September 2019 book review part 2

UNDERLAND, by Robert McFarlane

In his latest book, McFarlane takes us on a dizzying journey into the depths of the Earth. He rightly points out how little we think about what lies beneath our feet, yet there is a whole world down there- or in fact many worlds. He shows us round a few of them: a dark matter detector in a salt mine half a mile under the Yorkshire dales, the labyrinthine corridors of now disused limestone quarries beneath the streets of central Paris, into a moulin, or sinkhole, in a Greenland glacier that leads hundred of metres down to the bedrock, and many, many others.

What struck me most vividly about this book, as with David Attenborough’s latest TV series Our Planet, is the way Mcfarlane drums into us, page after page, the jeopardy we have placed the Earth in, and how something MUST be done, and done NOW, to avoid an unprecedented catastrophe. There is a wonderful section on what has been called the ‘Wood-Wide-Web’, the underground connection between trees which is mediated through fungal networks, which benefits the trees as well as the fungi. Apparently trees are actually capable of helping each other by transferring nutrients to diseased trees through the network. Incredible, but true, yet all is under threat from ignorant and cynical exploitation of the Earth’s resources. 

This is a wonderful book, beautifully written as always with McFarlane, but deeply disturbing too.

I for one will never look at a tree, at a copse, or a forest, in quite the same way again.

PALM BEACH FINLAND, by Antti Tuomainen

A developer has the brilliant idea of creating a Florida-style beach resort on the southern coast of Finland. Only two things stand in his way: the fact that, as he admits, there are only 7.5 hot days in Finland per year, and a recalcitrant homeowner who won’t sell her beachfront house so he can expand. He gets two loser employees to put the frighteners on her, but that goes wrong and someone ends up dead. An undercover cop is brought in to investigate on the QT, but things get a bit complicated when he falls for the rather attractive homeowner. Later things get a lot more complicated than that...

With his quirky, jokey style overlaying some very dark events, Tuomainen has created a cracking little thriller, good character building and plot development being his great strengths. I charged through this book at great speed, and enjoyed every minute. Strongly recommended if you like a bit of Nordic noir.