Henry Hoke (2)Reseñas

I loved this. I was wary going into it because I do not like stream of consciousness, but I was willing to give it a try because of the interesting premise. While there isn't any punctuation, it is formatted in a way that makes it easy to read.

It's a sweet tribute to P-22, and I understand why the people of L.A. (or ellay, as he would call it) felt such comradery with him.

More contemporary litfic misanthropy. “People can’t see it but I can / their end makes everything okay”. The conceit of a mountain lion overhearing and understanding spoken English and thus much about human society - although somehow, despite all it knows, no one must have ever uttered the word “zoo” or the concept around it - was one I was never able to buy into, so the book was never going to work for me anyway, likely. Give me the mountain lion from Ducks, Newburyport instead, please.

On the positive side it was occasionally funny. Having an older teenaged girl “adopt” the mountain lion following a Wiccan-like ritual performed in her back yard (“I summoned you” she tells it) and naming it Hecate (or “heckit” to the lion’s ears, following Shakespeare) while treating “her” as a goddess figure (“I can see its goddamn dick” her angry father points out after discovering it in his daughters room) was amusing and ends poorly as one would expect.

A short book, written in sparse prose, intelligently and deeply about an important and existential subject.
After Wolf and the Woodsman, I don't know why I put myself through another sad animal book. I literally cried multiple times reading this book. As someone who empathizes a lot with animals, who has held my cats as they trembled through my neighborhood's firework antics, Heckin, the mountain lion's struggles made my heart ache so hard for them. This is a book for people who recognize that, just because they cannot communicate or think like we do, animals are intelligent. The results are haunting.
I knew this was based on the P-22 mountain lion that lived briefly in Los Angeles, but after I read the book, I had to do some more research because I had forgotten his story. He lived in one of the smallest ranges for a male mountain lion, after crossing two major highways that most animals don't manage to survive. He was captured by the National Park Service and California Department of Fish and Wildlife after the alleged killing of at least two dogs and was euthanized after it was determined he could not be rehabilitated due to multiple health issues. Apparently, he had been hit by a car and had sustained internal injuries on top of having multiple chronic illnesses, being underweight, and having an extensive parasitic skin infection. It warmed my heart to hear he was honored by several representatives of Native American tribes in Southern California and buried in the Santa Monica mountains he once called home. He also inspired the construction of a wildlife crossing over the 101 freeway, which is expected to be completed in 2025.
This is a book about more than a mountain lion though. It is about climate grief, "scare city", and the hubris, cruelty, and disconnection of mankind from its own nature due to urbanization.
Rest in power P-22. I am so sorry for what humanity has done to beautiful creatures like you, and this planet as a whole.

Sources: nps.gov, Wikipedia, and 101wildlifecrossing.org

Another one I probably wouldn't have read without a nudge from the ToB. An interesting concept! Not many books follow non-human characters. But it was also tough to understand how this mountain lion would be using these words. At one point he says a particular word isn't a word he knows, but he seems to be doing pretty well with English. I love the dream sequence at Disney, but again, how would he know any of these things? So I couldn't just let many of the logistics fly. But that a mountain lion could have such an intricate dream is heartbreaking. Ultimately, this seemed a little too much like it wanted to end up as a movie -- it went places I didn't think it would. I think it knew to be a short book, and in that case, I don't regret reading it.
*Book #143/340 I have read of the shortlisted Morning News Tournament of Books

This novel from the point of view of a mountain lion in the Hollywood Hills, surprised me with its tenderness. The lion is based on the real P-22, but we see people and dangers through his eyes. He wants to be a part of the world as much as he's confused by it. Pax, a novel from the POV of a fox, hit me more deeply, but that's probably because I read it first.½

This book broke my heart. I finished listening to the audiobook in my car at lunchtime, and I had to sit and sob for a while before going back to work.½

One of the best books I read this year was a novel narrated by a queer mountain lion living in the wildland urban interface above Los Angeles ("ellay" in the lion's parlance). As many other readers will tell you, OPEN THROAT by Henry Hoke will grab you (yes, by the throat) from the very first sentence. This is a story about: loneliness, love, fear, climate change, human cell-phone chatter, acceptance, family dysfunction, wilderness preservation, empathy, the savory taste of flesh, loyalty, and two or ten other things--all of it told through the distinct and unforgettable voice of a mountain lion (modeled after the real life "P-22" cat who lived in the Hollywood Hills). I'll admit I was a bit skeptical when I began "Open Throat," wondering how Henry Hoke could convince me of the lion's queerness. Reader, by the time I reached page 62, I was convinced. This book is perfect, first word to last.

Wry, sly, strangely addicting.

4.5⭐️

I read Open Throat by Henry Hoke twice, listened to it once, and intend to read it again! The author does a commendable job of building a prose poem fever dream-like narrative from the first person limited perspective of an animal untouched by human domesticity, allowing for unbiased and untainted reactions to what it sees and experiences. The audio narration by Pete Cross breathes life into this story.

“I have no idea what it’s like to be a person and to be confronted with a me”

Our unnamed narrator, a queer wild mountain lion who roams the forest area around the Hollywood sign in “ellay”, shares their perspectives on a myriad of topics– survival in the dwindling forests, homelessness, the earthquakes or the “shudders”, their fear of the highway and the habits and conversations of the hikers they see from their hiding place in the thickets. Observant and perceptive, our narrator is often critical of the human condition and habits that impacted his habitat and way of life but also does not lack compassion where it is due.

In this midst of our narrator’s observations are their reflections and memories of family, and past love and we follow our narrator as they leave their hunting grounds after a heinous crime against the homeless encampment in his park, venturing into the city amid the very humans they once observed from a safe distance, ultimately sheltering in the attic of a family home, befriending a young girl - an experience that prompts a dream of “Diznee’ ’toward the end of this short novel, building up to an ending that stays with you.

“every person sitting and walking has hands too and I see all their hands and I know what their hands can do and what their hands would do and the violence waiting behind every motion”

Weaving vivid imagery, elements of wonder, tragedy, heartbreak and dry humor and touching upon themes that impact all living beings - human and animals alike, Open Throat by Henry Hoke is an addictive, imaginative and thought-provoking experience that I would not hesitate to recommend.
In the Acknowledgments section, the author dedicates this book to P-22, the wild mountain lion that lived in Griffith Park (circa 2010 till his death in 2022).

Second Read: June 21 2023

I read this twice this month. Once via the e-arc and once via audio... I love it so much, it's one of my favorites this year. Over time I think this will really stay with me. The themes and the delivery are so well done, poignant and moving. This is so poetic.

original characters
original story
poetic
immersive
enlightening
meaningful
thought-provoking
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First Read: June 1 2023

When I heard that FSG was releasing a book narrated by a queer mountain lion, I was intrigued (to say the least) and when Sunnys Book Club announced it as their June pick I was so excited. Imagine my utter joy when the e-ARC for ‘Open Throat’ by Henry Hoke was kindly provided to me via NetGalley and the publisher. I mean— most things might not be going my way, but in regards to this book, tops! LOL

And… without further suspense… it was a literal five star. I can’t. I loved, adored, ate this book up! Sunnys Book Truck you sure can pick ‘em! I couldn’t (and didn’t) put this down.

‘Open Throat’ is a captivating and innovative story, full of impactful writing and musings on people, planet, parenthood, love and connection. I was moved to tears, multiple times, amidst this seemingly sparse prose. The mountain lion (who’s name we cannot know, a detail that touched me) moves through the park, the dark, the outskirts of the city, and interprets - often with grey empathy - the beings around him, he thinks back on his mother and father — the love and violence of that — and his interactions with another mountain lion. There is a deep loneliness in his life, a vulnerability in his fertility. The whole story reads with such intensity and relatability. I can’t stop thinking about it, and I hope I never do.

My father worked at the nature center at a state park when I was a child. They took in a domesticated cougar and in the early days he got into the cage with him, and even I was able to pet him, talk to him. Over time, they didn’t allow anyone to. And he went from loved to lonely. His life in a cage made all the more painful by this change. One of the last times I saw him I stood at the enclosure, alone, and just looked at him, looking at me and I knew he knew me, and I have never felt more regretful that I could not just let him free. That what man had taken and misinterpreted, for its own amusement had cost him his life. I hope he knows he was a “goddess” to me.

The narrator is a displaced mountain lion in California. It was certainly interesting, and nicely brief. I like books that try to capture an animal's perspective. It really lost me though when the girl takes him to Disney World.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: Twenty little meditative essays inspired by a ubiquitous part of 1980s and 1990s childhoods: Stickers. (GAWD how I hated the damned things. "Easy release" my lily-white one! I was still finding them on the undersides of chairs and backs of paintings in 2010.)

Author Hoke shines in these quick hits of memory, bringing the reader back into his world as it was and thinking about his various challenges...disabled mother in a wheelchair, absent father, being queer in Charlottesville, Virginia...and the roots his white self has in the South, with all the freight that implies.

He reckons with comparatively large parts of his ancestral racism; he states that, with all its contradictions, he intends this read to make his identity "...a little more tangible." Without being acquainted with the gentleman, I feel that I have a picture of him as a person that would never be obtainable through any more rigorous, structured look at what makes a person into the unique self they are. No, it's not autobiography, or even memoir, it's that rare thing : The reflective essay, the thoughtful, loosely organized look into the back corners of the closets and the darker recesses of the attic for the bright, shiny things once delighted in and now gathering patina and dust in unused parts of one's mind

I enjoyed myself as I wandered around with Author Hoke as he showed me his once-prized gewgaws and knick-knacks. Join us for a good old wander.

Sticker by Henry Hoke, a volume in the Object Lessons series, is an interesting and compelling look at the life of stickers (many different kinds) as they parallel the life of the author.

As you probably know if you've read any books in this series (unless you're Theeasinine) the object serves as a springboard into something larger, in this case a person's life and a city's history. If you want to know what an object is, google it. If you want to know how an object lives alongside and within the world, this series offers many interesting excursions. Apparently for some anything that they can't understand is somehow Marxist, which is really just a reflection of their lack of intellect, Theepathetic.

While reading this you will likely remember your own experiences as they relate to stickers. Maybe the same stickers (gold stars in school, bumper stickers), maybe entirely different stickers. Hoke uses the stickers from his life to tell his story as well as, to a large extent, Charlottesville's story. I lived there for a few years and loved the town but, like any city, some of its past and even present can be troublesome.

I would recommend this to those who enjoy memoirs, especially those with unusual framing devices. Aside from the memoir aspect it will also appeal to those who like to read things that might make them reflect on their own lives, and stickers may well spark some reflections and memories.

Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley.½