The New York Times - Constance Casey
…for many people plants are so boring as to be almost invisible. We pay attention to a few flashy plant celebrities—perfumed roses, a thousand red tulips, a loaded tomato plant—but we are insufficiently curious about how plants live. Mr. Mabey's highly entertaining book…is a welcome corrective. He wants us to care about how these growing things, with which we share primeval genes, solve the big problem of life: staying alive to reproduce. Without being sentimental about it, Mr. Mabey gets us to look at life from the plants' point of view. His science is sound, he's witty and his language is engaging.
Publishers Weekly
11/09/2015
In his inimitable style, English naturalist Mabey (The Ash and the Beech) blends genres to produce a work that demonstrates his passion for the lives of plants. By incorporating natural history, travel writing, and mainstream botany into a text rich with philosophy, poetry, and visual art, Mabey brings a sense of excitement and vitality to his material (the book’s illustrations are paired well with the text and greatly enhance it). One of his goals is to move readers beyond the simplistic idea that plants are passive and uninteresting members of ecosystems. As he explains it, he has written a “story about plants as authors of their own lives and an argument that ignoring their vitality impoverishes our imaginations and our well-being.” He succeeds admirably in this task, whether he is discussing the 20,000 varieties of apples that have been bred from a single original stock, the critical role that olive trees played in the development of Impressionist art, or the complex ways in which plants communicate with one another. Mabey is delightfully eclectic in his approach, often touching on those species with which he has a personal connection, but he consistently advances his central theme while providing interesting insights and opinions. Illus. Agency: InkWell Management. (Jan.)
Booklist (starred review)
"A delightfully accessible work of scholarship…Mabey’s sensitive approach not only succeeds in giving these incredibly vital beings their just place in the story of life. It reminds us that, as we stare in the maw of large-scale environmental change, we can learn the right lessons from our relationship with plants and draw inspiration from their incredible resilience."
Robert Macfarlane
"Written with a typically Mabeyish mixture of wit, knowledge and intellectual power, The Cabaret of Plants…left me challenged and delighted—and seeing the world a little differently."
Evening Standard (UK)
"The greatest writer on nature alive…. [Mabey] fuses botany, art and literature into a prose which is interrogative, pungent, and urgently alive."
Amy Stewart
"A powerful shock to those of us who thought that plants can’t think. . . . Interesting and entertaining."
BBC (UK) - Dominic Couzens
"This is the nature-writing equivalent of fine dining—rich, full of different tastes, lasting and satisfying. A treat not to miss…. Go, buy it, and feast. Botany rocks!"
Wall Street Journal - Jenny Uglow
"Mabey’s book lets us see plants as subjects rather than objects, arrayed in all their colors, performing miraculous tricks, dances and acrobatics. . . . [His] lyrical prose enlivens the history of botanical understanding . . . [and] many readers will reel out of Mr. Mabey’s stimulating cabaret with their view of the plant world—the living world we all share—enriched beyond measure."
Spectator (UK)
"Wonderfully thought-provoking…Of all his 30-plus books, this is surely among his finest, an eclectic world-roaming collection of stories…lacing color, intimacy and emotional texture around the scaffold of hard facts."
Washington Independent Review of Books - Jennifer Bort Yacovissi
"A gorgeous and engaging book. . . . There are so many delights to be found in Cabaret—from the hunt for the elusive Amazonian moonflower, to the wonder of self-rejuvenating yews that defy efforts to determine their age, to the sprouting of an extinct Judean palm from a 2,000-year-old excavated seed—and Mabey keeps us enthralled from first to last."
Starred review Booklist
"A delightfully accessible work of scholarship…. Mabey’s sensitive approach not only succeeds in giving these incredibly vital beings their just place in the story of life. It reminds us that, as we stare in the maw of large-scale environmental change, we can learn the right lessons from our relationship with plants and draw inspiration from their incredible resilience."
From the Publisher
"An unusual and vastly entertaining journey into the world of mysterious plant life as experienced by a gifted nature writer." ---Kirkus Starred Review
From the Publisher - AUDIO COMMENTARY
"An unusual and vastly entertaining journey into the world of mysterious plant life as experienced by a gifted nature writer." —Kirkus Starred Review
Kirkus Reviews
★ 2015-09-23
A prolific and talented British nature writer explores 40 plant species and how they have influenced the human imagination over the centuries. Comprised of equal portions of knowledge, delight, and surprise, Mabey's (The Ash and the Beech: The Drama of Woodland Change, 2013, etc.) botanical history advocates for elevating the status of plants within the natural world. Rather than being taken for granted as passive vegetation and viewed as merely "the furniture of the planet," the author recounts "a story about plants as authors of their own lives and an argument that ignoring their vitality impoverishes our imaginations and our well-being." Each section opens with a brief essay presenting a theme—e.g., "How To See A Plant," "The Shock of The Real: Scientists and Romantics," "The Victorian Plant Theatre"—followed by an exploration of specific plants. For those unschooled in botany, these preliminary excursions are nifty gateways into the unknown. Mabey artfully combines historical and contemporary scientific writings, literary musings, and his personal recollections concerning his plant subjects. The author ranges across time from the interest showed by Paleolithic cave artists and the vegetation in their environment to how both Neolithic farmers and 18th-century scientists attempted to understand the mysteries of agriculture and plant cultivation. Though many of the individuals and a handful of the plants Mabey discusses may be unfamiliar to some American readers, the author skillfully melds together this bounty of insights, opinions, and scientific facts into a coherent and intelligent narrative, overcoming any initial unfamiliarity readers may experience. Numerous drawings and photographs enhance the book. What Mabey does best is invite readers to think about plants in a radical new way, even posing the question as to whether a plant's sensory abilities—electrostatic charges, chemical communication through pheromones and bio-acoustic sound waves—actually constitute intelligence. An unusual and vastly entertaining journey into the world of mysterious plant life as experienced by a gifted nature writer.
