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A review by befsk
Twelve Words for Moss by Elizabeth-Jane Burnett
2.0
I can't help feeling that I would've liked this book better if I knew the first thing about moss. The intricate descriptions of them just washed straight over me and I found my mind wandering a lot whilst reading. The poetry didn't draw me back in to the work like I hoped it would - in truth I mistakenly thought this was a book of poetry, so that's on me. It's more of a nature memoir that finds itself carried away in flights of fancy - between the poems, we find our narrator interviewing people who do moss-related jobs for a living like we're a serious science book before pages later finding her trying to listen to moss, convinced it produces music; stuffing moss into her shoes for some reason and then feeling guilty for stuffing moss into her shoes for, again, some reason. I clearly don't have the soul of a poet because this seemed like a lot of pretentiousness. The stuff about moss being good for fighting global warming was at least interesting, though.
I liked the sections where the author talks about loss and juggling grief and sadness. When she really digs down into her grief for her father it's heart-breaking at times, and beautiful too. The parts about familial roots and being able to trace her lineage back into the local area in England and her summers spent with her mother's side of the family in Africa were interesting also.
It's very lyrical prose that just could not be more unrelatable because it's about moss. We then sprinkle weird archaic-sounding poetry passages throughout about moss. Like she's literally waxing lyrical about moss, actual moss. Borderline love poems to moss. Which, obviously the title does say that it's about moss but I didn't actually know that anyone could write an entire book about moss, outside of being an actual science book about moss. This read has been an eye opening experience, that's for sure.
I liked the sections where the author talks about loss and juggling grief and sadness. When she really digs down into her grief for her father it's heart-breaking at times, and beautiful too. The parts about familial roots and being able to trace her lineage back into the local area in England and her summers spent with her mother's side of the family in Africa were interesting also.
It's very lyrical prose that just could not be more unrelatable because it's about moss. We then sprinkle weird archaic-sounding poetry passages throughout about moss. Like she's literally waxing lyrical about moss, actual moss. Borderline love poems to moss. Which, obviously the title does say that it's about moss but I didn't actually know that anyone could write an entire book about moss, outside of being an actual science book about moss. This read has been an eye opening experience, that's for sure.