“An intellectual carrot – the mind boggles.”

7. The Plants – Kenneth McKenney

The sunflowers like guinea pigs. Thankfully, they don’t want the guinea pig as a sacrifice, they just like them. They want human sacrifice. A willing human sacrifice. But first, they will warn the guinea pig’s owner repeatedly that the way humans are going is not okay and the plants will not take it. I sort of just gave away the ending, but, this book is from 1976.

See, England is having its warmest summer in years, not unlike in recent years. People who didn’t have allergies now have allergies – also like in recent years and those who already had them are having worse allergies…check for me over here in the US too. Plants are overgrowing their spaces and rustling. Very ominous rustling. And a TV show host’s family lives in the village at the center of it all, the village of Brandling. A giant squash has grown there, there are older men saying the “creatures of the field” are warning us, Mabel’s roses just bit her because they’re trying to run a plan here, and Debby, with a guinea pig she hasn’t named (sheesh), is listening to all the plants. Phillip, TV host, has seen a scientist who is tracking plant communication in London, who is promptly murdered by said plants because he could get in the way, and he believes the plants are rising because humans are being shitty stewards of the planet, although he said it less forcefully. I believe there was some chatter that humans are “making mistakes.”

I like books like this because they’re a little bit more like my life. Because my allergies are so severe, and grass and trees get some of my worst reactions, plants are a threat and they are also ubiquitous. Everything that triggers me to have trouble breathing is everywhere, though. It’s very hard to live comfortably for me. So it’s nice to see that almost represented, even though nobody dies of allergies in this book, they could’ve been, but they weren’t mentioned. However, having allergies and an honored guinea pig, even nameless, is extremely rare in a book, so to me this book is special even if I would have liked more carnage and less pub conversations. Especially since, unlike the people of Brandling, I can’t get my suffering to stop by hugging the angry peach tree and showing a guinea pig to some sentient sunflowers. I have guinea pigs and I like peaches, but, that is not my quest and the current effects of climate change do not seem to be slowing down so breathing is just going to get harder.

 

Salem knows the pumpkin monster is really just interested in how sweet he is. Plants like guinea pigs, I guess, even though guinea pigs eat essentially nothing but plants.