[Bookpossum]

Originally Posted by sun surfer

I agree with you. It's a very enjoyable read despite the focus on death both human and animal. So far the only criticism I have is that I get the nagging sensation that she could be slightly overstating or altering a few things here and there in her own story for effect. Not enough yet to affect my liking of the book, but enough for me to feel like mentioning it.

That's interesting sun surfer. I didn't get that feeling, though clearly she has written the book quite some time after the events it covers. However, I think while some events such as difficulties she has when she takes Mabel out and the bird decides to fly further than she should, are probably an amalgam of different similar events, others would be very clear memories. For example, the first time she plays with Mabel:

An obscure shame grips me. I had a fixed idea of what a goshawk was, just as those Victorian falconers had, and it was not big enough to hold what goshawks are. No one had ever told me goshawks played. It was not in the books. I had not imagined it was possible. I wondered if it was because no one had ever played with them. The thought made me terribly sad.

Something like that would be a clear, sharp memory because it was a revelation about the bird, and a feeling of sadness. I shared that sadness for all those many birds that were treated as grumpy killing machines rather than creatures with the intelligence to play.

One comment I liked, because it is so true of how many people view animals and how their reading shapes their opinion and attitude towards animals, so that they do not see the animal for itself. She refers to this in connection with a book by J A Baker about peregrine falcons:

I'd never believed in Baker's falcons, because I'd met real ones before I'd ever read his book: cheerful, friendly falconer's birds that preened on suburban lawns. But most of my bird-loving friends read Baker's book before they ever saw a live one, and now they can't see real peregrines without them conjuring distance, extinction and death. Wild things are made from human histories.

That last sentence seems to me to be profoundly true. As a very simple example, I have never been able to understand why people dislike ravens and crows, to the point of chasing them, throwing stones at them and so on. There is some sort of belief that they are evil because they are black, are birds of ill-omen or whatever. Yet they are handsome and very intelligent birds, and as interesting to watch as any other bird.

Another passage I marked is close to the end of the book, where she talks about the lessons she has learned from spending time with Mabel:

... there is a world of things out there - rocks and trees and stones and grass and all the things that crawl and run and fly. They are all things in themselves, but we make them sensible to us by giving them meanings that shore up our own views of the world.