A Life in Nature

In lyrical prose, Hamer revealed a curious kinship with moles - creatures who, like him, often work alone. Like Laurie Lee, Hamer is an elegist, attracted to what's beautiful precisely because it's poised to pass away.

Washington Post

[How To Catch a Mole] has the feel of an enduring classic. It is the testament of a man who has learnt to see, who has the nerve to interrogate his own annihilation and who…handles language superbly

Charle Foster, Oldie

[A] distinctive, quietly revelatory, book…a somewhat unlikely interplay of Hamer’s easeful poetry and observations with accounts of both the specialist life of moles and his own biography. Skilfully woven with eloquent simplicity, it offers a rich and sustained meditation on the task of apprehending the complex and delicate interconnectedness of life and land

Richard Greatrex, Church Times

[A] wholly original book

Craig Brown, Mail on Sunday, *Books of the Year*

[Hamer] offers us some heart-rending images which linger in the mind long after you’ve closed the book

Sebastian Shakespeare, Daily Mail

How To Catch A Mole is a beguiling mixture: part autobiography, part handbook, part travel book, part philosophical treatise. I’m happy to report that it succeeds on each level

Craig Brown, Mail on Sunday

How to Catch a Mole is a beautiful, elegiac ode to a remarkable creature. It’s also an exploration of Hamer’s life as he approaches his sunset years. Each page is filled with wonder, love, regret, humility and a sense of wonder (and oneness) with nature.

Washington Post

A beguiling mixture of autobiography, practical handbook and philosophical treatise

Neil Armstrong and Hephzibah Anderson, Mail on Sunday, *Summer reads of 2019*

A distinctive, quietly revelatory book... a rich and sustained meditation on the task of apprehending the complex and delicate interconnectedness of life and land. Its pages have much to teach us.

Church Times

A haunting memoir... [Hamer] writes of them [moles] and their underground lives with deep knowledge and tenderness, finding in their solitary habits an echo of his own vagrant nature

Jane Shilling, Daily Mail

From the first few words I knew I had encountered loving honesty and no one needs more than that. It is rare to encounter such respect and understanding of nature for herself.

Rosamund Young, author of The Secret Life of Cows

It's not often you meet a mole-catcher, let alone read their story. Marc Hamer's uplifting writings shed some light on the velvety creatures burrowing beneath our countryside

National Geographic Traveller

Marc Hamer's uplifting writings shed some light on the velvety creatures burrowing beneath our countryside.

National Geographic

Marc Hamer's wonderful How To Catch A Mole took me completely by surprise. It certainly is a book about catching moles but it is also a book of sound philosophy, poignant biography and a zen-like meditation on life and nature. Brilliant.

Caught By the River

Marc tells his story and explores what moles, and a life in nature, can tell us about our own humanity and our search for contentment.

Sunday Express

Not only a compelling meditation on the 'little gentleman in black velvet'…but also a fascinating, lyrical account of the loneliness and beauty of life on the margins, a memoir of vagrancy

Times Literary Supplement

The wisdom contained in this elegiac and intensely moving book doesn't need embellishing

Lady

This is a wonderful book about our relationship with the earth, with other animals and with our own troubled humanity. It has taught me a lot. I feel great love for it.

Max Porter