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Title details for On Animals by Susan Orlean - Available

On Animals

by Susan Orlean
ebook
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'Every essay in this book is magnificent... Mesmerizing.' New York Times 'How we interact with animals has preoccupied philosophers, poets, and naturalists for ages,' writes Susan Orlean. Since the age of six, when Orlean wrote and illustrated a book called Herbert the Near-Sighted Pigeon, she's been drawn to stories about how we live with animals, and how they abide by us. Now, in On Animals, she examines animal-human relationships through the compelling tales she has written over the course of her celebrated career. These stories consider a range of creatures - the household pets we dote on, the animals we raise to end up as meat on our plates, the creatures who could eat us for dinner, the various tamed and untamed animals we share our planet with who are central to human life. In her own backyard, Orlean discovers the delights of keeping chickens. In a different backyard, in New Jersey, she meets a woman who has twenty-three pet tigers - something none of her neighbours knew about until one of the tigers escapes. In Iceland, the world's most famous whale resists the efforts to set him free; in Morocco, the world's hardest-working donkeys find respite at a special clinic. We meet a show dog and a lost dog and a pigeon who knows exactly how to get home. Equal parts delightful and profound, enriched by Orlean's stylish prose and precise research, these stories celebrate the meaningful cross-species connections that grace our collective existence.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    November 4, 2021

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Read

      • ISBN: 9781838955472

    • EPUB ebook

      • ISBN: 9781838955472
      • File size: 930 KB

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Publisher's Weekly

      August 30, 2021
      New Yorker staff writer Orlean (The Library Book) delivers an entertaining and informative look at various animals in this clever collection of essays. According to Orlean, her “animalish” personality has driven her to track down critters her whole life, as well as stories of humans as animalish as she. In “Lady and the Tigers,” she profiles a tiger owner in Jackson, N.J., while “Little Wing” sees her documenting a teenager’s relationship to her carrier pigeons in Boston. The essays are well researched and showcase a keen journalistic eye, as in “Lion Whisperer,” which covers Kevin Richardson’s frolicsome relationship with lions, and “The Rabbit Outbreak,” which details the spread of a disease in rabbits across the globe. Orlean’s prose dazzles when she uses human metaphors to describe the natural world, conjuring up hilariously vivid images: Biff, a show dog, has “the earnest and slightly careworn expression of a smalltown mayor”; Keiko the whale, who starred in Free Willy, is “a middle-aged piebald virgin living as good a life as captivity could offer”; and carrier pigeons are “muttering to themselves like old men in a bingo hall.” While not all the essays land (some leave something to be desired in Orlean’s examination of the human-animal relationship), they’re nonetheless packed with spirit. Animal lovers will find much to savor.

Formats

  • OverDrive Read
  • EPUB ebook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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