Henry Hoke (2)

More contemporary litfic misanthropy. “People can’t see it but I can / their end makes everything okay”. The conceit of a mountain lion overhearing and understanding spoken English and thus much about human society - although somehow, despite all it knows, no one must have ever uttered the word “zoo” or the concept around it - was one I was never able to buy into, so the book was never going to work for me anyway, likely. Give me the mountain lion from Ducks, Newburyport instead, please.

On the positive side it was occasionally funny. Having an older teenaged girl “adopt” the mountain lion following a Wiccan-like ritual performed in her back yard (“I summoned you” she tells it) and naming it Hecate (or “heckit” to the lion’s ears, following Shakespeare) while treating “her” as a goddess figure (“I can see its goddamn dick” her angry father points out after discovering it in his daughters room) was amusing and ends poorly as one would expect.… (more)

A short book, written in sparse prose, intelligently and deeply about an important and existential subject.
After Wolf and the Woodsman, I don't know why I put myself through another sad animal book. I literally cried multiple times reading this book. As someone who empathizes a lot with animals, who has held my cats as they trembled through my neighborhood's firework antics, Heckin, the mountain lion's struggles made my heart ache so hard for them. This is a book for people who recognize that, just because they cannot communicate or think like we do, animals are intelligent. The results are haunting.
I knew this was based on the P-22 mountain lion that lived briefly in Los Angeles, but after I read the book, I had to do some more research because I had forgotten his story. He lived in one of the smallest ranges for a male mountain lion, after crossing two major highways that most animals don't manage to survive. He was captured by the National Park Service and California Department of Fish and Wildlife after the alleged killing of at least two dogs and was euthanized after it was determined he could not be rehabilitated due to multiple health issues. Apparently, he had been hit by a car and had sustained internal injuries on top of having multiple chronic illnesses, being underweight, and having an extensive parasitic skin infection. It warmed my heart to hear he was honored by several representatives of Native American tribes in Southern California and buried in the Santa Monica mountains he once called home. He also inspired the construction of a wildlife crossing over the 101 freeway, which is expected to be completed in 2025.
This is a book about more than a mountain lion though. It is about climate grief, "scare city", and the hubris, cruelty, and disconnection of mankind from its own nature due to urbanization.
Rest in power P-22. I am so sorry for what humanity has done to beautiful creatures like you, and this planet as a whole.

Sources: nps.gov, Wikipedia, and 101wildlifecrossing.org… (more)

Another one I probably wouldn't have read without a nudge from the ToB. An interesting concept! Not many books follow non-human characters. But it was also tough to understand how this mountain lion would be using these words. At one point he says a particular word isn't a word he knows, but he seems to be doing pretty well with English. I love the dream sequence at Disney, but again, how would he know any of these things? So I couldn't just let many of the logistics fly. But that a mountain lion could have such an intricate dream is heartbreaking. Ultimately, this seemed a little too much like it wanted to end up as a movie -- it went places I didn't think it would. I think it knew to be a short book, and in that case, I don't regret reading it.
*Book #143/340 I have read of the shortlisted Morning News Tournament of Books… (more)