When they appear on TV or in movies, rattlesnakes are often sensationalised. They're depicted as menacing and vicious. Bryan Hughes, who has never got over his fascination with them, knows better. Rattlesnakes are wild animals whose lives are increasingly at risk from the expansion of human civilisation, and a society that doesn't really understand these reptiles.
"You're supposed to hate these things, you're supposed to kill these things – well, I don't," says Hughes. "I want to save them."
There is so much to tease out in this book, so many wonderful ideas explored: but one that has stuck with me is the idea that language can get stuck in the throat.
Things in Nature Merely Grow is a story of loss that is unlike any other book I’ve read. It’s a work of harsh beauty that exists in a different realm to most grief memoirs. That’s partly because of its startling poise and emotional restraint, and partly because it describes a realm of experience that is exceptionally strange and terrible.