Garlic, ginger and chilli sunburst
Authorlouisa
1. The walk is super short but it happens – all three of us go and Lily’s tail wags for the first half.
2. We’re deep in conversation but both need to wee. We keep talking as we climb the stairs, while we wait patiently for the other person to finish then walk downstairs again.
3. The cinnamon in the air makes me sneeze but at the same time, it smells lovely.
The book is divided into three broad sections: first, the physiology from the mouth to the bum (though it actually starts at the bum, since that’s the bit that gets our juvenile attention, then doubles back to the other end); next, anomalies in the system and how it interacts with other bits of us; and finally, the micro-organisms that live with(in) us, where they come from and how we should treat them.
For obvious, self-obsessed reasons, I found the section on the interactions between the gut and the brain (and thus mental health) particularly interesting but wished the section on vomiting had included a section on people who don’t/can’t vomit. I also enjoyed the section of helicobacter pylori – why it’s not all bad – and was inspired to be generally a bit nicer to my microbiome in the future. Over the years, for one reason or another, I’ve picked up a fair bit of the information covered in the book but it was still useful to read it all as a single, integrated narrative.
The style of the book is as noteworthy as the content: it’s written in a friendly, fun manner with cute little pen drawings to illustrate the action of villi or how microbacteria can be caught in the air using iodine crystals. As well as the actual illustrations, Enders illuminates everything with analogies – my favourite perhaps being the parallel between the reason why it’s hard to poo when sat up straight and getting grounded for squirting a sibling in the face with a garden hose. Very occasionally – two or three times at most – these get in the way (they’re either cumbersome or actually confuse the issue) but mostly they serve a useful purpose.
An almost overly confident tone is used throughout, treating everything that isn’t explicitly qualified as solid fact. A few times, I felt that this tone was exploited to present debatable theories as gospel — especially in the chattier bits, she would allude to/reference the common prevailing opinion on the subject for the sake of a joke or neat closing line, when the new research on the subject presents a muddier or contrary position. There is a lengthy reference list at the back of the book but nothing is cited/footnoted directly — and this made it feel like a lighter, less substantiated book than it really is. (I realise this is a common problem with pop science books.)
Overall though, it’s a great book – interesting, informative and a genuine pleasure to read. I’d recommend it to anyone with a gut or the desire to relay the specific texture of their poo.
1. The melting chocolate is nice enough to counter the annoyance of bits of it plopping in my tea.
2. A day alternating between blue skies and heavy sleet storms. Thankfully the latter happen when we’re in the car rather than out and about. The sleet piles up in a column on John’s side of the windowscreen and speckles the grass verge on the side of the road. On the way back, we concoct a routine about a strange seat left by the curb, as far from the setback houses as possible.
2b. The mustard yellow in my new scarf matches my boots. The red in it matches my other boots. Winter win!
3. She rejects it at first but a few minutes later, snaffles the chew treat I bought her at the chicken feed store. Later, her tail wags the quickest it has done in weeks.
1. A day off – from both work and cooking. John insists on his usual hangover fare (a fish butty) for lunch and just as we’re finishing, his friend texts to offer us dinner for that evening: black little desi chickpeas, rice and a rich sauce, with startling yellow vegetables on the side.
1b. The chilli chutney is smooth and consistent, a fresh round green.
2. Lily and I go for a little walk – the first all week. She isn’t really up for it but it’s about as much work as going down to the garden for her to wee, and it is more mentally stimulating. She sniffs EVERYTHING between our house and the horses’ field and back.
3. I go up into the spare room and dig out an old project (a scarf from a decade ago that I didn’t like in the end) to rework (into a cat windowsill cushion), and a box of photos from when I was little. The two things occupy my evening.
1. Tilda sits on her windowsill cushion in the first sunshine we’ve had for weeks.
2. I fiddle with something – a logo for a silly site – for far too long but in the end, it turns out cute enough to have been worth the bother.
3. There’s something about the texture of foam bananas that I find offputting but I can. not. stop. eating. them.
© 2025 Louisa Parry