Shelf Care: The weird, wonderful world of fungi in Entangled Life

Entangled Life by Merlin Sheldrake PHOTOS: VINTAGE PUBLISHING, MERLIN SHELDRAKE

Entangled Life

By Merlin Sheldrake
Non-fiction/Vintage/2020/Paperback/368 pages/$31.95/Available here

It is natural to seek escape through fantasy, but there is also enchantment to be found in the real world.

British mycologist Sheldrake's introduction to the weird and wonderful world of fungi is nothing short of magical.

Read about slime moulds that can model motorway networks and map their way out of furniture store Ikea, white rot fungi that can grow on a diet of used diapers, and even the sex lives of truffles.

Gasp in horrified fascination at "zombie fungi", which infect ants, forcing them to climb up high, whereupon the fungus sprouts a stalk out of its host's head and showers spores down on unwitting ants below.

Sheldrake, who has a PhD in tropical ecology from Cambridge University, has a marvellous knack for making science sound lovely.

"If you could place your olfactory epithelium into the soil, it would feel like the performance of a jazz group, with the players listening, interacting, responding to one another in real time," he enthuses.

Throughout the book, he seems to be constantly physically immersing himself in fungi or ingesting them.

He buries himself naked in a mound of decomposing wood chips. He harvests apples from scientist Isaac Newton's tree and ferments their juice into a cider he calls Gravity, which he drinks.

He describes his plans to seed a physical copy of his book with Pleurotus mycelium, a kind of oyster mushroom. He will wait for the fungus to eat its way through the pages, whereupon he will harvest and consume it, making him that rare author who will literally eat his own words.

Like its subject matter, there is a mind-altering quality to Entangled Life. Spend long enough in its depths and you will find yourself babbling at length to your bewildered friends and family about lichens.

"If I think about mycelial growth for more than a minute, my mind starts to stretch," writes Sheldrake.

And indeed, the book has the potential to rewrite anthropocentric perspectives and get you thinking about just how inextricably entangled you are with your environment. You will never look at a mushroom the same way again.

  • Shelf Care is a twice-weekly column that recommends uplifting, comforting or escapist books to read while staying home during the Covid-19 pandemic.

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