NOMINEE 2011 – Toronto Book Awards
When Edal Jones wakes to the sound of a mouse on the hardwood floor by her bed, she doesn’t quite know why she says softly, “Hello.” But then, a lot of things have stopped making sense for Edal. As a federal wildlife officer at Pearson International Airport she’s seen everything from goliath bird-eating tarantulas crammed in a briefcase to a California condor “folded up like a sports coat.” So why has the sight of juvenile star tortoises crushed and broken in a grandmother’s luggage suddenly made it impossible for her to go on?
That same morning, riding her bike in the empty downtown core, Edal spots a young homeless girl rescuing birds that have knocked themselves out against the glassy office towers. Edal tracks Lily through the city to Howell Auto Wreckers in Toronto’s east end and discovers a new world where the links between people and animals can heal rather than hurt.
Handsome wrecking-yard owner Guy Howell employs Stephen, a young soldier on medical release whose duties include veterinary as well as mechanical tasks. Guy is rehabilitating a weakened red-tailed hawk, while Stephen raises a litter of orphaned raccoons, and Lily comes and goes with her birds and her constant companion, a massive black dog named Billy. All the characters in Fauna are animal lovers in search of something that human cruelty has denied them. As the narrative develops, we learn more about each of them, until they begin to feel like our intimate friends. The circle expands to include a young veterinary technician mourning her lover’s death, then expands again with dramatic consequences for all concerned when a disturbed young man starts taking out his anger and sorrow on the coyotes that live in the Don Valley.
Gently, meditatively, this unique novel delivers a profoundly immersive experience. A new kind of urban writing, Fauna encourages us to look again at the margins and undercurrents of the cities we inhabit, and consider how we treat the other beings who call those spaces home. What’s more, the persuasive beauty of York’s writing, the tenderness of her approach to her characters, and the connections she draws between them invite us to look inward and re-evaluate both the human and the animal within.
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Quill & Quire
Alissa York’s Fauna is an extraordinary novel. A departure from the author’s previous, more historically minded works (including 2007’s Scotiabank Giller Prize–nominated Effigy), Fauna takes place in the hidden, wild corners of present-day Toronto, where the titular animals are rats and raccoons, coyotes and cats, injured foxes by the roadside and dead birds at the bases of office towers.
The book’s human characters live on the fringes of urban society. Edal, on stress leave from her job as a federal wildlife officer, encounters a homeless teenager gathering dead birds from the sidewalk. The girl flees upon approach, and Edal follows her to a curious dwelling on the edge of the Don Valley, where sick and injured creatures (and people) are taken in and cared for.
Realizing that the makeshift shelter violates wildlife regulations, Edal is conflicted about her association with the group, and must hide her official role from the others, whose backstories of loss and trauma York reveals over the course of the novel. When mutilated coyote carcasses begin appearing in the ravine – clearly the work of a vigilante hunter – the group must acknowledge the limits of its power to protect the city’s fauna, and Edal is prodded to put her life back together again.
York does not use Toronto as a mere backdrop; her novel evokes the city with remarkable specificity. The Don Valley is at the centre, with its roaring traffic, winding river, and incongruous wilderness teeming with life. The valley is bordered on one side by the affluent Cabbagetown neighbourhood and a city-run farm, on the other by a Chinatown whose alleys are prime scavenging grounds for raccoons. The story tracks its characters through these neighbourhoods, back and forth across the Riverdale Footbridge, and into outlying areas, creating a picture of Toronto that bears scant resemblance to the city many of us think we know.
York pulls off a daring feat by having the animals themselves narrate a few passages, managing a most unsentimental portrayal – these animals are vermin, and it’s a dog-eat-rabbit world out there. But it’s also a world whose connections to literature are strong: Fauna calls to mind works such as Watership Down, The Jungle Book, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, and Wild Animals I Have Known.
York’s exceptional novel shows that books, like cities, are enlivened by their wild populations.
Review
“Rich and strange and deeply satisfying. Whether she’s adopting the voice of a homeless teen, a yuppy vet, or a famished coyote, York writes with a spare, unsentimental fluency that connects strangers, enemies, species. Fauna reminds us of the life that swoops and slithers and lopes and pounces all around us, even in the most urban of worlds; a wild life we share and ignore at our peril.” —Annabel Lyon, author of The Golden Mean
“Fauna is the sort of rare novel that can change the way you see your world. Its cast of misfits and dreamers is united by their visceral connection to the forgotten animals surviving in the green patches of our big cities. This book is beautiful, unusual and memorable. And Alissa York is a daring and original talent.” —Jim Lynch, author of Border Songs
“Layered with astonishing detail, with every location vividly evoked and every action a visceral experience.”
— The Globe and Mail
“One of the novel’s strengths is the way York turns her gaze from the human world to the world of Toronto’s skunks, coyotes, raccoons and squirrels. . . . Even as she brings animals to life with her writing, she is clear about the terrible toll taken by everything from cars, to skyscraper windows, to live electrical wires.”
— Winnipeg Free Press
“Lyrical. . . . Fauna is well crafted, morally serious and even noble in its sensitivity.”
— Toronto Star
“An extraordinary novel. . . . daring and exceptional.”
— Quill & Quire (starred review)
“A tender and beautiful novel.”
— NOW (Toronto)
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Customer Reviews
There is no doubt that the writing is beautiful, York's narration is stunning, not to mention she wrote the entire book in the present tense which is an art unto itself I believe.
What struck me about this novel is its realism - this book follows 6 people (and a few fauna) over the course of roughly 7 days, interspersed with flashbacks that slowly reveal what each character is going through emotionally.
I kept waiting for something huge to happen - a big event, adventure, something... and I believe that this is why after reading it I wasn't sure I liked it.
Now, looking back, I realized that this book is beautiful in its representation of real life - and real wild life. York gives you an intimate look into the lives of people that you probably meet every day - the Edal's struggling with emotional stress, the Lily's finding independence and voice, the Kate's who are suffering a deep loss... and the wildlife she uses to narrate some passages - they are all individuals whose personal stories permeate the world around us, these characters could walk off the page, so deep is their development. York artfully expresses each character's personality and interactions with each other - they are all connected somehow, through love, loss, life, and wildlife.
Overall, this book is a piece of art - it's like nothing I have ever read before and I would recommend spending some time pondering the realities York presents after you close the back cover.
This is a book about the real wildlife of a city and people for whom they are important. Some of the people try to help by rescuing injured birds, rehabbing a red-tailed hawk and orphan raccoons (I've done the latter myself so I especially enjoyed the pages mentioning their noise and bottle-feeding them). One of the characters cares about a mouse living in her apartment, and ironically just after I started this review, I had to stop writing to look for one which ran across my dorm room.
On the other side is a character who wants to eliminate coyotes, and things can get a bit gruesome in his portion of the story.
The human aspect of the story involves the small group of animal lovers gradually getting to know each other and bonding as a small alternative family/community. This is not timeless literature, but a fine story of compassion.
