A review by pippa_w
Feral: Rewilding the Land, the Sea, and Human Life by George Monbiot

2.0

The government says that unless determined efforts are made to exterminate them, they will become established through much of England within twenty or thirty years. It is a prospect that delights me, though I accept that not everyone shares this view.

After nearly three weeks (I am so annoyed) of clawing through this slog of a book, I HAVE EMERGED.

Look, I am so, so glad this book seems to work for a lot of people. When he eventually gets to them, the facts George Monbiot highlights about the damage wreaked on the planet and its species by humanity and the benefits of re-wilding are deeply interesting and powerful.

But the most remarkable revelation in the paper was this: that in 1889 the fishing fleet, largely composed of sailing boats, using primitive, homespun gear, reliant on luck and skill rather than on fish-finding technology and all the other sophisticated equipment available today, landed twice the weight of fish as boats working the same sea do today.

However, Monbiot is also an egocentric, privileged white man who really, really wants his Scout badges in kayaking, connecting with your inner feral hunter-gatherer, “expertise” in other cultures derived from a few weeks of superficial immersion, condescension with limited self-awareness, and a deep, deep hatred of sheep (or, as Monbiot calls, them “the white plague”).

Then there was the bit where he introduces the differences in technology between “humans” (white Europeans), as opposed to Native Americans.

Nope, nope, nopity nope. I’m assuming this was a typo. But the fact that it happened, and that no one caught it, in the context of the tone of the rest of the book and how DEEPLY opposed he is to species from other parts of the world being introduced in the U.K., just puts the worst possible taste in my mouth.

There is a comment on a review here in Goodreads that describes the memoir aspects of this book as gorgeous, decorative, self-aggrandising, and largely irrelevant to the premise of the work. Unfortunately, this book is not pitched as a memoir, and, even more unfortunately, a memoir is what most of this book is.

If you are content with the scope of your life, if it is already as colourful and surprising as you might wish, if feeding the ducks is as close as you ever want to come to nature, this book is probably not for you.

I should’ve taken this huge red flag of a belittling comment, even if not directed to me, to heart and just put it down. But I didn’t, so let’s end on a rare insight I did like:

So many fences are raised to shut us out that eventually they shut us in.