Globe Book Club: The enduring appeal of animal literature GlobeArts
Barbara Gowdy’s The White Bone is Margaret Atwood’s choice for our new Globe and Mail Book Club for subscribers. Every week, Globe Books will look at themes drawn from the novel to spark discussion among readers.kicks off the conversation with a look at how writers use animals to tell very human stories. Tell us in the Comments section about your favourite book featuring anthropomorphic animals and why it speaks to you.
“Talking rabbits,” said my Grade 10 English teacher. “That’s why I wouldn’t teach this book. I just heard talking rabbits and I said no way. That’s for children. Talking rabbits!” For years afterward, my friend Alex and I used the phrase “Talking rabbits!” – expressed in a strong Nova Scotian accent – to represent a kind of conservative indignation at anything.Watership Down.
The device of the alien visitor is a strong one in satire, developed particularly in France in the 18th century: Montesquieu used it in, an epistolary novel that purported to describe Parisian social and political life through the eyes of visiting Persian rich men. Putting his critique of sophisticated society into the mouths of bemused and supposedly barbaric foreigners was a ploy for avoiding punishment from the censorious state.
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