“It is a slow fall. Sometimes, though, it is a rising upward” (138).

It took me numerous starts to get into this, but once I did — wow. This was lovely, reminiscent of Per Petterson’s Out Stealing Horses: quiet, rural, memory-laced. I wouldn’t have enjoyed this book in my twenties. It’s almost plotless as the aging narrator meditates on nature generally and moss particularly, the small plant that is barely noticed, yet covers the largest trees, renders the most solid thing invisible. If you like that kind of quiet book, that’s meditative, about one thing — like moss — but really about so much more, then check this out. If you’re looking for a book in which a bunch of stuff happens, though, this may not be for you. ( )

When it comes to the magnificent old pine tree whose branches beat against my upper windows, I can name it “correctly” and conceptually disassemble it right down to its molecular structure. But I have no way of describing the language with which the tree, in knocking against the window, speaks to me.

With nature themes and a meta-literature premise narrated by an aging botanist who specializes in nomenclature, I was excited to snag this novella through LT’s Early Reviewers. Then I started it, and started it again, and again… I don’t know…the passage above captured me a couple dozen pages in, but I felt I was reading the whole rest of it with glazed eyes. ( )

I select virtually all of my reading material, so it's rare not to have expectations for it. Expectations figure in deciding it's worth reading at all, of course, but also when to read it. Many books wait on my shelves for the right time, which frequently isn't for years. That little reading I do without any real expectations is attributable either to the book being a gift, or somehow being "assigned". These days, assignments typically are short form: essays, perhaps an article for work. Only gifts are likely to be longform, and most of these were selected to match an interest, so these also come with some expectation "built-in".

In the case of Moss, I anticipated a blend of reflective essay (perhaps more botanical than philosophical, though I was hopeful for both) and modern Weird fiction. I'm drawn to that strain of Weird with commentary on reason and rationality, so to my mind such an expectation wasn't outlandish. Modick here incorporates several tropes into his novel which suggested my expectations: a found manuscript; the death of the narrator's brother whose recluse lifestyle developed out of his work in psychological theory; the cabin in which the dead man was found, covered in moss.

While it's true the novel has a strong meditative feel to it, I found it more personal than world-disclosive, and also light on Weird. The early botanical musings were tantalising, but felt more like diversions than prominent features of the story. Similarly, I saw several hints at Weird, but these also didn't pan out in terms of understanding the brother's demise. So while many elements I anticipated were in fact present, and while the tone and style fit what I'd hoped to find, still somehow the story didn't come together for me.

Generally, my expectations aren't fully met in my reading. Even so, usually I enjoy the books I read, because other aspects of the story prove compelling, or other qualities in the narrative speak to other interests I have. Modick didn't provide that, though the overwhelming experience was of something lacking rather than anything proving to be explicitly bad. Looking back, I recognise there was an element of "assigned reading", since the book was awarded as part of LTER, and I felt responsible for reading it sooner than I might elsewise have done. I'm left wondering if my expectations here hindered my reading experience. It's possible I lost Modick's thread in attending overly to my expectations, rather than to where the text, in fact, led. ( )

An interesting brief bildungsroman of sorts, where the character, rather than growing up, grows into his death. The text is presented as a "found manuscript" published after the author's death.

The protagonist tries to move away from the language of (botanical) science in which he spent his adult life in order to achieve a different kind of knowledge, more holistic.

While a reader may disagree with the stance of the character - Lukhas Ohlburg (and it is hard not to consider him an alter ego of the author, whose name is an anagram of the character's: Klaus), his approach to the subject matter of how to perceive reality is nevertheless compelling. ( )

A true curiosity! An aging botanist writing a treatise on scientific classification that should be his legacy work finds himself stuck on moss, more and more literally. While writing, he lives in a family vacation cottage that is prone to invasive moisture during seasonal transitions and to moss growing on the roof. He rejects the seasonal scraping of the moss that was one of his father's obsessions. He relates youthful stories of lovemaking in the moss. He begins to revere it, and to envision himself as supporting its growth. He gives up shaving and begins to muse about his own death, the greenery that will survive him and thrive upon him.

David Herman, the translator, had his work cut out for him in making this German language work come alive in English, working closely with the author. Philosophical and inward-turning abstractions are reworked as poetry, as in this bit involving the advantage of a wood fire over coal: “. . . it makes me sad that I have not known, not seen, not cut down myself the trees that undergo this transformation from a luscious green to a red-hot vital force, giving life . . . No one piece looks like another—a banality that has been banal for so long that it is no longer recognized as such. Yet the variety, particularly of burl wood, is more than astounding. I attempt to estimate the age of the wood by reconstructing the size of the trees, their double life in earth and air, their simultaneous upward and downward growth. Now and then I chew small pieces of bark, especially ones that already have moss attached to them.”

Moss was originally published over thirty years ago. As with Heroine, another book I reviewed recently, reading Moss I often had the sensation of a string of eternity vibrating between the past and the present. Rather than offering persistent arguments and scenarios on women and society (Heroine), Moss relates concern that political policy is ambivalent when it comes to the environment. “Could it be,” the narrator writes, relating a conversation with a friend, “that people had finally grasped that not politics but, rather, nature constitutes the true concern of mankind? But how, exactly, does one go about doing politics by means of nature?” ( )