Underland (MacFarlane) - Book Reviews

  Book Reviews
[MacFarlane] can ladle on that BBC/PBS gently-eat-your-peas earth-show narration…. More often [he] is superb. He is so good at what he does, and has won so many awards for his books, that there has begun to be pushback in England, just to keep his career in perspective…. [T]his is an excellent book fearless and subtle, empathic and strange. It is the product of real attention and tongue-and-groove workmanship.
Dwight Garner - New York Times


You know a book has entered your bloodstream when the ground beneath your feet, once viewed as bedrock, suddenly becomes a roof to unknown worlds below ... If writing books is a form of making maps to guide us through new intellectual territory, Macfarlane is a cartographer of the first order ... Macfarlane’s writing is muscular, meticulously researched and lyrical…. Underland is a portal of light in dark times. I needed this book of beauty below to balance the pain we’re witnessing aboveground.
Terry Tempest Williams - New York Times Book Review


Mr. Macfarlane is above all a poet, evoking place and mood with astounding economy.… [H]is description of encountering the indescribable is gorgeous and evocative ... At times when this multivalent book feels as if it might not cohere, the power of the writing holds it together like a force field.… Mr. Macfarlane in fact seems a bit self-conscious about the narrative’s gender lopsidedness… [with] the pallid depictions and limited speaking parts that this virtuosic writer allots to women in his stories.…  Mr. Macfarlane’s prose is almost always enchanting, but on occasion the spell is broken.
Wall Street Journal


[A] masterly and mesmerising exploration of the world below us.… We exit, utterly, beautifully changed…. At one point, a taciturn potholer in the Carso, Sergio, offers up a halting explanation of why he seeks to map the underland: "Here in the abyss we make… romantic science." It’s a fitting description of this extraordinary book, at once learned and readable, thrilling and beautifully written.
Guardian (UK)


Few writers come as well-equipped for the subterranean task as Macfarlane…. It’s a tangled journey—part science fiction, part ancient myth—and Macfarlane narrates it elegantly. He’s a precise, tart, luminous writer, whose descriptions throw off sparks…. It’s also true that toward its middle, Underland lags a bit…. [b]ut his story gathers power as he descends into subterranean spaces linked to humanity’s grimmest moments.… [A] remarkable book.
San Francisco Chronicle


[W]ide-ranging but uneven… a worthy project, going deep, making the space beneath us come alive, and it’s one Macfarlane seems uniquely suited to dispatch with aplomb…. Macfarlane… starts strong, and any reader familiar with Macfarlane’s prose will find that precise and underloved stash of fabulous words.… [But] astonishingly, the previously stoic, ageless and gifted Macfarlane feels corny, too sure, unedited.… Considering the book as a whole, you might say that Macfarlane is best when he’s honest, humble and specific… [an] unbelievably talented but imperfect writer.
Los Angeles Times


Macfarlane explores subterranean spaces with the yearning of a man who feels awe ... Action sequences mean the pages of Underland fly fast.… The beauty is immense…. Reading Macfarlane connects us to dazzling new worlds. It's a connection that brings, more than anything else, joy. And that joy in turn connects us to the artists who depicted, thousands of years ago, dancing red figures in Norway's caves.
Barbara J. King - NPR


It’s a travelogue… a big, brave book that asks the vital question of our time: are we being good ancestors for our descendants here on Earth?… [E]xperts, including geologists and glaciologists, are roped in, yet the book avoids indulging in too much beard-stroking…. Underland can get abstract while losing itself in the dark in search of an almost Zen-like divinity. It’s beautiful nonetheless…. Underland speaks to our era’s solastalgia—our existential distress at what we’re doing to our planet. Is it a retreat underground away from the horrors of the natural world changing irreversibly around us? Yes. But it simultaneously looks at them square on, too. And it can be utterly joyful.
National Geographic


(Starred review) [E]ye-opening, lyrical, and even moving.… Macfarlane’s rich, evocative survey enables readers to view themselves "as part of a web... stretching over millions of years past and millions to come," and deepen their understanding of the planet.
Publishers Weekly


(Starred review) [E]xplores the connections between humans and landscape, this time revealing our complex relationship to what lies beneath.… A sterling book by one of the most important nature writers working today. —Robert Eagan, Windsor P.L., Ont.
Library Journal


(Starred review) [A]stonishing… Underland… argues the necessity… to dive into deep time and grasp the greater context of life on Earth.… A powerful, epic journey for anyone wondering about the world below and all around us and, perhaps more important, for those who aren’t.
Booklist


(Starred review) Wherever [MacFarlae] travels, he enhances our sense of wonder‚ which, after all, is the whole point of storytelling. A treasure all its own. Anyone who cares to ponder the world beneath our feet will find this to be an essential text.
Kirkus Reviews