Fox and I: An Uncommon Friendship by Catherine RavenMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
This is not a feel good, nature-as-meditation book you may expect from nature books. I think it is about anthropomorphizing. Raven comes from an unrevealed traumatic past. She hides within nature and away from people. She reads Antoine Saint-Exupéry, Shelley, and Melville, as guides for her life. But she also uses them to rationalize her life.
Throughout the book, I wished she had chosen female role models (Shelley was female, but her monster was male). I wished she did not feel a need to defend and hide who she truly was. For too long, males have dictated how we are supposed to interact with the world. We shall not anthropomorphize. And we shall not interfere with wildlife even if it saves an animal from suffering. Raven, like me, disagrees with both of those tenets. But I think by the end of the book she shows signs of growing into knowing that her ideas are as worthy as any other person's.
It is a wonderful book and worthy of the awards that it has won. The forest fire, her conflicts with teaching, and insights into nature are valuable. The history of fox hunting is brutal but worthwhile because I learned the British deliberately whitewashed this non-sporting event.
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I sure don't like it when animals get hurt, nope.
ReplyDeleteI'm not so sure i could get through the foxhunting part, i know what that was like and have no wish to know more.
ReplyDeleteMaybe you disagree with both of those tenets, not tenants.
ReplyDeleteomg Thank you for spotting that! What an embarrassment!
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