Fauna

By Alissa York

Scotiabank Giller Prize-nominated author Alissa York creates a contemporary human fable that taps into the great tenderness and drama at the heart of the animal world.

The wide ravine that bisects the city is home to countless species of urban wildlife, including human waifs and strays. When Edal Jones can't cope with the casual cruelty she encounters in her job as a federal wildlife officer, she finds herself drawn to a beacon of solace nestled in the valley under the unlikely banner of an auto-wrecker's yard. Guy Howell, the handsome proprietor, offers sanctuary to animals and people alike: a half-starved hawk and a brood of orphaned raccoon kits, a young soldier whose spirit failed him during his first tour of duty, a teenage runaway and her massive black dog. Guy is well versed in the delicate workings of damaged beings, and he might just stand a chance at mending Edal's heart.

But before love can bloom, the little community must come to terms with a different breed of lost soul—a young man whose brutal backwoods childhood is catching up with him, causing him to persecute the creatures that call the valley home.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Release date: Jul 27, 2010
• ISBN: 9780307375704

Alissa York

Alissa York's novels Mercy, Effigy, and Fauna, have been nominated for the Giller Prize and other major awards.

Reviews for Fauna

[smits_52 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

A strange group of characters connected by the green areas around the Don Valley parkway in Toronto and the animals that live there. The people and the animals are damaged in many ways.Not really my kind of novel;

[paradiseporch · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

(Literary, Contemporary, Canadian) This was the 2013 pick for One Book Nova Scotia. It’s set in the Don Valley in Toronto, Ontario. The River Don runs through the heart of Canada’s biggest city, largely unnoticed by most residents, but the valley teems with wildlife activity. Alissa Yorke imagines an auto wreckers in this ravine, with a secret sanctuary for the injured fauna of the title. All of the characters who cross paths here are recovering from or distancing themselves from a loss. Most interesting is Edal, a federal wildlife officer on stress leave, torn between reporting the illegal operation and watching the wildlife she is sworn to protect heal. There’s also a coyote-shooting fringe element, and of course, the wildlife itself.Read this if: you are interested in the role that animals and humans play in the healing of the other; or you live in or near Toronto (or another large urban centre) and want a glimpse of the hidden world amid the concrete that is the Don Valley. 4 stars

[tommcgreevy · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

An interesting enough story in itself. While it managed to hold itself together, none of its plots were adequately explored and none of its characters were sufficiently fleshed out. The writing was good, not earth-shattering.

[julie10reads · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Guy Howell, proprietor of autowrecker's yard on edge of the Don Valley ravine offers sanctuary to strays - animals and people alike. Stephen, a young soldier recently returned from Afghanistan; Darius, coyote hunter & survivor of brutal beatings from his grandfather; Lily tents in ravine with Billy, a big black dog & rescues songbirds; Kate lonely & has just lost her partner LouLou, Edal Jones, a federal wildlife officer on stress leave from the handling of smuggling of rare creatures; Storyline from the perspective the humans & animals who inhabit the ravine. Sweet & ingrossing read. Guy has the insight to treat both animals & humans with respect & deep understanding of the damge that they have experienced. Summary PhyllisMargaret of Ottawa Public LibraryBeautiful tale--fable--of the intertwined lives of humans and animals in the Don Valley of Toronto. It's about sanctuary. literal and figurative, for animals of all kinds, including the human animal. Stripped-down dialogue and vibrant description tell us in an kind way that what we do to everything in the physical world around us we ultimately do to ourselves, both for ill and good.I loved it. A keeper.8.5 out of 10 Highly recommended to readers of literary and nature fiction.

[zabetreading · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

Can someone please enlighten me as to 1) why this book has gotten such high ratings and 2) what exactly was the point?

The characters were boring, there was no conflict, plot or driving force. Why, why, why????

[beam2380 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Unfortunately, this book didn't keep my attention at the time. I really wanted it to, as Alissa York was the Writer in Residence at my University at the time I started this book, but I just couldn't get into it. I stopped reading around page 179, so I gave it a good shot. I'd like to try it again in the future, perhaps I was just too involved / consumed with my Medieval Literature classes at the time to be able to relate to this Modern Canadian Lit. novel.

[schatje_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This book has been sitting on my shelf for almost two years since it was released in 2010. I really liked Alissa York’s two previous novels and so bought this one as a hardcover. In those two years I made several attempts to read the book but just couldn’t seem to get into it. This time I was determined to finish it, and I’m glad I persevered although it was slow going at the beginning.Set in the Don Valley of Toronto, the novel brings together five disparate characters to an autowrecker’s yard which serves as an ad hoc animal sanctuary. Guy is the owner of the business and he welcomes animal strays as well as those of the human variety. These latter include Edal, a federal wildlife officer on stress leave; Stephen, a young veteran recovering from a tour of duty in Afghanistan; Lily, a teenaged homeless runaway; and Kate, a lesbian veterinary technician specializing in canine physiotherapy. All five characters have suffered the loss of parents either through death or virtual abandonment (because of abuse or mental illness or self-centredness or nonacceptance). Each is an outcast or misfit in some way and so wary of human interaction. All are also somehow involved in rescuing injured animals, and it is this common concern that helps them connect.All five are interesting people, especially as their backgrounds are gradually revealed. (At the beginning, the number of characters and the alteration among them can cause some confusion; several times I found myself having to look back to connect a particular back story with a particular character.) My problem with them is that, despite their dysfunctional childhoods, they are all such paragons of decency. Guy is almost god-like in his acceptance and welcoming attitude to all, both animals and humans.The book examines the inevitable collision between animals and humans in an urban setting. An uneasy relationship exists between them, and the author’s suggestion is that humans must find a more balanced way to live with animals. Furthermore, there is a healing power to be found in the natural world: all five characters find some form of redemption in their interaction with the fauna that share the world they inhabit. (The one exception is Darius, the extreme opposite of an animal lover, whose behaviour and fate are lessons in what happens when animals and humans do not co-exist peacefully.)Because of my affinity for the author, I wanted to love this book, but I can’t honestly say I did. The pace at the beginning is almost glacial, and until the end there is no real action or conflict. There are nice touches like the short passages narrated from the point of view of various animals (fox, skunk, bat, raccoon, squirrel, bat) living in the Don Valley. Also, as mentioned, the five protagonists are rather too good, and in the end the resolutions for all involved are too neat. At one point, Stephen describes an encounter with a camel spider and he concludes, “The longer he watched it, the lovelier it became” (230). That statement both summarizes the author’s opinion as to how people should approach animals and my opinion of the book as I continued to read. Unfortunately, it takes too long to get caught up in the reading.

[gypsysmom_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I really loved this book. A little while ago I came across the term "Nature Deficit Disorder", a term coined by writer Richard Louv in his book Last Child in the Woods. Louv posits that children are spending less time in nature resulting in a host of behavioural problems. I haven't read his book but I can believe in the existence of the disorder. And I don't think it is confined just to children, I think a lot of adults probably are disconnected from nature. For those people I prescribe reading Fauna and the other books mentioned in it. And then I prescribe that they get out in nature and observe and interact with it.The inhabitants of this book don't suffer from nature deficit disorder. The first one we meet is Edal. She is a federal wildlife officer currently on leave because she lost it one day when yet another traveller tried to smuggle exotic pets back, killing most of them in the process. Edal is out for a bike ride in the downtown canyons of Toronto when she sees a young girl with a big Newfoundland dog searching for birds that have smashed into the office towers. Lily is homeless and lives in a tent in the Don Valley with her dog, Billy. Lily is spooked by Edal's presence and hops on her bike to hightail it to Howell Auto Wreckers. Edal has followed her and watches for a while from outside the gate until she is invited in. Guy is the owner and he helps Lily with the birds she rescues. When they have died from their encounter with the glass expanse Guy and Lily bury them in the abandoned garden on the grounds. Guy has rescued a red tail hawk which he is nursing back to fighting form. Stephen is the one employee of Howell's. He fought in Afghanistan but was invalided out after succumbing to a nasty virus. He travels the Don Valley often and on one occasion saw a raccoon scramble down a tree and across the road where she was hit by a vehicle. Stephen went to pick the body up for a decent burial and realized she was a nursing mother. Stephen and Guy rescued the young kits from the tree hollow where there mother had left them and Stephen is nursing them until they can be freed. Kate is a veterinary technician who rehabilitates dogs with gait problems. Kate runs across LIly and Billy on one of her runs in the Don Valley and Lily, uncharacteristically, invites her to come to Howell's some night. This unlikely group of friends come together out of their concern for animals but remain together for friendship, food and literature.The one exception to the nature loving that goes on in this book is Darius. We are first introduced to him through his blog which he has advertised by putting up posters in the Don Valley. He calls himself coyotecop and he is determined to wipe out all the coyotes in Toronto. Stephen saw the posters, tore them down but checked out the blog and was horrified by what he found there. He tries to use reason and facts to counter what Darius is saying but as the days go on Darius escalates from talking to doing.Throughout the book we learn the back stories of most of the characters. As might be expected Darius comes from an abusive household. He grew up in the mountains of BC and he learned about animals from his grandfather, a hunter and thoroughly nasty man. We never do learn much about Lily but we know that she fled from home with Billy so it could not have been a good situation. Both of these young people have been damaged by their home environment but Lily has retained some humanity and as she becomes part of the community that revolves around Howell's she starts to heal. Darius remains a loner.This was a very powerful book. Annabel Lyon, author of The Golden Mean is quoted on the front cover as follows: "Rich and strange and deeply satisfying." I concur.

[icolford · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This exquisitely wrought novel begins with Edal Jones, a federal wildlife officer on stress leave, happening upon a skinny young woman collecting injured birds at the base of a Toronto office tower. Propelled by some impulse she hardly recognizes, she follows the woman and her dog back to a fenced-in yard full of wrecked cars. The next day Edal returns and is welcomed in, only to discover that Howell Auto Wreckers in Toronto's east end is refuge for a motley group of young people doing what they can to nurse the city's wildlife back to health after injurious encounters with human civilization. Almost as if she has no choice, Edal joins their ranks. This novel is about recovery and endurance. York's human characters are just as damaged as the animals they are trying to help and which play such a vital role in this story. York's novel does not fall prey to sentimental musings on animal rights. The humans are sympathetic, their plight poignant. Emotionally resonant, this is a wry commentary on urban life and a fine work of fiction.

[littlebones · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

A cute book, but unsatisfying. The descriptions of the animals were beautiful, but huge aspects of many of the characters were untouched. It seems as though none of them really evolve throughout the story, and their various motivations are mysterious, if not completely obscure. I never felt as though I got to know any of the protagonists in this book, or that there was really much conflict beyond everybody having a tragic backstory.The ending was kind of a let down.Again, though, I would read an entire book of Alissa York just describing animals going about their day. Those parts were excellent.