David Yoon

For author Ben MacIntyre, Oleg Gordievsky belongs in the pantheon of world changing spies. A KGB colonel at the height of the Cold War, he was in fact an agent for the British Secret Service. The book opens with his flat in Moscow being bugged, cameras installed and a light coating of radioactive dust sprinkled on his clothes and shoes. Oleg is returning to Moscow and it's clear his traitorous activity of the past decade has been discovered. The noose is tightening and Oleg is quickly running out of options.

MacIntyre is a meticulous researcher and interviewed nearly every British agent working with Gordievsky and several Russians as well. He creates a tense historical account that reads like a slow burning thriller. But this isn't movie spy-craft and what becomes critical to Oleg's story is a Mars bar, a Safeway bag and a soiled diaper.

Mundane details certainly, Oleg is turned while playing badminton of all things, but let's not discount the world-changing effect he had on geo-political relations. He may very well have averted nuclear disaster and helped usher in a new age of glasnost. An eye opening account of old world spy-craft where the KGB, CIA and MI6 converge.

A full review for our Non-Fiction November pick here: https://youtu.be/qoz3wJAL-Xs

In an exciting development the Man Booker longlist includes, for the first time, a graphic novel.

But why this one?

I mean that rich middle section with tinfoil hat wearing talk show hosts calling out conspiracies and crisis actors in our thriving clickbait culture speaks to the current American dumpster fire beautifully. And the email from “Truth Warrior” is a perfectly realized little gem with its own subtle twists moving from soothing empathy to sputtering rage. But all of this is wrapped up in a bland burrito. The flat muted colours and the barely rendered characters centred on each rigid panel gives it a feel like an airplane emergency card, and just about as compelling. And yes I get it, it's supposed to feel banal and tedious. But is it better in this format? I liked the meaty, almost too text heavy section. Would this have been better as a short story?

If I'm being generous, Drnaso does use images to portray an underlying threat - the held knife behind the door, the gun revealed in act one, the end times bunker noted without comment. But overall the flat style draws too much attention to itself. Look! We are all living lives of quiet desperation, empty and flat! Look at these long uncomfortable silences, these placid faces! LOOK! Do you get it? I'll keep hammering it over your head with these repeating boxes following the flat rhythm of a comatose patient's heartbeat. MuCh mUnDanE! VeRY DiSapPoInT.

Jonny Appleseed is a two-sprit, full-metal indigiqueer, NDN glitter princess who leaves the Rez to make his way in the ‘peg hustling as a cybersex worker. He's getting men off online, whether they're closeted and curious, or nourishing some connection to idealized Native sensibilities and the spiritual connection they believe Indigenous people have to the land, or simply want to explore some Village People Indian fetish, Jonny deals with them all. Even more so now as he tries to make enough money to return to the Rez to support his mother after the death of his stepfather.

Jonny discovers his sexuality watching Queer as Folk at 8 years of age. But that sort of gay seemed awfully white, evoking a certain class and body type. Even queer is tied to colonialism, queer rights and Stonewall while two-spirit can trace its arc back to the indigenous people inhabiting the land for generations before. But it doesn't make it any easier for Jonny on the rez. And yet there are glimmers of tenderness, his childhood friend Tias and their love weaving in and out of their lives.

Congratulations to indie Arsenal Pulp Press for having two of their books in the showdown to the Canada Reads 2021 final and congratulations to Joshua Whitehead's Jonny Appleseed for taking home the prize this year!

I think having read The Burnout Society and The Scent of Time I've gotten the gist of Byung-Chul Han. Indeed this feels like an extension of his thinking from those earlier works. Here Han argues we've gone from a disciplinary world of limitations and commandments to one of freedom and self-expression. We've moved from should to can. But Han reveals the trap. We've simply replaced God with capitalism. We're no longer living under firm edicts and weighty “thou shalls” but have instead become commodities trying to maximize our market value while being traded as packages of data for economic use.

This existence in Neoliberal society is one where we are free to achieve our dreams, to become successful or rich — we just need to put in the work, pull ourselves up by our bootstraps, and grind. We have only ourselves to blame for our failings. If we're not rich and famous it's because we lack hustle or we didn't want it badly enough. We are filled with self-loathing and guilt because we aren't better. And this constant focus on work and optimization inevitably leads to burnout, anxiety, and depression.

Throw in ideas of the necessity of narcissism, politics as an extension of shopping with the electorate treated as consumers instead of citizens, the digital panopticon that sees us as both slave and master willingly throwing all of our information onto the internet, Neoliberalism as the capitalism of like with our smartphones serving as rosaries, and you're getting a hell of a lot of philosophical bang for your buck.

But I like that Han doesn't simply throw his hands in the air in desperation. He advocates for a world of contemplation, quiet boredom and playing at the idiot — someone veiled in silence, who doesn't need to say anything at all.

Coming of age novel set in the South centering on a group of strong, independent African-American women who take in a little girl with a dead mother and abusive father. It's like a writers workshop hosted by Oprah. I feel like I could start ovulating over here. Strangely I really enjoyed the book.

It's 1948 Los Angeles and Easy Rawlins suddenly finds himself out of a job with a mortgage to pay.

He loves his home and the pride he gets owning his spot. Easy isn't about to lose his place which leads him to taking DeWitt Albright's money. His gut tells him he should know better even with Joppy's introduction but it's a simple gig. Find one Daphne Monet and tell Albright where she is. Nothing else. But there's no such thing as easy money and the bodies start piling up.

I'm woefully ignorant of the noir genre so I followed this up quickly with the Denzel Washington led movie of the same name. (A young Don Cheadle is absolutely perfect as Mouse.) The two are now intwined in my head despite their slightly differing plot threads.

It's smooth storytelling and amounts to Easy's origin story before becoming a hard boiled dick. (That just sounds ridiculous) For now he's an unwitting and somewhat unwilling detective trying to keep his head above water. I liked the added tension of the police - he's not the grizzled renegade that's a step ahead of the police but a black man just as likely to take the fall for crimes he didn't commit or simply suffer a beating at their hands. It adds an extra dimension to the traditional noir genre.

There is this Japanese idea of “Mono no aware” or the “pathos of things.” How ephemeral beauty is, how everything is transient and fleeting - and the sadness that accompanies that realization. And that sentiment pervades the book as things disappear. Something in the air changes, and on waking the people stumble outside to understand what has been removed from their lives. One morning the rivers are covered in petals slowly floating out to sea as roses join hats, ferries, and birds as the thing that is gone. Soon the very memory of it disappears.

But then it takes a turn to the dystopian. Jackbooted thugs called Memory Police appear to ensure that newly forgotten thing is truly eradicated. They are there when novels are disappeared, stoking massive pyres of books, setting the library ablaze, ransacking homes looking for things that should be forgotten and carting away those that still remember.

And as it nears the end it takes on an absurdist tone that borders on the horrifying but is still presented in a calm, almost flat affect that pervades this particular translation.

It's such an open-ended read that defies easy categorization and that is both frustrating - I mean what's with the typewriter story? - and it's biggest strength. It allows for a myriad of interpretations that hinge on the personal. It is a story reflecting the Cultural Revolution, speaks to Trump's America, harkens back to sanctions against Yugoslavia and is a metaphor for social media and the very act of writing. Or maybe it's just my need to imbue the whisper quiet story with some larger narrative to explain its nagging persistence.

It's the debut novel from 26 year old Fatima Farheen Mirza and the first published under Sarah Jessica Parker's SJP Imprint over at Hogarth. Mirza delivers an absolute stunner.

A Place for Us focuses on Hyderabad Muslims living in America and how they grapple within the confines of their faith and family in a post 9/11 world.

Hadia is getting married as the book opens and is hoping to see her brother Amar who has been missing for years. She is a doctor now, the eldest daughter fulfilling all the heavy expectations of a second generation child. Amar exists in opposition and has strayed from the fold. But naturally it's all a bit more complicated than that.

The story jumps back and forth in time and is told from the perspective of different family members as they recount their lives leading up to Amar's estrangement. The shifts of time and character are handled with the sure hand of someone who feels like they've been doing this for years. Seamless and assured, but I still felt the story sag in the middle. As we build to the climax, I was increasingly impatient for the inevitable collision we're clearly driving towards.

Mirza delivers and just wrecked me. Rafiq, the father is rendered with such clear-eyed understanding that belies the author's young age. Complicated, beautiful and heartfelt. It's like you're watching all the tedious brushwork at the start, sections of colour carefully laid out, but it's not until you step back from the finished canvas that you see how it comes together in a rich, nuanced tapestry that leaves you gasping.

The book opens when two kids find Chase Andrews, former star quarterback and newly engaged local golden boy, in the swamp by the old fire tower, dead.

The story rewinds back 17 years and we're introduced to six year old Kya Clark on the day her mother walks down their sandy lane wearing fake alligator skin heels, carrying a suitcase - never to reappear again. Kya, the youngest of five, sees the family slowly slip away from their abusive and drunk father until it's just the two of them left in the marsh shack. And then one day it's just Kya.

The story flips back and forth in time. Kya, the March Girl, Wolf Child, Miss Missing Link manages on her own, learning to read and take care of herself. But that murder is there, like an itch, nagging in the background as the townspeople of Barkley Cove become sure that Kya is the murderer.

So we've got a mystery and a small handful of possible suspects but what hooked my from the beginning is how Delia Owens renders this strip of land. She's got a wildlife scientist's eye for place, rendering the flora and fauna so vibrantly. (Doesn't hurt that Delia Owens is in fact a wildlife scientist and has won the John Burroughs Award for Nature Writing already.) From Kya's shack to Jumpin's Bait and Gas the marsh comes alive. The herons the colour of grey mist reflecting on blue water, Kya reciting poetry to preening gulls as the marsh's moist breath hung the oaks and pines with fog.

At its heart it about the Aids epidemic in the 80's specifically in Chicago and how it decimated that community. The trick is how Makkai manages to show so many different facets to the story. It avoids being one-note and I never felt like some voyeuristic tourist chaperoned by a voluble tourguide shouting about all the interesting gays! It also steers clear of being pure misery porn as well.

The 2015 timeline with Fiona looking for her daughter in Paris allows us to reflect on the 80's from the perspective of a caregiver. But the story didn't quite gel and it felt almost cruel to know that this women who cared so deeply for these men dying of AIDs would end up alienating her own child as a result. And we also get memories of an artist commune in Paris of the 20's which adds a bit of gallery acquisition thriller in the middle.

I guess it's just this weird theme of the excitement of living in a moment with these larger than life figures with all the attendant beauty and tragedy but how it leaves its mark on the next generation. The disconnect with Nora wanting to preserve her memories at the expense of her children who are shown as petty and small-minded, or Fiona's love for the men of boystown throwing a long shadow over her own daughter's understanding of maternal love. It's a lot to pack into a book and it started to feel shaggy around the edges. If it sometimes misses the mark, it still manages to stay a compelling read.

It's told from three perspectives and starts off simply enough with aspiring journalist Jasminder Bansal working for a massive development firm to cozy up to the man who employed her brother's killer.

Mark Ward left his wife and child in Bangkok to return to Vancouver to work with his criminal brother. He's barely hanging on with some severe PTSD after a stint in Afghanistan

And then we meet Carl “Blitzo” Reed and things go off the rails fast. It's Hunter S Thompson channelling Douglas Coupland and I don't know what's real anymore. I get it - Carl's a drug fuelled addict running a green investment firm who talks to a pig. It becomes a problem when the pig talks back.

It's a swirling maelstrom of a narrative from a Vancouver native trying to foster a unique voice for the city but there was nothing to hold onto. Out at the edges it's frayed and messy but nearing the end it hits a singular point of clarity for each of the characters that felt like the beating heart of the story. Which is a fancy way of saying I invested a lot of time wading through the confusion for a brief moment of clarity.

I will admit that Vincent Peele is painfully good, a delicious character to hate read, and may be indicative of my own biases. He is what we here in Ontario probably envision when we think of those off on the west coast living in Lotus Land.

These were ubiquitous in my internet timeline, early comics appearing in Buzzfeed relating Mira Jacob's son's early obsession with Michael Jackson. It's in that low-fi, consumable, internet meme visual style that's immediately recognizable and dying to be shared. Jacob's paper cutouts look out at the reader in a stunned, apathetically imploring, semi-ironic way that immediately speaks to my tiny GenX heart. There was no way I wasn't going to eventually snatch this one up.

It's heartfelt, wry and piercingly of the moment. Raising a bi-racial boy, contending with Trump voting in-laws, rich white lady micro-aggressions, fluid sexuality, being brown post 9/11 and Michael Jackson. Mira Jacobs is the hilariously sane person you need in your life to call up for drinks to commiserate over our current dumpster fire moment, feel righteous indignation at the world's injustices, and somehow leave with a tiny bit of hope in your heart.

A polyphonic story narrated from a dozen perspectives. When I started I thought they were separate short stories as they were so divergent. Orange starts closing the circle as the characters slowly begin to converge on an Oakland pow-wow. And you realize the gun he brings in the first act is bound to go off.

I love the idea of the urban Indian. Orange gets us off the reservation and places his characters in the city. And maybe it's me missing the narrative plentitude of indigenous writing but it felt relevant and strangely present. And it's placed within a larger context, with Orange briefly leaving the narrative in a searing prologue and interlude to drop some knowledge.

I loved how Orange talked about the dancers too, feathers shaking, shoulders dipping, like gravity meant something different to them.

A stunning debut and a much needed win for indigenous writers after all the recent scandals surrounding Boyden and Alexie. Reviewed here: https://youtu.be/ZZvx3rbjLzk

From Albert Hofmann accidentally discovering LSD after the worlds first unexpected acid trip, to Timothy Leary and his cries to “turn on, tune in and drop out” that drove the drug underground, and it's current scientific resurgence - it's been a long strange trip indeed for LSD.

Digging out from the countercultural baggage of the 60's, psychedelic research is showing remarkable efficacy in treating depressions, addiction and the existential anxiety of the terminally ill. But Pollan takes things a step further and recounts several of his own guided sessions, his first at age 60. These aren't recreational binges or microdosing sessions but heroic doses administered with the help of trained professionals.

But Pollan himself notes how hard it is to share these experiences. How they tend to cliche and the outright banal. “Love conquers all.” “We are all one.” But at the same time, in the grip of a psychedelic episode, these take on profound import.

Pollan brings the same level-headed reason that he applied to food in a Defense of Food to psychedelics, perhaps leaning a bit harder on the science given the controversial nature of his subject. I think I would have liked a bit more wide-eyed wonder but maybe I'm not the one the book is meant to convince. Full video review here: https://youtu.be/DtYcGwm6Of4

I love how Will's faith, that once burned with a white hot fervour, is still something that he misses. The certainty that faith brings. Phoebe, still plagued by guilt and needing something bigger than herself to believe in, needs that faith. She's pulled between John Leal who is singular in his focus and promises to be there when she's ready to be something more, and Will who's still just trying to figure it out.

But the book is far more slippery than that and maybe I'm just reaching. The conflict between the certainties of faith and struggling when you no longer have that as a foundation to build on. And more obliquely the notion that religion needs to make demands to incite fervour, that simply espousing kindness hardly invokes devotion. It sees Will proselytizing at Fisherman's Wharf filled with the Holy Spirit and Phoebe standing on a rooftop as explosions level a building.

It's not like I'm saying if you practice the faith it's only a matter of time before you're blowing up a building. I'm struggling to clarify my ideas so I should cut Kwon some slack for being as slippery as she was. I can hardly expect answers, I just wished there was more I could grab on to.

PS I love the Asian-American author community that Kwon name-drops in the acknowledgements! I talk more about that and laissez-faire atheism here: https://youtu.be/bY7DE8UZk0M

What should be the insufferable, late stage reminiscing of a recently widowed man returning to a childhood haunt is instead a beautifully rendered story that sparkles at every line. This was my first foray into audiobooks and I found myself listening at natural speed to better luxuriate in the language (despite my penchant for 1.5x or faster speeds listening to podcasts)

Our protagonist meanders back and forth across the years recalling childhood crushes, current griefs, and a middling career in-between. This should be as tedious as a garrulous old man sitting next to you at the pub regaling you with shaggy dog stories and teary eyed laments. Indeed nothing seems to happen for most of the book, but Banville manages to captivate with his language.

Author Nico Walker grew up the son of affluent parents in Ohio, spent 11 months in Iraq pulling in more than 200 missions as a woefully under-qualified Army medic and returned to develop a heroin addiction which led to a string of 11 bank robberies in a 4 month span, stealing about $40K to feed the habit before inevitably being caught. He's currently spending 11 years at the Federal Correctional institution in Ashland Kentucky where he wrote Cherry. And despite the author's note proceeding the work - “This book is a work of fiction. These things didn't ever happen. These people didn't ever exist.” - the story is pretty much that.

But damn what a read. I think critic Ron Charles put it best when he calls Cherry a morose Holden Caulfield goes to war. Walker is matter of fact, adopting a simple street argot but not in a boastful way, trying to show off his cred. The story is not a metaphor, Walker's not angling for your sympathies, he's not looking to redeem himself in your eyes. There's nary a whiff of an MFA program, juggling intent. He's a walking shrug emoji noting the blunt, blood-used and crooked needles in the cupboard, the quiet joke of robbing a bank, the whole make-believe mess of the war. I really enjoyed the read and really settled into Walker's distinct voice - and maybe I'm just taken in by the lived experience on display here, the story that fuels the story adding to the weight of the thing. In contrast to the novel, Walker's Acknowledgements are an effusive read, crediting the people around him for any semblance of talent on display here which just adds to the allure.

The book has sold in several languages already and Walker's using the money to pay back some of the banks he's robbed. They're already working on a movie deal but it's currently held up because he's used up all his phone time in prison. At a meta level it's just such a beautifully crafted package.

It's the zombie apocalypse but the mindless, infected hordes this time aren't craving human brains but are instead locked in an endless loop of familiar and comforting patterns. Setting the table for example, or trying on outfits, over and over and over again.

In that sense, Candace barely differs from the infected. As the city vacates around her and more and more people succumb to the fever, she is stuck in her own routine. She continues to punch a clock, and put in her time at an increasingly empty office. As a Chinese immigrant she has no family to go to, no living parents, no real connection to her co-workers, or even the city she lives in.

Even at the tail end of the apocalypse, when she decides to throw in with a tiny band of survivors headed out of New York, she's still the odd one out. Their fearless leader, an gothy IT admin, WoW player who smokes vanilla scented e-cigarettes admonishes Candace to try being a bit more participatory. See if their group is a “good fit” as if she's fielding offers from other survivor bands.

It's a wry meditation on being other and the familiar routines we often hide in. Everyone locked into their own repeating patterns, oblivious to everyone else. It's the Millennial apocalypse - full review here: https://youtu.be/oZ-LiukdoCY

I appreciate the story but on the whole it comes off like something expressly crafted for a grade school textbook. I half expect to find a glossy laminate sheet tucked inside with questions like “What do you think of the world Jonas lives in? Why?” It's no doubt a fantastic book to foster animated discussions in the classroom, maybe not so great for anyone who's old enough to pay income tax.

It's not like i'm some mythology fanboy. I read the Odyssey out of some sense of literary obligation, beholden to the early stories of the Western canon. And Circe, if she's remembered at all, is only from her brief appearance in Homer's story. Island witch, turns men into pigs.

But with this rough clay Madeline Miller manages to fashion something incredible. The book opens amidst the Titan pantheon and it's all mythological mean girls. It's a raucous read right off the bat. Naive first love to modest mortal who becomes a douchebag demi-god and the inevitable other girl. Petulant rage and the home-wrecking nymph is transformed into a multi-headed beast. It's a ton of fun that still respects the source material. Scylla aside there's touchstones aplenty with appearances from Daedalus, Prometheus, Hermes, Icarus, the Minotaur, Jason of the Golden Fleece and of course Odysseus dropping in and out of the narrative.

What's amazing is that Madeline Miller is fashioning a coming age story. A minor miracle given she's dealing with an immortal. But from that first disastrous crush to coming into her own, Circe is shown working to define her abilities and secure her independence. Childbirth is shown with all the epic pitch of any traditional hero narrative and motherhood is a defiant struggle that is, at its core, completely badass.

Miller sticks the landing and frankly I was left a little ruined for any subsequent read. Just phenomenal. You check out my video review here: https://youtu.be/B9DdmRRlF6M

Ben Fountain, at the behest of The Guardian, is sent out on the campaign trail in the lead-up to the 2016 US Presidential election and finds himself at the Quicken Loans Arena for the Republican National Convention. Here he finds stern warnings against tennis balls. Tennis balls are definitely not allowed on the convention floor. Same goes for water guns, toy guns, tape, rope, umbrellas with metal tips and a dozen other items that are considered verboten. What are allowed are guns. In the open carry state of Ohio, guns are allowed on the convention floor. Clearly America has lost its mind.

It's Fear and Loathing on the campaign trail and while Fountain saves much of his head-shaking ire for Trump, he's a non-partisan critic assessing Hillary as someone completely incapable of connecting with the middle-class and Ted Cruz who is determined to out-Jesus everyone else. He posits that the United States finds itself at a critical crossroads, one they've only been twice before during the Civil War and the Great Depression. In all cases, the country has had to completely reinvent itself to survive as a democracy.

Fountain is one hell of a writer. In our current breakneck news cycle that sees fresh new dumpster fires everyday, looking back those few short years seems to make the most sense. It is an arms length view that still seems horribly prescient. Full length video review here: https://youtu.be/uQ1HHhujnXY

Addressing a blind spot in my Australian author diet which till now consisted of Jane Harper and Liane Moriarty (huge fan of both btw) Claire G. Coleman is a Noongar Aboriginal, a people who have traditionally occupied the south-west corner of Western Australia long before history started being recorded there.

Terra Nullius is the story of Settler arrogance and their disdain for the Natives. Bending them to their language, their rules, their religion only to offer them a life of enslavement. Jacky manages to escape his Settler captors and makes a run for the bush which sets off a chain of events. I loved the mid-story turn but I feel this would have been better served as a short story or novella. The impact slowly trickles away with each subsequent chapter.

This harkens to the Residential schools of Canada, with a light dusting of Nickel Boys and a heap of the Southern Baptist faithful who interpreted the word of God as still allowing for the ownership of slaves and split with their abolitionist church goers in the north.

It seems colonizer narratives are sadly all too familiar regardless of what country you come from.

I assumed Thelonious (Monk) Ellison was an over-the-top satirical portrayal of a tweedy, leather-elbow-patched, white academic who of course enjoys fly fishing and woodworking when he's not teaching literary theory and writing dense papers on semiotics. Someone who mutters “egads” on the basketball court after missing a shot and the obvious polar opposite of the Stagg R. Leigh persona. Turns out author Pervical Everett teaches literary theory when he isn't fly-fishing, woodworking, and ranching besides. What does that say about me and my assumptions?

The book pokes at credulous readers and the publishing industry hype machine fumbling around representation. It recalls the early days of Indigenous writers and authors from Africa selected to shore up misery porn narratives. Predominantly white industry gatekeepers shaping BIPOC narratives, fuelled by good intentions but blind to their own biases.

Ellison is in the middle of a family crisis as his sister is killed by an anti-abortion protester, his brother is newly out which has thrown his marriage on its head, and their mother is clearly deteriorating with Alzheimer's. The bank gained by his literary minstrelsy sure could make things easier but then who is Thelonious Ellison at the end of this? The existential crisis he faces is evident on the page as he drops snippets of dialogues between Wittgenstein, Derrida, and Joyce along with the entire hit making novel My Pafology. It can make for a disjointed story that careens all over the place, glancing lightly on both the satirical, like the literary award panel, and the sombre struggles of his family situation.

Zadie offers up a collection of her essays here but what's interesting it that she notes in the foreword that all of them were written during the Obama presidency and therefore a product of an already bygone world. An interesting prompt for an essay I'd wish she'd written as well.

I am the poor reader that is willing to meet the author part of the way but cannot subsist on language alone. That is to say Smith scores some easy hits for me with her essays on Jay-Z, Key and Peele and I loved her examination between writers and dancers and she convinced me that I need to read more art criticism, especially if it's done as well as her.

On the other hand her Harpers Magazine review of books I had no desire to read. While they are perfectly tuned to the specific style expected of the magazine they otherwise left me nodding off. Like any collection it's uneven. It's also a doorstopper of a read. But what shines is the warmth in which she speaks to the reader, perhaps a Zadie from a pre-Brexit, pre-Trump world.

This got under my skin - in a good way.

Attila Asare is a Ghanaian psychiatrist visiting London to deliver a keynote presentation. He's had a career travelling from war zones to battlefields and is a noted expert in post-traumatic recovery. He's a recent widower, is also tending to a former lover who's tumbled into early dementia, and finds himself helping his niece navigate immigration issues and find her son Tano who's disappeared into the city. It's a lot, but Attila is all efficient composure, still out to attend the theatre, dine on his own or dance in his hotel room.

We're also introduced to Jean Turane in London, divorced and missing her son back in the US, designing small space gardens, and studying foxes. The two collide in a meet-cute on Waterloo bridge and Jean is soon enlisted in the search for Tano, bringing in her network of fox watchers comprised of traffic wardens, street sweepers, street performers, security guards and hotel doormen to find the lost boy.

And there's quite a bit about the foxes, coyotes and even urbanized parakeets here. How they've adapted to their ever changing situation. How they manage to thrive and how they still represent something other, something wild that needs to be tamed or eradicated before it can insinuate itself into our insulated world. We've got notes on assimilation, immigration and trauma as well as lessons in resilience and joy. How very highbrow - but at its core suffused with warmth and hope. An utterly lovely read that surprised me in the best of ways.