Bookworm, no. 155
Claire Hurley reviews Dan Werb’s “Our Wild Familiars.” Christina Apa on Emily McBride’s “Queen Mab.” A cover artist Q&A. Inside the July/August issue.
Our Wild Familiars: How Animals Are Adapting to Cities and Reshaping the Natural World
Dan Werb
Knopf Canada
336 pages, hardcover, ebook, and audiobook
In Our Wild Familiars, the Toronto epidemiologist Dan Werb makes one thing clear: “Cities are nature.” One would be hard-pressed to argue with his sweeping study of synanthropes—the wild animals who dwell among us—and how they are actively transforming and being transformed by urban environments.
In skilful prose, Werb makes a case for the maligned critters living in our shadows. His tone is by turns jocular and lyrical. His observations are often touching as he charts a dizzying cross-continental voyage that features a cast of environmental experts and local guides. And then, of course, there are the beasts: the great Pacific octopus, gazing from her one big eyeball, cradling a hundred thousand eggs in a makeshift concrete den off Seattle’s polluted coast; belligerent baboons in Saudi Arabia, riding atop wild dogs on the outskirts of Al-Baha. These are among the signs “that modern nature is alive in a landscape of refuse and decay.”
Werb is at his most captivating when describing the adaptations of creatures in response to urban sprawl: evolutionary processes, which would normally take hundreds of years, unfolding in just a generation or two. Indeed, the resourcefulness of synanthropes astounds, as does the fact that they often choose to live in seemingly inhospitable places. Werb also condemns the systems and structures that fool us into thinking we can stave off our animal neighbours and, critically, their viral spillover. “If we are to survive,” he writes, “we cannot separate environmental health, animal health, and human health.” Hope lies in serious investments in green initiatives and in “dispensing with the nostalgia we have for a lost and pristine world.” To build cities that are more connected, beautiful, and alive, we must pursue “a conservation movement based on joy.”
—Claire Hurley
Queen Mab
Emily McBride
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
304 pages, hardcover and ebook
Madeleine, a twenty-three-year-old graduate student, is less than thrilled when she discovers she’s pregnant. Between teaching and working alongside her mentor, it doesn’t feel like the right time. Before she can decide what to do, her subconscious, which she believes is her unborn baby (or a moth, as she refers to it), convinces her that a child would bring her husband and, especially, her mother happiness.
But after a traumatic birth, the isolation of motherhood creeps up on Madeleine. From here, Emily McBride’s Queen Mab delves into the world of fairies and postpartum psychosis. Madeleine convinces herself that her baby, Maud, was stolen and replaced by a changeling. She becomes so consumed by the idea that she abandons all other responsibilities to fix the mistake. Then Madeleine decides that it’s she who’s been changed.
McBride borrows from Charlotte Brontë, Yeats, and Tennyson, as well as folklore, to craft a story about a young mother who doesn’t get the support she needs. After all, Madeleine’s friends have a hard time understanding her choice to have a child in the first place, while her husband works toward a promotion that never comes. Madeleine disguises her struggles and challenges so well that even her loved ones don’t notice something is amiss until she’s standing at the edge of a canal, looking ready to jump. But even after Madeleine receives professional help, she still sees supernatural signs outside her window.
—Christina Apa
Cover Artist Q&A: Scot Ritchie
How did this cover come to be?
The editor found some pictorial maps on my website and thought something similar would work well with FIFA coming to North America. The direction was to include the World Cup cities and fill in the rest with activity and soccer. I had a lot of freedom. That makes things fun.
Who are your influences, both for this cover and for your art generally?
My influences range quite a bit, but there is often humour involved. I admire Sempé, Hergé, and Len Norris (a cartoonist for the Vancouver Sun from years ago). I fight a constant battle to get humour recognized as something valid. People think if they are amused, an illustration must not be weighty.
The cover is full of little jokes. Which is your favourite?
My goal is to lull readers into a few moments of playful observance—maybe to lose themselves as they did as kids. After all, my main career is illustrating children’s books. My favourite bits are the old salt in Newfoundland with the pipe smoke going to the ship, the shark swallowing the sun, and Trump bloviating atop his gold-plated White House.
You managed to sneak in a bit of political commentary — for example, the “No ICE” placard in Mexico. Was it important for you to have some messaging on the cover?
That was the editor’s idea, and I loved it. I really wasn’t sure how political I could get: every publication is different, and this was my first time working with the magazine. I’ve done a lot of satirical editorial cartoons. Maybe on my next cover I’ll really let loose!
Are you working on anything you’d like people to know about?
As a freelancer, I always have something in the fire. One book I’m working on now is with the Ostara Project, about Canadian women in jazz.
Inside the July/August Issue
“But the question remains as to whether, in our current era of hyper-commercialism and all-encompassing media distraction, the beautiful game can be said to embody any kind of ethical ideal at all.” James Brooke-Smith searches for meaning in global soccer.
Kelvin Browne explores Robin Ward’s guide to Montreal’s best buildings.
“After their separation, Duffy was left with the muddle of holding on to two truths at once: that she and her husband still loved each other and that they could no longer be a couple.” Pamela Mulloy takes in Mo Duffy’s Radiant. White. Light.
And much more!