How it’s going:

This book comes to us from an author who used to be a reporter, her main focus was on reporting about climate change. In her despondence about the state of the world she turned to botany and found that a lot of scientists had been making extraordinary discoveries about plants. For example that plants can recognize other plants that are related to them and won’t block the related plants from receiving sunshine or water, but will block plants that are not related. How they do that? We have no idea, but they do. And so, in her fascination, she started talking to be people about plants and wrote this book.

So far this book is utterly entrancing. I have seen a lot of review criticize the author for anthropomorphizing plants. And I understand their disagreement with it. But, at the same time, how exactly do you talk about the things plants do that defy our language to define it any other way? And we cant forget that historically humans are very bad at recognizing any “intelligence” that isn’t our own. Unfortunately, my time limit on this one from the library is nearly over, I will have to put it on hold again and finish it the next time.

How it’s going:

This is my first time reading a book from this author, but if this book sticks the landing it certainly won’t be the last. The premise of this book is that our protagonist escaped a horribly abusive childhood. Her mother was a complete monster, and her father committed suicide and wasn’t around to protect the children. She escapes, gets married and has two children of her own and then her mother calls. Her mother has cancer, and with her last weeks to live she wants to move into the protagonist’s home and “make amends”. But soon strange things begin happening and our protagonist starts to wonder if perhaps her mother is possessed by a demon.

I am listening to this one on audiobook and the narrator is remarkable. Her tonal shifts with each character are subtle, but they perfectly set the mood. The story is delightfully creepy. Our protagonist is just starting to put the pieces together and I am anxious to see how it ends.