Book Review: Entangled Life by Merlin Sheldrake
When it comes to books about fungi, you don’t necessarily expect the content to welcome you like an old friend. Yet Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds & Shape Our Futures by Merlin Sheldrake does precisely that. It chronicles a span of knowledge that reads like fiction while ultimately feeling deeply necessary to our thriving world. And don’t worry—this isn’t just a book about mushrooms. Mushrooms are the most popular fungi, but this book focuses on fungi that are out of sight and, for a lot of people, out of mind.
Sheldrake’s work—clearly manifested through passion and pure wonder—has given fungi several new signifiers. They are not only fundamental to nearly every branch of life, but they are also sublime, mysterious, eye-opening, and ever-transitory beings. If we were to build fungi into our house of cards, we would find them at the bottom: the crucial foundation. As these pages unfold, it becomes obvious that without fungi, the world as we know it could not exist.
There are so many wonderful fungi that rise to the surface through the research compiled in Entangled Life. However, a favorite of the fungi discussed is the Monotropa uniflora, or “ghost pipe.” This fungus looks exactly like a flower but it’s completely white—almost translucent—and it takes all of its resources from the trees and shrubs around it by connecting to their roots. It is a truly astonishing phenomenon that results in expansive mycorrhizae networks that can be miles long. These networks then become channels that share resources and hormone signals between plants.
What I find most fascinating about information like that of the Monotropa uniflora is that it would be nearly impossible to discover through a simple Google search. Merlin Sheldrake has done something inspiring in their ability to convey niche, peer-reviewed research in a way that anyone can understand. Sheldrake takes what could have been scientific jargon, and turns it into an imaginative, poetic tale. Life and identity take on new forms in this captivating book. As our resident earth atmosphere lover Hunter would say, this book is a must-read.
