Book Review: Open Throat

 

Image: cover of the book is an ivory background with a stencil like image of the face of a mountain lion. The stencil is all black except for the eyes which are shades of pink orange and yellow. Across the top is the title open throat written and streaks like a marker made up of black, pink, Orange, and yellow. Along the bottom is the author's name Henry hoke in the same style. And small letters along the left side are the words "a novel."

This will be a short review for a short little book. I wasn't sure exactly what to expect from Henry Hoke's novel Open Throat. I have had a range of experiences with anthropomorphized accounts of other animals. Let me be clear, when I say anthropomorphized,  I'm not saying that acknowledging that other animals have feelings and inner thoughts is anthropomorphism. I mean a lion speaking a human language in a fantasy-like book form to be read easily by us is. 

Anyway, reading the description about a queer mountain lion romping through California made me think I would be humorously entertained. I did not expect to be brought to tears. I don't know if everyone would have that reaction, but as someone who has dealt with a lot of animal rescue and also tries to create a bridge between humans and other animals to better understand one another, I felt that this author captured something quite real in the way that they wrote about the mountain lion and his life. This mountain lion is no doubt a wild being, but like many animals with lots of interactions with humans such as hikers and campers, there is a level of domestication that happens. There are tons of things in this book that are completely outlandish, but the feelings and thought processes are there, described in ways that humans can digest.

The two particular points in the book- a section about a highway and the ending- were the most emotional for me. I hope that people come into this book looking for entertainment and come out thinking a lot more about what may be going through the minds of other animals that we see as nuisances, pests, dangerous, or any other number of one-dimensional, anthropocentric descriptions. 

This book was a surreal experience of many all too real things.

This was also posted to my goodreads.