Elisabeth Tova Bailey – The Sound of A Wild Snail Eating

Tags

Autobiography, Book Review, Elisabeth Tova Bailey, Meditation, Science and nature, The Natural World, The Sound of A Wild Snail Eating

To see a World in a Grain of Sand And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,

Elisabeth Tova Bailey’s long meditation on, of all things, a snail, is a beautiful thing. A modest, unostentatious and tender account of one year confined to a sick bed, at times close to dying, kept alive in hope and spirit by connection with a snail. Life slowed down to simplicity and snail time as living at human speed becomes impossible.

Victim of a lethal mystery virus – possibly Lyme disease, possibly also ME, possibly tick-borne encephalitis, Tova Bailey has written an account of one year of her history of debilitating illness. Observing a snail brought to her on a violet plant by a friend provides deep immersion into what it means to be human by contrast with what it means to be snail. Tova Bailey explores with interest the lives of snails – but this is much more than a fascinating introduction to gastropods. Its a beautiful illustration of Blake’s ‘Auguries of Innocence’ quote above – anything, no matter how humble, can open into wonder and provide ‘thoughts that do lie too deep for tears’

Oh, and if you think ‘well I’m not the least interested in snails, horrid creatures’ prepare to be seduced into seeing a snail from a changed perspective, gently shown the blinkered quality of your previous snail view by this delightful snailscape!

Another writer with a brilliant ability to show the natural world in a deeply reflective, transcendent manner is Sharman Apt Russell Anatomy Of A Rose: The Secret Life of Flowers and An Obsession With Butterflies: Our Long Love Affair with a Singular Insect

Admittedly Tova Bailey’s subject is rather more unusual – many of us love roses and butterflies, and both of them have acquired mythological and mystical connections – but Snails??? Prepare to be enchanted.

Snail (of course!) Wikimedia Commons

I was reminded of just how much I had been moved, enchanted and come into being present, by the reading of this reflective, modest book, by another blogger’s post about it – here is a ping back to that review

I originally received the book as an ARC from the Amazon Vine Programme, UK

The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating Amazon UK
The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating Amazon USA

Advertisement

Siddhartha Mukherjee – The Emperor of All Maladies

Tags

Book Review, History of Medicine, Science and nature, Siddhartha Mukherjee, The Emperor of All Maladies

Abnormal Distortions of our Normal Selves

This is a tremendous piece of research and writing by a doctor, for the lay reader. To say that a book about cancer, that most dread of diseases, is deeply thought provoking, instructive and very entertaining indeed may seem a weird combination of experiences, but so it is. I’m not surprised that this book was a Pulitzer Prize Winner. It is quite brilliant.

Mukherjee examines this disease and its treatment historically from the first evidence of its appearance. It is a malady which appears to have been known and feared for at least as long as we have had any sort of written records – the ancient Egyptian physician Imhotep describes its aetiology in the Smith papyrus, thought to date from around 2,500 B.C, defining with precision what seems to be the presentation of breast cancer, with the dread advice to fellow physicians on treatment – There Is None.

Mukherjee intersperses the long and fascinating history of the search for initially, A Cure For Cancer, to more modern methods which look at multifactorial treatments, and specific treatments for individual cancers, with the narrative of specific patients. The historical journey weaves in, as it must, much fascinating information about changes in medical philosophies, ethics, the relationship between clinician and patient, the move away from a holistic view of disease inhabiting a person to views which see the clinician completely focused on the condition and ignoring the person with the condition. Stories about the extreme radicalism of surgical procedures for breast cancer `The Halstead approach’ in the latter part of the 19th and early 20th century make for shocking reading, and one can’t help but feel it was more about the glorious and theatrical daring of the surgeon than the benefit of the poor sufferer. This was medicine without the evidence to support it, happening none the less.

Even I (well aware that often `gold standard ` trials in medicine DON’T happen) was shocked to discover that the preferred treatment for breast cancer, – increasingly radical mastectomy, in use in America for nearly 100 years, – was not brought to the table for a proper trial. It was not until 1981 that  the results were shown that survival rates following `extirpation’ (removal of the breast, axillary and sometimes even cervical lymph nodes) were no better a treatment than either simple mastectomy, or the even more conservative lumpectomy with radiotherapy. In fact, the name `lumpectomy’ was coined as a dismissive, by the radicals, to describe the early, effective and more conservative treatment initially pioneered, as early as 1924, by an English doctor, Geoffrey Keynes. It was a struggle for those trying less invasive treatments to get the orthodox radicalists to listen.

Interestingly, Mukherjee links the eventual move towards less disfiguring, yet equally effective treatments, with the rise of patient power, and, in the case of breast cancer, feminism’s challenge to a generally masculine medical model.

deviant art, commons

The development of radiotherapy and chemotherapy make fascinating reading. Synthesised chemistry initially grew out of the desire to find dyes for cloth in the 1850s, natural dyes being costly and not so effective, and was then further exploited by the war industry, most notably in the production of Mustard Gas in the trenches of the First World War.

Treatment of survivors of mustard gas showed they had severe anaemia – in fact, mustard gas depleted the blood-forming cells in bone marrow. Eventually this led to interesting conclusions which could be utilised in the search of a cure for leukaemia, abnormal and aggressive proliferation of white blood cells. An unlikely combination of the fashion industry and the war industry as the mother and father of chemotherapy, where chemical molecules are designed and developed for specific purposes.

There is a long and absorbing section on the woefully late entrance of funding, ideology and will, to the idea of Cancer Prevention, rather than the starrier and more dramatic search for a cure or cures. The section begins with a telling quote from 1975, published in the Chicago Tribune:

The idea of preventative medicine is faintly Un-American. It means, first, recognising that the enemy is us

He enters into the shocking and political story of the known links between tobacco and lung-cancer, and the length of time it took for anything meaningful to be done with the explosive information. Two studies done in 1948, one in the UK and one in the USA, were published in medical journals, already demonstrating the evidence. A later landmark study, as far as methodology is concerned, published in 1954, by the British team, in theory put the evidence clearly in the market place. Cover-ups and skilful manipulation by an extremely powerful lobby, the tobacco industry, kept the death toll caused by smoking-related lung cancer steadily rising. When America finally took action, and the health of its population became more important than the vested interests of the tobacco industry, that industry shifted its focus to emerging markets.

Future death-by-lung-cancer for citizens of the developing world awaits. Mukherjee pulls no punches on this, describing the condition from his observations of his patients afflicted with the condition.

There are fascinating stories about `public taste’ – an early campaigner seeking to set up support groups for breast cancer survivors in the 1950s tried to take out an ad addressed to such women in the New York Times. She was told that neither the word `breast’ nor indeed the word `cancer’ could possibly be mentioned. The suggested wording was `diseases of the chest wall’ . Mukherjee examines the history of advertising campaigns, and how that too had its part to play in changing public awareness of the unmentionable condition and, more importantly, generating the cash which would fund research into cures.

There is also an interesting fleeting look at how cancer – a condition after all of `immortality and excess’ – normal cells have `programmed death’ – apoptosis which cancerous cells over-ride, mutating into fast proliferating immaturity – may be a disease which could, to some degree, be symbolic of our times – in the same way that `consumption’ – TB, symbolised Victorian romanticism.

Movingly, the book is dedicated to a little 3 year old, Robert Sandler, 1947-1950, who was one of the earliest beneficiaries, if only for a very short time, of treatment with an early, chemical isolate, which was trialled (without patient consent) for experimentation on his leukaemia.

Mukherjee is a poetical scientist, a scientific poet, in his writing. His use of metaphor illuminates the hard science. The subtitle of the book, `A Biography of Cancer’ is also particularly well chosen – this disease is as complex, contradictory and multi-faceted as any person.

Particularly of interest to me was the long section detailing the struggle for some of the newer, more specific cancer drugs to be brought into treatments, and this section encapsulated a lot of the real, problematic ethics behind classic medical trials, and the often worrying split between `hard-science’ (or, indeed `hard profits’) and real-life living (and dying) patients. .

My only disappointment with the book is that he has only focused on mainstream approaches to cure or management of the condition. Mock though some will, there have been other, often combination treatments – mainstream WITH complementary, and there is evidence out there. I would have liked to have seen some information for example about the work of the  Simontons, Getting Well Again: The Bestselling Classic about the Simontons’ Revolutionary Lifesaving Self-Awareness Techniques, about results with the now outlawed laetrile, and some mention of dietary approaches. There are oncologists and oncology units who routinely suggest patients have CAM treatments – NOT to treat the cancer itself, but to support the person who has the cancer. Understanding more about the interface between body and mind – Psychoneuroendoimmunology – gives credence to holism.

For once, the `puff’ about the book from published reviewers seems in no way an oversell. Impossible to praise highly enough! This book and the equally profound and moving The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, both about cancer, cancer research and medical history, are unforgettable, meaningful books about much more than a disease which fills us with dread.

Apologies, if you made it, for the length of this review. Nearly as long as the book itself!

The Emperor of All Maladies Amazon UK
The Emperor of All Maladies Amazon USA

Molly Birnbaum – Season to Taste

Tags

Autobiography, Book Review, Health and wellbeing, Molly Birnbaum, Olfaction, Science and nature, Season to Taste

Smelling the way to reality

I can’t begin to adequately express how much I enjoyed this book.

As the publicity info indicated, Molly Birnbaum, clearly a highly talented chef-in-the-making, lost her sense of smell and taste as a result of a traffic accident, shortly before she was due to start training at a prestigious Culinary School. This book charts her personal story around the loss of 2 lesser-valued senses, smell and taste, and also contains a more scientific journey into olfaction.

Like Birnbaum, I am someone who had a profound awareness of living in a world full of aroma, a good smell memory, a strong realisation of the fact that the world is full of aromatic messages, and smelled my way around my world with as much pleasure as hearing it and seeing it. Like Birnbaum, I have experienced anosmia. And the loss of the particular pleasure olfaction brings is something I mourn. I’ve been fortunate not to lose my sense of taste, but from time to time I am anosmic, hyponosmic and, gloriously, sometimes fully scenting – without fully knowing, or being able to predict, why I move through these states rather than having a steady sense of smell

So, I know that part of my extreme pleasure in this book is because it feels personal and pertinent – but even if I were not intermittently anosmic, I would have adored this book. Birnbaum (who after having to give up her culinary dreams, trained as a journalist) is a beautiful and evocative writer, particularly about olfactory and gustatory experiences, painting her way through smells and tastes with her choice of words. I found I could smell the smells she was describing, and taste the tastes, through her ability to engage my imagination fully.

There is some fabulous, clearly explained science within these pages (lots of it, I revelled in her ability to be so clear about olfaction, the flavour industry, perfumery, the testing of olfactory neurological disorders) However, she also explains a personal, evocative, profound journey about how odour cements and enriches relationships.

This book is a wonderful marriage of head, heart, soul and gut – olfaction and taste are both the most visceral of senses – they are, after all, how we take in ‘other’ whether that other is the food we eat to live, or the real chemistry, the odour molecules, of the world. We literally breathe each other in. Birnbaum explains both the metaphysics and the physics of this, and how aromatics are part of our 3D experience of the world, profoundly, movingly, and most engagingly.

Highly, highly recommended

Jan Breughel Evocative painting of The Sense of Smell – Wiki Commons

I was lucky enough to get offered this as an ARC on the Amazon Vine programme
Season to Taste Amazon UK
Season to Taste Amazon USA

Jonathan Balcombe – Second Nature: The Inner Lives of Animals

Tags

Book Review, Ethics, Jonathan Balcombe, Philosophy, Reflection, Science and nature, Second Nature: The Inner Lives of Animals

Embracing our animal nature may be the only hope for us

Jonathan Balcombe is an animal behaviourist of the right sort. By which I mean that he views animals with respect and empathy, in the same way, I surmise, as he views other members of his own animal species.

Essentially, this is the nub of the book. Balcombe eschews the idea of ‘anthropomorphising’ because in effect he shows (backed up by good references and citing) how time and again many of the ‘higher’ behaviours which we arrogantly assume are evidence of our unique ‘humanity’ – such as altruism, empathy, the ability to reason, language are in fact ‘animalistic’. There is not such a clear divide between ourselves and the rest of the, particularly, mammalian and avian world, though Balcombe also shows reptiles, fish and even insects to be more advanced than we might suppose.

In fact, rather disturbingly, the idea cannot help but surface that our unique
humanness may rather be a retrograde capacity to delight in the wanton infliction of suffering upon others, whether of our own species or of other, supposedly dumb (sic) animals. Balcombe posits that we may well have introduced the philiosophy of regarding ourselves as separate from other species in order to justify this brutality, to find an excuse for our cruelty towards other animals – and indeed, our cruelty, expressed across cultures, geographies and the centuries, towards individuals and groups of our own species, which the dominant cultural group regards as ‘subhuman’. This ability to separate the human from the subhuman has been responsible for some of our most intense acts of racial cruelty.

Balcombe’s well written, carefully thought through book ends with an impassioned argument in favour of veganism, on environmental grounds, as much as any other argument against the exploitation of our fellow, though non-human, animals.

Second Nature: The Inner Lives of Animals Amazon UK
Second Nature: The Inner Lives of Animals Amazon USA

Jonathan Balcombe – Pleasurable Kingdom: Animals and the Nature of Feeling Good

Tags

Book Review, Ethics, Jonathan Balcombe, Philosophy, Pleasurable Kingdom: Animals and the Nature of Feeling Good, Reflection, Science and nature

A challenge to blinkered speciesism

This is a terrific book, giving the lie to those who dismissively accuse those of us who ascribe emotions to animals as ‘anthropomorphising’ Its always seemed to me to be rather crucially the other way round. As human beings are after all also animals, and as we can see clearly the development of anatomical structures across aeons of time, and across species, its absolutely obvious that all the aspects of physiology have also been a-developing. Animals – not just other mammals, but other vertebrates, have neurological and endocrine systems like ours. It has always seemed to me to be supreme arrogance to interpret human behaviour and human emotion one way, and deny that complex behaviour and emotion also exist in animals. Why should we interpret the playful human one way, and see other animals, both wild and domesticated, behaving in a manner which looks playful, and looks as if the animal is enjoying itself, and not draw the conclusion that he/she is also having fun. I have used the term he/she deliberately, as Balcombe does, pointing out that our language, calling animals ‘it’ removes them from individuality. His tenet in this book is that we have failed to investigate the clear evidence that animals feel ‘pleasure’ in all its many guises – pleasure from companionship and social bonds with other animals, pleasure in play, a sense of beauty, enjoyment in the feel-good of sex – not just a mechanical urge, but pleasurable, like it is for humans. Even, in one startling image, he presents the idea that certainly other primates may experience a sense of awe.

As he points out, carefully tracing what appears to be complex emotion back and back – even to invertebrates, to insects, once we begin to see the adaptive, in evolutionary terms, nature of ‘feel-good’ and to see that ‘dumb animals’ not only feel pain, but also the complexities of the pleasurable (a much more individualised, personal identity response than the pain response) we should be forced to change our thinking about the separation between ourselves and other species.

The further I read into this book, the more Jainism, with its deep respect for all that lives, makes scientific, not just ethical sense.

My only cavil about this excellently put together, well-written, carefully argued and researched book is that I wish the extensive bibliography and citing of published research material had been footnote referenced, rather than all the books and studies cited in a chapter collected together at the end of the book, as I wanted to look for the evidence of some of the more surprising information given.

Its possible that this may have been done in the physical text, but certainly is not a feature of the Kindle edition.
Pleasurable Kingdom: Animals and the Nature of Feeling Good Amazon UK
Pleasurable Kingdom: Animals and the Nature of Feeling Good Amazon USA

Bruce Hood – Supersense: From Superstition to Religion – The Brain Science of Belief

Tags

Book Review, Bruce Hood, Neurobiology, Science and nature, Supersense: From Superstition to Religion - The Brain Science of Belief

A most unjudgemental, unfundamentalist, atheism

I found this a most absorbing read, particularly because though I agreed with the rationale behind much of it I did also find myself arguing, enjoyably rather than angrily, as there are manifestations of `supersense’ which I believe he rather ignores, dismissing certain things which exist and there have been statistical studies on (e.g. telepathy)

Hood examines he reason why we are, as a species, prone to `supernatural’ thinking and have an inbuilt tendency, rather than just a cultural tendency, to the perception of `sacred’. Briefly, we are programmed to see patterns and connections. The world may be full of randomness, but we see patterns which connect some of that randomness and make it meaningful. We are a patterning, and a cause and effect species. We are a species which invests meaning. Hood does not quite say this, but it seems to me to make perfect gut sense that as a trade-off for our awareness of mortality, and perhaps an overwhelming felt sense of a random, uncaring universe, we make certain connections, and invest meaning, and benevolent design to our world.

I admit to being a `patterner’. I probably always was. However, curiously, now seeing patterns of benevolence rather than patterns of indifference, there is no doubt that this has had a profoundly positive effect on me as an individual and as an individual in society.

He shows how much all of us, even the most `rational’ are affected by `essential thinking’ – that is, an irrational investiture of some meaningful quality in both animate and inanimate object, which can be caught, or `infect’ a person in some way. A couple of interesting experiments are put forward to demonstrate this – would you knowingly wear the washed cardigan of a serial killer such as Fred West, and even if you would, do you have a frisson of discomfort at the idea? Would you without any qualms, take a photograph of someone infinitely precious to you – say, your young child, and stab scissors through the child’s eyes, on the photograph? If you can do this, because of course, the photo is not the child, were you able to do it without an initial feeling of horror at the idea. Most of us answer no, even those who are profoundly materialistic in their thinking and feeling.

There are a couple of points where Hood I think did not see beyond his own `these are the rules by which the world works, therefore anything which happens which does not accord with how the world works, and can’t fit into the theory, can’t exist’

Hood talks through how these feelings of meaning, essence, sacred, may have cohered us as a species, whilst he dismisses the real existence of `essence’ – however, he then tells a couple of stories which don’t quite bear out his `there is no such thing as essence’ thinking. One is the recounting of the choosing of the Dalai Lama – traditionally, the very young child demonstrates that he IS the new incarnation of the Dalai Lama by picking, from a group of very similar looking sacred objects, those that belonged to the previous Dalai Lama. No doubt the hardened sceptic would say that some fraud is being perpetuated by those who are searching for the new Dalai Lama, but as those devoutly wanting to find their spiritual leader believe most profoundly that it is the Dalai Lama who must reveal himself, and not them who must choose him, what is the selection of the right objects really proving?

The other is a final story linked to Fred West.

Homoeopathy (something of an open season for sceptics) comes of course under Hood’s dismissed errors of thinking, at best as `just placebo’ – whilst he does acknowledge the power of placebo. However, it does work with babies and with animals, and presumably the placebo effect cannot explain that.

What I particularly like about Hood is his ability, pretty thoroughly, to debate religion and spiritual beliefs, from the clear stance of an unbeliever and a rationalist, without the highly charged emotionalism which Dawkins brings to the arena. None of us escape our subjective view of the world, and how it colours what we experience, but Hood is pretty good at seeing, given the widespread belief in `the sacred’ that whether the sacred exists or not, the sense of meaning and sacredness has evolved for a reason, and must confer an evolutionary advantage.

I think this is an excellent book, for those of us who are meaningful patterners, and for those who dismiss the whole thing as hokum – Hood I believe will make both sides think.
Supersense: From Superstition to Religion – The Brain Science of Belief Amazon UK
Supersense: Why we believe in the Unbelievable Amazon USA

This is the same book, published with different explanatory subtitles, UK and USA, for reasons we can, I’m sure, imagine!

Mark Rowlands – The Philosopher and The Wolf

Tags

Autobiography, Book Review, Ethics, Mark Rowlands, Philosophy of Mind, Science and nature, The Philosopher and The Wolf

This story of the relationship between Dr of Philosophy Mark Rowlands, and a wolf he bought as a cub, whilst a very young lecturer in Arizona in the 1990s, is fascinating, touching, meditative, troubled, thought provoking and as heartbreaking at times as it is amusing at others.

Rowlands was, as he admits, on one level quite a troubled individual – misanthropic, intensely reflective but not particularly comfortable with himself or other members of his own species, and veering into a relationship, far less instructive and elevating than his relationship with a wolf or part wolf part dog – with the bottle. The ability to drink a couple of litres of spirit in agonised despair on one particular, heartbreaking night, as he recounts, is clear evidence of hardened heavy drinking.

This book is part a loving recount of an 11 year relationship with Brenin, but, as importantly, a reflection on what it is to be human – or, as Rowlands, in disgust puts it ‘ape’ or ‘simian’, by contrast with what it means to be a lupine, vulpine or canine animal.

There is much which fascinatingly turns our own perception of ourselves as fine and advanced, on its head – Rowlands marks all our achievements down, from the highest to the lowest, as based on the evolutionary road which started in other primates, before homo sapiens, namely, the ability to work an advantage in deceiving each other, carried forward in speech, to grandiose mendacity, to ourselves as well as others, and, in order that the deceived do not lose evolutionary advantages, the development of the ability to read each other, see through lies and deceptions, and the never ending content between deceivers and deceived which then goes on permanently. And of course, the fact that each of us is both, simultaneously.

He contrasts the colder, cleaner concept of relationships built on loyalty within the pack of non-primate social species, with the sort of tricky behaviour (so similar to our own) which can be observed by animal behaviourists who study primate tribes over years in the wild.

I very much appreciated the debunking of arrogant superiority which we are prone to, as a species, but, increasingly, as I read, I could not help but be reminded, again and again, that the insistance, almost, on our innate debased nature, in comparison to a more noble non-human animal nature, seemed as flawed as those who believe we are the pinnacle, and the rest, dumb beasts.

Much of the book seemed to inhabit a place of self-loathing – and that loathing was projected outwards to the species as a whole of which the author seemed to be a reluctant and repulsed member.

Man, like wolf, is neither wholly flawed nor wholly perfect and part of our ape-ish evolution also leads to that very ability to self-reflect, even at times to be brutally honest in our self-reflection and attempt to see the world through another’s eyes.

Yes, for all I know non-primates may indeed be able to try and empathise with what it might mean to be lupine or avian, or even to try to perceive the world through cockroach or evergreen tree perspective, but I think this is definitely a pronounced human characteristic – and one which, if developed, can work to overturn the undoubtedly also present duplicity of simian development.

At times I very much was in 5 star territory with this book, as it made me think and ponder deeply, but I got pulled back to 4 star because some of the arguments really felt due to the fact Rowlands’ own nature made him often peer at the world through ordure-tinted spectacles. Which, in the end may be just as partial in view as rose-tinted ones
The Philosopher and The Wolf Amazon UK
The Philosopher and The Wolf Amazon USA

Michael Pollan – The Botany of Desire: A Plant’s-Eye View of the World

Tags

Book Review, Michael Pollan, Science and nature, The Botany of Desire

Desire for beauty, sustenance, and intoxication – a meditation on plants and man

Michael Pollan is one of the most interesting writers I know looking at the natural world, and, more particularly, at the politics, economics, cultural  and health issues around food. He has the most magical, open mind; the ability to take the everyday and look at it like a true artist – thus forcing the reader to look anew at his/her own everyday.

Here, he looks at four plant species whose development and spread has been closely linked with Homo sapiens – the apple, the tulip, the cannabis plant and the potato, and considers the evolutionary advantage from the plant perspective. The book uncovers history, folk-law, economics, politics and much more.

Pollan delivers much fascinating information and has the lightest and most passionately engaged of writing styles. He is a wonderful raconteur. I read this book with a wider and wider smile, thoroughly delighted and enchanted.

This book reminded me in many ways of Anatomy of a Rose: The Secret Life of Flowers by Sharman Apt Russell. Both authors have the ability to be fascinatingly informative whilst simultaneously managing charm, entertainment, profound thought and beauty.

Both effortlessly illustrate Blake’s:

To see a world in a grain of sand
And A heaven In a Wild Flower
Hold Infinity In the Palm of Your Hand
And eternity in an hour

They are writers who can take the mundane, and open it to deep meaning, philosophical complexity and educationA small factual teaser from the tulip section – the most prized and valuable tulips were those variegated by fine filigrees of crimson patterning upon the primary colour base. But this was caused by the presence of a virus, so over time, plants grown from bulblets broken off from the ‘parent’ bulb would grow weaker and weaker – so increasing the rarity and fabulous cost of the prized variety. The evolutionary gainer from mans’ ‘meddling’, not the tulip, but the virus, which we disseminated!
The Botany of Desire

Anatomy of a Rose – the secret life of flowers

Tags

Anatomy of a Rose, Book Review, Reflection, Science and nature, Sharman Apt Russell, The Natural World

Botany written by a poet, a mystic, a lover

This is the most lush and gorgeous book. Russell wears her research and erudition lightly, and writes a book about the pharmacology and morphology of plants as if she is writing a song of praise, a novel with a delicious cast of characters and a page-turning plot, a passionate political/ideological credo and a torrid piece of erotica! All in one book.

I can’t recall a piece of scientific writing this exciting, which had me laughing out loud at some points and moved to tears at the wonder of it all at others.

What a glorious and rich world we live in! The flowers in my local park have never seemed more potent and thrilling!

Anatomy of a Rose UK
Anatomy of a Rose USA