Unhinged and cray-cray as hell. Imagine a plant with active consciousness. Then that plant goes insane and writes a book. That’s what The Book of Feral Flora feels like—and I kinda love it. Four stars for the audacity and giving me something wild to talk about at dinner parties. Another star because, why the fuck not? Where else would I find such delicious plant-based madness?
Okay—how to begin? Let’s start with genre. There isn’t one. If you’re going to read this, you must forget everything you know about reading. Free your mind of precedent, of what a book is supposed to do and not supposed to do. All rules will be broken anyway, so stop thinking about rules.
If I were to box it into a genre, I guess it would be literary fiction. But I think it’s actually closer to poetry. A poetry chapbook. Unconventional in content and publication. Poetry for people who love poetry but are also tired of it and want something different.
Part of the book is literally “written” by plants. The author explains how she read passages to various plants and, using sensors, recorded how they (the plants) “re-wrote” the text using “electrical impulses.” That’s what she says, at least, and I do believe it. The work the plants produce has no particular meaning and I don’t think the reader is meant to “read” it. Still, there is an eerie profundity about seeing it on the page.
Other sections include more traditional prose, though repeated later with subtle differences. You aren’t going crazy, but the déjà vu is real. These pages were the most jarring for me, the most brain-boggling, but clearly this was the intention.
Another portion, and possibly my favorite, are dozens of alternating pages filled with nothing but the repeated names of plants and trees in all-cap font. The string of words are without meaning but, placed between fragments of poetic images, at varying lengths, they transform the meaninglessness into a kind of plant choir exalting ebbs and flows of enthusiasm.
The final story, “The Ideal Subject” is, more simply, a superb work of short fiction that both stands alone and compliments the bizarro earlier segments.
In the end, I’m breathless and in awe by this experience. I had to read it in small doses, and there were times when it felt too unconventional for me to get through. But I’m glad I did. Especially from page 96 to the end, it became impossible to turn away.
I will, from now on, look at plants with fresh perspective—perhaps with fear as well as renewed respect. I will watch for more by Amanda Ackerman because her writing is fierce. There is feral flora, but also a feral woman vibe that I could read over and over. Just when I thought I’d seen every plot and every “unconventional” twist on storytelling a thousand times, it’s nice to read something that, for better and for worse, is completely unique.
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