt, and can attack backwards, crushing its enemy with its bone-hard backside. There are Greenland sharks, slow and ugly, swimming in our oceans that were around when Shakespeare was composing his works – we know this because we have learned how to date the crystallines in their eyes. Academics at St Andrews have taught seals to sing Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.
Colourful myths explored and exploded
Rundell’s sentences are small miracles that charm, like a soft hand on the reader’s cheek. “The first lemur I ever met was female, and she tried to bite me, which was fair, because I was trying to touch her, and because humans have done nothing to recommend themselves to lemurs.” “I once met a half-tame she-wolf… she smelled… of dust and blood. She did not want to meet my eye. Wolves are like the fairy tales they prowl through: wild, and not on any body’s side.” And on, beguilingly, she goes.
The colourful myths that have surrounded creatures for centuries, always based on human ignorance, are explored and exploded. The giraffe, it was thought in the 17th century, was made up of “leopard, buffalo, hart and camel”. The same era thought bear cubs were born a solid lump of flesh and then licked into bear shape by their mothers.
“Our desire to get close to the world’s wild creatures has often done them very little good,” writes Rundell. “Every species in this book is endangered or contains a subspecies that is endangered, because there is almost no creature in the world, now, for which that it not the case.”
The Golden Mole is the most exquisite charge sheet imaginable. Slight as it is, you should read it, and feel its weight.
Chris Deerin is a leading journalist and commentator who heads independent, non-party think tank, Reform Scotland
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