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How to Be Human
From Guardian writer Paula Cocozza, a debut novel of the breakdown of a marriage, suburban claustrophobia, and a woman's unseemly passion for a fox
One summer’s night, Mary comes home from a midnight ramble to find a baby lying on her back door step. Has Mary stolen the baby from next door? Has the baby’s mother, Mary's neighbor, left her there in her acute state of post-natal depression? Or was the baby brought to Mary as a gift by the fox who is increasingly coming to dominate her life?
So opens How to Be Human, a novel set in a London suburb beset by urban foxes. On leave from work, unsettled by the proximity of her ex, and struggling with her hostile neighbors, Mary has become increasingly captivated by a magnificent fox who is always in her garden. First she sees him wink at her, then he brings her presents, and finally she invites him into her house. As the boundaries between the domestic and the wild blur, and the neighbors set out to exterminate the fox, it is unclear if Mary will save the fox, or the fox save Mary.
One summer’s night, Mary comes home from a midnight ramble to find a baby lying on her back door step. Has Mary stolen the baby from next door? Has the baby’s mother, Mary's neighbor, left her there in her acute state of post-natal depression? Or was the baby brought to Mary as a gift by the fox who is increasingly coming to dominate her life?
So opens How to Be Human, a novel set in a London suburb beset by urban foxes. On leave from work, unsettled by the proximity of her ex, and struggling with her hostile neighbors, Mary has become increasingly captivated by a magnificent fox who is always in her garden. First she sees him wink at her, then he brings her presents, and finally she invites him into her house. As the boundaries between the domestic and the wild blur, and the neighbors set out to exterminate the fox, it is unclear if Mary will save the fox, or the fox save Mary.
288 pages, Hardcover
First published May 9, 2017
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March 26, 2017
In a nutshell, this is the story of a woman unravelling after being left by her abusive fiancé. But I can guarantee you have never read a treatment of the theme quite like this. Indeed, I have never read a book quite like this.
My feelings about How to Be Human are so mixed that 4 stars seems an odd compromise. While trying to draft this review from possibly the messiest collection of notes I have ever had to work with, I repeatedly felt I should actually be writing two reviews – one positive, one negative. When I was a few chapters in, I made a note that I was finding it 75% mesmerising and 25% agonising. After finishing, I wanted to describe my reaction as 50% elation and 50% frustration. Apparently there's something about How to Be Human that makes me want to measure my (rhyming) emotions in percentages.
Mary is a newly single woman in her mid-thirties (though, deliberately or otherwise, the character is written in a way that makes her feel much older). It's the middle of a long, sticky summer. Living alone in a suburb of London, Mary has settled into a numbing routine. Nowhere particular to go; nothing much to do; no friends or close family to speak of; a dull and uninspiring job. The shadow of her ex, Mark, looms over everything, his absence palpable in what used to be their shared home. At first he is sketched benignly in Mary's memories, but as he appears more and more often, seeking to remind Mary that he's watching her, it becomes clear how repellent Mark is. He is half gaoler, half wheedling child, a sickening – yet horribly plausible – figure. Mary is caught between boredom and discomfort, and she develops a powerful obsession with a fox she regularly sees in her garden. Later, she also focuses her attention on her neighbours' baby daughter.
Mary appraises the fox as one would an attractive person. She tries to assign a name to him (she is never in doubt that the fox is male), testing out 'Red' and 'Sunset' before deciding simply to think of him as 'her fox'. It goes further. She tells acquaintances she is seeing someone, all the while thinking smugly of 'her fox'. At first this might be an in-joke, albeit one Mary only has with herself, but the delusion is soon proved to run deeper than that. And just when you think it can't get more disturbing than pages of borderline-erotic descriptions of an animal, there's the scene with Mary kissing the baby. I now understand what people mean when they say they need 'brain bleach'...
This is just such a deeply uncomfortable and disturbing book in so many ways. It never crosses that line into downright perversity, but then, part of what makes it so painful is the fact that it is always teetering on the brink. It's hard not to want something definitively horrible to happen, if only for relief from that inescapable pressure. Scenes are long, unnaturally stretched out, excruciatingly so; the way people talk – either using tired platitudes or getting worked up over very little – is incredibly irritating; a threat of violence hangs over every appearance Mark makes. How to Be Human feels like it's designed to make you squirm with discomfort at every single development. There's no denying it's all pulled off brilliantly, but I don't think I have ever written the word 'nauseating' as frequently as I did while making notes on this novel.
The sentences, like the scenes, are long and rolling, folding familiar language into surprising shapes. Cocozza occasionally slips into the fox's thoughts, using an effective combination of disordered words and weird neologisms to approximate his 'voice': He brisked his whiskers. The air poked damp and saline. Come fresh to stalk around the human Female with sly feet and rippety eyes. Spruckling toadsome. Just the thought made his shoulder fur thicken. The atmosphere is thick and hallucinatory. I have a very clear picture of the setting in my mind, and I can't imagine forgetting it anytime soon.
If you were to have a conversation with me about this book, you'd probably go away thinking it was something I hated. It's true that I spent a lot of my time reading it cringing, squirming and anxiously wishing the scene I was reading would just end. But it's also true that it knocked me off my feet, that I could hardly believe how audacious and original it was. I admired it; it got under my skin. (While the two are very different, it reminded me of my reaction to Joshua Cohen's Book of Numbers, a book that's maddening and offensive but also such an absolute fucking masterpiece that I'm completely unable to describe it without swearing. It also made me think of Beryl Bainbridge's Harriet Said...; that same dragging summer; that same awful dread...)
In the end, Mary remains as opaque and unknowable as she was at the start. So many things about the character, her behaviour and development are so unlikely that they can surely only be symbolic. It feels most rewarding to see How to Be Human as a sort of modern fable about isolation, the precariousness of happiness (and perhaps sanity), and exactly how infinitesimal the division between a comforting distraction and a dangerous delusion can be.
I received an advance review copy of How to Be Human from the publisher through NetGalley.
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My feelings about How to Be Human are so mixed that 4 stars seems an odd compromise. While trying to draft this review from possibly the messiest collection of notes I have ever had to work with, I repeatedly felt I should actually be writing two reviews – one positive, one negative. When I was a few chapters in, I made a note that I was finding it 75% mesmerising and 25% agonising. After finishing, I wanted to describe my reaction as 50% elation and 50% frustration. Apparently there's something about How to Be Human that makes me want to measure my (rhyming) emotions in percentages.
Mary is a newly single woman in her mid-thirties (though, deliberately or otherwise, the character is written in a way that makes her feel much older). It's the middle of a long, sticky summer. Living alone in a suburb of London, Mary has settled into a numbing routine. Nowhere particular to go; nothing much to do; no friends or close family to speak of; a dull and uninspiring job. The shadow of her ex, Mark, looms over everything, his absence palpable in what used to be their shared home. At first he is sketched benignly in Mary's memories, but as he appears more and more often, seeking to remind Mary that he's watching her, it becomes clear how repellent Mark is. He is half gaoler, half wheedling child, a sickening – yet horribly plausible – figure. Mary is caught between boredom and discomfort, and she develops a powerful obsession with a fox she regularly sees in her garden. Later, she also focuses her attention on her neighbours' baby daughter.
Mary appraises the fox as one would an attractive person. She tries to assign a name to him (she is never in doubt that the fox is male), testing out 'Red' and 'Sunset' before deciding simply to think of him as 'her fox'. It goes further. She tells acquaintances she is seeing someone, all the while thinking smugly of 'her fox'. At first this might be an in-joke, albeit one Mary only has with herself, but the delusion is soon proved to run deeper than that. And just when you think it can't get more disturbing than pages of borderline-erotic descriptions of an animal, there's the scene with Mary kissing the baby. I now understand what people mean when they say they need 'brain bleach'...
This is just such a deeply uncomfortable and disturbing book in so many ways. It never crosses that line into downright perversity, but then, part of what makes it so painful is the fact that it is always teetering on the brink. It's hard not to want something definitively horrible to happen, if only for relief from that inescapable pressure. Scenes are long, unnaturally stretched out, excruciatingly so; the way people talk – either using tired platitudes or getting worked up over very little – is incredibly irritating; a threat of violence hangs over every appearance Mark makes. How to Be Human feels like it's designed to make you squirm with discomfort at every single development. There's no denying it's all pulled off brilliantly, but I don't think I have ever written the word 'nauseating' as frequently as I did while making notes on this novel.
The sentences, like the scenes, are long and rolling, folding familiar language into surprising shapes. Cocozza occasionally slips into the fox's thoughts, using an effective combination of disordered words and weird neologisms to approximate his 'voice': He brisked his whiskers. The air poked damp and saline. Come fresh to stalk around the human Female with sly feet and rippety eyes. Spruckling toadsome. Just the thought made his shoulder fur thicken. The atmosphere is thick and hallucinatory. I have a very clear picture of the setting in my mind, and I can't imagine forgetting it anytime soon.
If you were to have a conversation with me about this book, you'd probably go away thinking it was something I hated. It's true that I spent a lot of my time reading it cringing, squirming and anxiously wishing the scene I was reading would just end. But it's also true that it knocked me off my feet, that I could hardly believe how audacious and original it was. I admired it; it got under my skin. (While the two are very different, it reminded me of my reaction to Joshua Cohen's Book of Numbers, a book that's maddening and offensive but also such an absolute fucking masterpiece that I'm completely unable to describe it without swearing. It also made me think of Beryl Bainbridge's Harriet Said...; that same dragging summer; that same awful dread...)
In the end, Mary remains as opaque and unknowable as she was at the start. So many things about the character, her behaviour and development are so unlikely that they can surely only be symbolic. It feels most rewarding to see How to Be Human as a sort of modern fable about isolation, the precariousness of happiness (and perhaps sanity), and exactly how infinitesimal the division between a comforting distraction and a dangerous delusion can be.
I received an advance review copy of How to Be Human from the publisher through NetGalley.
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May 4, 2017
(4.5) Thirty-four-year-old Mary Green is adrift after her long-term fiancé, Mark, moves out of their East London home. She works in university HR but hates her job and can never manage to show up to it on time. Though she and Mark broke up in part because she didn’t feel ready to commit to having children, she’s inordinately fond of the next-door neighbors’ baby, Flora. Most of all, she’s trying to reorient herself to the presence of a fox who slips in from the surrounding edgeland to visit her back garden each evening. He leaves presents: boxers, a glove, an egg, and – one disorienting evening – Flora herself, a live bundle on the back steps.
Whereas the neighbors are horrified at the thought of a fox infestation and ready to go on the attack if necessary, Mary is enraptured by this taste of wildness. Before long the novel is using almost erotic vocabulary to describe her encounters with ‘her’ fox; Mary even allows the neighbors and her ex to get the idea that she’s ‘seeing someone’ new. Yet even as Mary’s grasp on reality grows feebler, it’s easy to empathize with her delight at the unexpectedness of interspecies connection: “At the end of her garden she had found a friend. … His wildness was a gift. … He was an escape artist, she thought admiringly. Maybe he could free her too.”
I love this novel for what it has to say about trespass, ownership and belonging. Whose space is this, really, and where do our loyalties lie? Cocozza sets up such intriguing contradictions between the domestic and the savage, the humdrum and the unpredictable. The encounter with the Other is clarifying, even salvific, and allows Mary to finally make her way back to herself. There’s something gently magical about the way the perspective occasionally shifts to give the fox’s backstory and impressions as a neologism-rich stream (“Come fresh to stalk around the human Female with sly feet and rippety eyes. Spruckling toadsome”). Memorable lines abound, and a chapter set at the neighbors’ barbecue is brilliant, as are the final three chapters, in which Mary holes up in her house in anticipation of a siege.
As much as this is about a summer of enchantment and literal brushes with urban wildlife, it’s also about women’s lives: loneliness, choices we make and patterns we get stuck in, and those unlooked-for experiences that might just liberate us. The character Mary is my near contemporary, so I could relate to her sense of being stuck personally and professionally, and also of feeling damned if you do, damned if you don’t regarding having children. “Some part of her was made for a bigger, wilder, freer life.” One of my favorite books of 2017 so far.
Originally published with images on my blog, Bookish Beck.
Whereas the neighbors are horrified at the thought of a fox infestation and ready to go on the attack if necessary, Mary is enraptured by this taste of wildness. Before long the novel is using almost erotic vocabulary to describe her encounters with ‘her’ fox; Mary even allows the neighbors and her ex to get the idea that she’s ‘seeing someone’ new. Yet even as Mary’s grasp on reality grows feebler, it’s easy to empathize with her delight at the unexpectedness of interspecies connection: “At the end of her garden she had found a friend. … His wildness was a gift. … He was an escape artist, she thought admiringly. Maybe he could free her too.”
I love this novel for what it has to say about trespass, ownership and belonging. Whose space is this, really, and where do our loyalties lie? Cocozza sets up such intriguing contradictions between the domestic and the savage, the humdrum and the unpredictable. The encounter with the Other is clarifying, even salvific, and allows Mary to finally make her way back to herself. There’s something gently magical about the way the perspective occasionally shifts to give the fox’s backstory and impressions as a neologism-rich stream (“Come fresh to stalk around the human Female with sly feet and rippety eyes. Spruckling toadsome”). Memorable lines abound, and a chapter set at the neighbors’ barbecue is brilliant, as are the final three chapters, in which Mary holes up in her house in anticipation of a siege.
As much as this is about a summer of enchantment and literal brushes with urban wildlife, it’s also about women’s lives: loneliness, choices we make and patterns we get stuck in, and those unlooked-for experiences that might just liberate us. The character Mary is my near contemporary, so I could relate to her sense of being stuck personally and professionally, and also of feeling damned if you do, damned if you don’t regarding having children. “Some part of her was made for a bigger, wilder, freer life.” One of my favorite books of 2017 so far.
Originally published with images on my blog, Bookish Beck.
April 21, 2017
This is not a light and whimsical tale of a woman’s relationship with a friendly fox, but much more of a dark and mentally consuming story, the hint of a foreboding fairy tale, if you like, of a desperately lonely woman, who seems no longer able to truly connect with those humans around her, but gradually develops a relationship with a fox that firstly enters her garden, and gradually her heart, mind and soul.
I imagine many readers will view Mary as somewhat unhinged, so it is perhaps slightly concerning how much of myself I saw in her. I experience isolation on a regular basis, I’m alone most of the day, as I work from home, my husband goes away for months on end with the military, I live hundreds of miles away from most of my family and friends, I live in the country and most days my only companion is my gorgeous 14 year old dog, Milo. I too talk to spiders, and explain to visitors that the reason there are cobwebs around the house is that I won’t destroy them while a spider in living in one. I live in harmony with all spiders in my house, much to the horror of some visitors who are terrified of them. I feel more closely connected to nature and animals than I do other humans, so I understood how Mary’s friendship developed with the fox.
This book left me feeling surprisingly emotional at the end and has been playing on my mind all day. I still keep trying to work out which parts of the story were in fact real or imagined in Mary’s mind. As deep emotions and complex thoughts are human traits, I suppose in a somewhat unusual and bizarre way, this book reminded me what it is to be human.
I’m torn on how to rate this book. For excitement of pace and plot it’s probably around 3 stars. For imagination, originality and for how it has left me feeling, then I would definitely award it 5 stars. This is a book that some people will absolutely love, while others will either feel bored or just find it far too weird for their minds to cope with.
I imagine many readers will view Mary as somewhat unhinged, so it is perhaps slightly concerning how much of myself I saw in her. I experience isolation on a regular basis, I’m alone most of the day, as I work from home, my husband goes away for months on end with the military, I live hundreds of miles away from most of my family and friends, I live in the country and most days my only companion is my gorgeous 14 year old dog, Milo. I too talk to spiders, and explain to visitors that the reason there are cobwebs around the house is that I won’t destroy them while a spider in living in one. I live in harmony with all spiders in my house, much to the horror of some visitors who are terrified of them. I feel more closely connected to nature and animals than I do other humans, so I understood how Mary’s friendship developed with the fox.
This book left me feeling surprisingly emotional at the end and has been playing on my mind all day. I still keep trying to work out which parts of the story were in fact real or imagined in Mary’s mind. As deep emotions and complex thoughts are human traits, I suppose in a somewhat unusual and bizarre way, this book reminded me what it is to be human.
I’m torn on how to rate this book. For excitement of pace and plot it’s probably around 3 stars. For imagination, originality and for how it has left me feeling, then I would definitely award it 5 stars. This is a book that some people will absolutely love, while others will either feel bored or just find it far too weird for their minds to cope with.
May 8, 2018
Poor guy was tired with avoiding the traps, the emotional weight of the evening. She understood that, but it troubled her, this quietness. There were occasions when she could hear his thoughts as clear as day, and others where she longed to hear them but he may as well have been switched to mute. With a sinking feeling, it occurred to Mary that the closeness of his thoughts to hers might depend on her own sense of their proximity at any given time. For all that they were embarking on a serious advancement of their relationship, she felt foiled by his remoteness. In her worst moments she wondered whether it wasn’t her need powering him.
I read this book due to its shortlisting for the Desmond Elliot prize for first novels – a prize whose winners in the last four years have included the very impressive trio of A Girl Is a Half-formed Thing, The Glorious Heresies and Golden Hill and whose other shortlisted entries this year are the brilliant We That Are Young (also shortlisted for the Republic of Consciousness Prize) and the ubiquitous Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine. The author is a feature writer for the Guardian.
For a book that is heavy on metaphor/simile (at both a meta and micro level) the above quote could be assumed to being with a metaphor – but in fact it is not.
The traps that the “poor guy”, whose relationship with Mary is advancing, has spent the evening avoiding are real traps – not man traps but fox traps, and not ones he accidentally is caught by but ones specifically set to catch him.
Because this “guy” is in fact a fox, and the advancement of the relationship is that Mary, an HR worker (the H being key given it stands for human) has asked him (a fox) to move in with her, having resisted the manipulative attempts of her ex-boyfriend to rekindle their relationship.
A relationship which: Mary first realises is becoming serious when in a dream fantasy of sex with her ex, his body and face disolve and turn into the fox; which makes Mary repeatedly remark on the scent of the foxes emissions; and one she marks at a crucial point by squatting on the floor to leave the fox a marker of her own.
Although Mary is the main third party protagonist of the book – the fox (who Mary can never quite decide what to name) also features as an occasional protagonist in what can only be described as a vulpine take on Eimaar McBride –a kind of Fox is a Quarter-Formed Thing.
Just jump up. Forepaws on. Push over. Flap flaps. Out it all comes.. Animals, fish, fruit, toys, bones. The sun grows it hot and squelch.
At this point I suspect you may be already mentally deleting this book from your TBR pile, and I have to say at points, including some of those referenced above I had to channel my inner Magnus Magnusson principles of reading, to continue ……..
And yet, there is actually quite a lot to like in this book.
Firstly the author is clearly a talented writer – nicely observant both of urban nature and of human society. Just as an example of the latter I really enjoyed some of her observations on children/parenting – for example:
Mary clocked the ‘we’ and wondered … why parents chose to live so much in their children’s lives that they gatecrashed the first person
Secondly there is a real depth to Mary and her relationship with her-ex Mark, the influences on her and her relationships of her distant mother, the way Mark won her affection by putting her needs first and giving her the attention and love she had craved all her life, but then the way this turned into possession and manipulation as Mary based her life around giving Mark what he needed, only for it to end with verbal and physical violence on both sides as (again due to her relationship with her own mother) she refused to give him the one thing he really wanted – a child.
Thirdly, alongside the odd but pivotal relationship with the fox, Mary also strikes a strong relationship with Flora, the baby of her neighbours (the mother of whom is clearly suffering from some form of post-partum depression) – just as with the fox being able to project on to the non-speaking Flora her own feelings and thoughts and imagine the presence of what she has been missing from her two main relationships with her mother and with Mark.
Fourthly the book has some subtlety in its limited plot development – the book opens with Mary finding Flora as a gift on her own doorstep, but later when the incident occurs it is left ambiguous who put Flora there – her mother, Mary herself, the fox (which we kind of assume early on in the book), even Mark (the only person really who – temporarily at least - gains from the incident) – ambiguous both to us and to those in the book, including at least two of the potential perpetrators.
Fifthly and as alluded to in my opening – this book is extremely metaphorical: around the boundary and intersection between human urban society and the wild; about generational consequences; about isolation and the need to belong (shades here of course of “Eleanor Oliphant”; about territory, boundaries and ownership.
However perhaps disappointingly the book fails somewhat at the end or rather – turning from its increasing psychological breakdown of Mary and those around her – to a positive and clichéd ending as she reflects on how the fox has left her, but left her in a much better place
So overall a very interesting book – one I could easily have given a variety or other ratings – my final rating being a mix of 2 (or even 1*) and 4* elements.
April 5, 2017
I received a copy of this book from Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.
Weird, unsettling and at times a little unpleasant - but a thoroughly novel idea, nonetheless.
Gosh. What a hard book to review! On the one hand, I wanted to give it 5* for being such an unusual, brutal examination of a woman mentally unravelling. On the other hand, I wanted to give it 1* for being borderline distasteful and lacking the oomph required to make me want to read on. So in the end, I settled for somewhere around the middle - I'd say a 3-3.5*!
Firstly, let's start with the basic premise. Mary, we soon realise, is a woman on the edge. She and her husband have split, she lives alone, and there's something 'off' about her. She starts noticing a fox in the garden, then befriends it. Yes, it really is that odd.
What's great about this novel is the slow descent of Mary - it was very convincingly written indeed. Throughout the book, she's so fragile, yet so completely unaware of the fact that she's coming apart at the seams, and that's conveyed brilliantly. The transition from 'human' to 'wild thing' is also written perfectly - and by the end, I really did feel for her.
The best part of the book was undoubtedly the neighbour's BBQ- just perfectly written, this human gathering, falling apart into chaos. Beautifully done - and the book's worth reading for that scene alone.
Now for the not so good. This might just be me, but I found her relationship with the fox downright creepy. As a reader, I like to be challenged - but this borderline bestiality made me feel somewhat queasy, especially as the fox seemed complicit in it (which wouldn't happen in real life!). Also, there was a lot of focus on the 'tang' of the fox, of his 'pungent' odour etc. I know exactly what the author was talking about - foxes do have a very distinctive smell, but I disliked this constant, almost sexual repetition of the fox leaving his scent. Again, vaguely stomach-churning.
The book also took a while to get going, which nearly caused me to abandon it a few times. It felt a little like an idea for a short story, which had been dragged out to fill a full-length book. I bet as a short story it really would have packed a wallop of a punch, though!
It's a memorable book - and an entirely fresh idea, which is always a joy to see. I just wish the unsettling nature of the novel hadn't been conveyed through this slightly repulsive relationship between a male fox and female human. Perhaps it's just me though, after all - books are entirely subjective. Paula Cocozza clearly can write really well, and I feel bad for giving the book a bit of a bashing - I'd like to emphasise, my comments are no reflection on her clear ability to write beautifully. I'll keep an eye out for books written by her in the future!
Weird, unsettling and at times a little unpleasant - but a thoroughly novel idea, nonetheless.
Gosh. What a hard book to review! On the one hand, I wanted to give it 5* for being such an unusual, brutal examination of a woman mentally unravelling. On the other hand, I wanted to give it 1* for being borderline distasteful and lacking the oomph required to make me want to read on. So in the end, I settled for somewhere around the middle - I'd say a 3-3.5*!
Firstly, let's start with the basic premise. Mary, we soon realise, is a woman on the edge. She and her husband have split, she lives alone, and there's something 'off' about her. She starts noticing a fox in the garden, then befriends it. Yes, it really is that odd.
What's great about this novel is the slow descent of Mary - it was very convincingly written indeed. Throughout the book, she's so fragile, yet so completely unaware of the fact that she's coming apart at the seams, and that's conveyed brilliantly. The transition from 'human' to 'wild thing' is also written perfectly - and by the end, I really did feel for her.
The best part of the book was undoubtedly the neighbour's BBQ- just perfectly written, this human gathering, falling apart into chaos. Beautifully done - and the book's worth reading for that scene alone.
Now for the not so good. This might just be me, but I found her relationship with the fox downright creepy. As a reader, I like to be challenged - but this borderline bestiality made me feel somewhat queasy, especially as the fox seemed complicit in it (which wouldn't happen in real life!). Also, there was a lot of focus on the 'tang' of the fox, of his 'pungent' odour etc. I know exactly what the author was talking about - foxes do have a very distinctive smell, but I disliked this constant, almost sexual repetition of the fox leaving his scent. Again, vaguely stomach-churning.
The book also took a while to get going, which nearly caused me to abandon it a few times. It felt a little like an idea for a short story, which had been dragged out to fill a full-length book. I bet as a short story it really would have packed a wallop of a punch, though!
It's a memorable book - and an entirely fresh idea, which is always a joy to see. I just wish the unsettling nature of the novel hadn't been conveyed through this slightly repulsive relationship between a male fox and female human. Perhaps it's just me though, after all - books are entirely subjective. Paula Cocozza clearly can write really well, and I feel bad for giving the book a bit of a bashing - I'd like to emphasise, my comments are no reflection on her clear ability to write beautifully. I'll keep an eye out for books written by her in the future!
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
August 16, 2019
Oh dear. Bizarre is not necessarily equivalent to interesting. Here is the novel's premise: a young woman, Mary Green, breaks up with her boyfriend of five years. The relationship has seen considerable strain; numerous heated arguments have been fought over Mary’s failure to commit and her ambivalence about having children. She buys out her partner’s share of the house they had purchased together. Mary then develops a relationship, bordering on romantic, with a fox that enters the backyard. Soon, she is attempting to control, "civilize" and protect the animal in the very way she resented her boyfriend doing with her. I cringed when the protagonist began to address the creature as "darling" and felt sorry for the animal’s being trapped in Cocozza's novel. No fox deserved that fate.
This too precious and often silly novel lumbers towards the literary. It is very tedious. It is possible that How to be Human might have made a more successful short story than a novel, but maybe only because it would have ended sooner. The book lurches along, straining under an ever-growing weight of sensory details. I cannot tell you how fed up I got reading about the puffs of musk that were emitted (seemingly endlessly) from the fox's rear.
In the end, I could only wonder why this increasingly deranged woman hadn’t simply got a dog.
This too precious and often silly novel lumbers towards the literary. It is very tedious. It is possible that How to be Human might have made a more successful short story than a novel, but maybe only because it would have ended sooner. The book lurches along, straining under an ever-growing weight of sensory details. I cannot tell you how fed up I got reading about the puffs of musk that were emitted (seemingly endlessly) from the fox's rear.
In the end, I could only wonder why this increasingly deranged woman hadn’t simply got a dog.
October 18, 2018
A foundling, a shape-shifting wild animal and an urban wilderness make up the fairy tale elements of a modern fable – or is it? In this dreamlike blurring of everyday reality and the supernatural, we follow the human protagonist as she forges an unusual relationship with a visiting fox, while the vivid imagery lends an unsettling aura of enchantment, and we begin to fear for her sanity.
Reviewed for Whichbook.net
Reviewed for Whichbook.net
August 3, 2017
Have you ever spoken to your pets, convinced that they really, and I mean REALLY understand you? Pets do not judge, they do not care if you are in your sweatpants with no makeup and they always show unconditional love.
So, Mary verbalising her problems to a fox is no different than people talking to their pets however towards the end the author really pushed the line of acceptability and the reading experience became a bit unpleasant.
Mary is newly single, in danger of losing her job, indifferent to housekeeping, with a tolerance of her neighbours whose baby she can hear crying through the walls. Her life seems at the verge of crumbling until she spots a fox snoozing in her garden.
She has always been a solitary child and grew up as a very lonely and submissive woman, allowing life to push her any way it wants.
Initially Mary’s unhealthy fascination with the fox acts as a catalyst to see her life and failed relationship with Mark through new eyes. Throughout most of the book I could clearly see how Mary has grown stronger in her belief in herself. But then the author chose to let Mary slide deeper into delusion and all that good work showing a slightly unhinged woman finding a foothold in her life, started falling away. What a pity, I really enjoyed the book up to the 60% mark.
I would have liked the understand the dynamics between Mary and Mark better as their failed relationship is one of the driving forces behind Mary’s delusions. Things are hinted at but never explored.
I did enjoy the fox’s narration included here and there. Almost like a stream of consciousness which I found unique and very well done.
I think the writing was fine but this is not a book I will actively recommend.
ARC Netgalley
So, Mary verbalising her problems to a fox is no different than people talking to their pets however towards the end the author really pushed the line of acceptability and the reading experience became a bit unpleasant.
Mary is newly single, in danger of losing her job, indifferent to housekeeping, with a tolerance of her neighbours whose baby she can hear crying through the walls. Her life seems at the verge of crumbling until she spots a fox snoozing in her garden.
She has always been a solitary child and grew up as a very lonely and submissive woman, allowing life to push her any way it wants.
Initially Mary’s unhealthy fascination with the fox acts as a catalyst to see her life and failed relationship with Mark through new eyes. Throughout most of the book I could clearly see how Mary has grown stronger in her belief in herself. But then the author chose to let Mary slide deeper into delusion and all that good work showing a slightly unhinged woman finding a foothold in her life, started falling away. What a pity, I really enjoyed the book up to the 60% mark.
I would have liked the understand the dynamics between Mary and Mark better as their failed relationship is one of the driving forces behind Mary’s delusions. Things are hinted at but never explored.
I did enjoy the fox’s narration included here and there. Almost like a stream of consciousness which I found unique and very well done.
I think the writing was fine but this is not a book I will actively recommend.
ARC Netgalley
July 14, 2017
This was such a strange, oddly mesmerizing read, I'm honestly not even sure how to describe it.
How to Be Human is about moving on after a certain chapter in your life comes to an end and learning how to be your own person. It's about finding new purpose and opening your heart to new, unexpected things and experiences. It's about life in general, and the many curveballs it sometimes throws at us. And while these topics have been explored over and over again in fiction, How To Be Human is written in a way that feels completely unique and fresh.
There were passages in this book that resonated deeply with me. I was taken aback by how much I was relating to the main character and everything she was going through, as well as her insightful thoughts on relationships, suburban living, motherhood and friendships.
The writing style was very pleasant, for the lack of a different word. It flowed gently and with amazing fluidity. The short passages written from the fox point of view were odd and almost poetic in both the form and the message. (and if you're wondering, there were only a few of them and they were brief enough not to disrupt the story flow).
I don't know how I feel about the ending. It was definitely a perfect ending for this particular story, but I wanted more answers, more closure. It was all there for the taking, but it wasn't spelled out clearly, and it left me wondering about certain things. Not a bad thing at all, just not something I'm used to.
I'm not sure what more I can say about this book, it's definitely one that is hard to review. I picked it up because the synopsis sounded intriguing and the suburban English setting (coexisting closely with the beautiful wildlife) pulled me in. I found this book completely enthralling, fascinating and almost magical. I can't put my finger on what specifically made this book work for me, but it was a very enriching reading experience for me and I'll definitely be following Paula Cocozza's carrier closely.
How to Be Human is about moving on after a certain chapter in your life comes to an end and learning how to be your own person. It's about finding new purpose and opening your heart to new, unexpected things and experiences. It's about life in general, and the many curveballs it sometimes throws at us. And while these topics have been explored over and over again in fiction, How To Be Human is written in a way that feels completely unique and fresh.
There were passages in this book that resonated deeply with me. I was taken aback by how much I was relating to the main character and everything she was going through, as well as her insightful thoughts on relationships, suburban living, motherhood and friendships.
The writing style was very pleasant, for the lack of a different word. It flowed gently and with amazing fluidity. The short passages written from the fox point of view were odd and almost poetic in both the form and the message. (and if you're wondering, there were only a few of them and they were brief enough not to disrupt the story flow).
I don't know how I feel about the ending. It was definitely a perfect ending for this particular story, but I wanted more answers, more closure. It was all there for the taking, but it wasn't spelled out clearly, and it left me wondering about certain things. Not a bad thing at all, just not something I'm used to.
I'm not sure what more I can say about this book, it's definitely one that is hard to review. I picked it up because the synopsis sounded intriguing and the suburban English setting (coexisting closely with the beautiful wildlife) pulled me in. I found this book completely enthralling, fascinating and almost magical. I can't put my finger on what specifically made this book work for me, but it was a very enriching reading experience for me and I'll definitely be following Paula Cocozza's carrier closely.
January 2, 2021
You can watch my review here: https://youtu.be/FanbtcIXkwY or read it here: https://lifehasafunnywayofsneakingupo...
How to be Human the debut novel from Paula Cocozza skirts the line between magical and maudlin. With all the beautiful, fairy-esque description and it's way of turning things on their heads it reminded me very much of Rebecca Gransden's Anemogram and Peter S Beagle's Summerlong.
Mary is the main character in this novel. Recently separated from her long term boyfriend Mark, she is living alone in their old house with half of their belongings. It's a sad state of affairs and one that many of us can identify with. Mary is lonely, she hates her job and her boss, she wants to do a masters degree but can't find the time or motivation despite having nothing else to occupy her time. She has no friends and her father lives in Spain and her mother in Devon both with their new partners. Her neighbours have their own marital problems and a newborn to contend with. As far as they are concerned Mary is only good for babysitting duty. But then she finds The Fox, or maybe he finds her.
The Fox becomes a part of Mary's life in a way which Goodreads blurb describes as 'unseemly'. But for me it wasn't that at all. It was weird in parts (think Fox at the dinner table eating frittata), but overall it was magical in a way that didn't involve wands.
Mary and The Fox strike up a friendship, as her friends and neighbours set out to exterminate him, she finds a purpose in protecting him. One which she needs more than even she knows. Slowly as her relationship with The Fox grows, so does her own personal strength.
This is not as it first seems about a crazy woman befriending a Fox. It is a novel of self discovery, of pain and intense, complicating emotions which really highlight as the title suggests How to be Human.
How to be Human the debut novel from Paula Cocozza skirts the line between magical and maudlin. With all the beautiful, fairy-esque description and it's way of turning things on their heads it reminded me very much of Rebecca Gransden's Anemogram and Peter S Beagle's Summerlong.
Mary is the main character in this novel. Recently separated from her long term boyfriend Mark, she is living alone in their old house with half of their belongings. It's a sad state of affairs and one that many of us can identify with. Mary is lonely, she hates her job and her boss, she wants to do a masters degree but can't find the time or motivation despite having nothing else to occupy her time. She has no friends and her father lives in Spain and her mother in Devon both with their new partners. Her neighbours have their own marital problems and a newborn to contend with. As far as they are concerned Mary is only good for babysitting duty. But then she finds The Fox, or maybe he finds her.
The Fox becomes a part of Mary's life in a way which Goodreads blurb describes as 'unseemly'. But for me it wasn't that at all. It was weird in parts (think Fox at the dinner table eating frittata), but overall it was magical in a way that didn't involve wands.
Mary and The Fox strike up a friendship, as her friends and neighbours set out to exterminate him, she finds a purpose in protecting him. One which she needs more than even she knows. Slowly as her relationship with The Fox grows, so does her own personal strength.
This is not as it first seems about a crazy woman befriending a Fox. It is a novel of self discovery, of pain and intense, complicating emotions which really highlight as the title suggests How to be Human.
July 20, 2017
A beautifully restless and atmospheric read, How to Be Human is quite the ride. This debut is a portrait of one woman's bright descent as she journeys to find answers and control in her life.
How to Be Human finds the protagonist, Mary, at a crucial time. Stuck with a lackluster job and a strong absence of desire to have children (much to her pushy ex-fiancé's dismay), all she has is the house she fought for. When a neighborhood fox begins delivering presents, she begins to see an exciting and unique alternative. We catch glimpses of what Mary has struggled with in the past and recent present. Between a distant loveless mother and her violent ex who is now pushing his way back in her life under the guise of assistance, Mary seeks to find her way through adversity and towards autonomy. As Mary evolved I found myself highlighting more and more passages - I felt so close and faraway from her at once, in a way that is hard for me to review here.
As the novel deepens, Mary finds comfort in wordless creatures. Her fox of course, but more surprisingly (to her as well), the next door neighbor's infant daughter. It's through these two channels that she begins to discover her place in the world, and on her own. While we do get lovely glimpses of the fox's perspective, I almost wish we were left without it. It's rare that I feel so immersed in a protagonist's headspace, and these moments took me out of it.
I'm struggling to review How to Be Human, a novel so original and strange. I can't wait to see what Cocozza continues to write!
How to Be Human finds the protagonist, Mary, at a crucial time. Stuck with a lackluster job and a strong absence of desire to have children (much to her pushy ex-fiancé's dismay), all she has is the house she fought for. When a neighborhood fox begins delivering presents, she begins to see an exciting and unique alternative. We catch glimpses of what Mary has struggled with in the past and recent present. Between a distant loveless mother and her violent ex who is now pushing his way back in her life under the guise of assistance, Mary seeks to find her way through adversity and towards autonomy. As Mary evolved I found myself highlighting more and more passages - I felt so close and faraway from her at once, in a way that is hard for me to review here.
As the novel deepens, Mary finds comfort in wordless creatures. Her fox of course, but more surprisingly (to her as well), the next door neighbor's infant daughter. It's through these two channels that she begins to discover her place in the world, and on her own. While we do get lovely glimpses of the fox's perspective, I almost wish we were left without it. It's rare that I feel so immersed in a protagonist's headspace, and these moments took me out of it.
I'm struggling to review How to Be Human, a novel so original and strange. I can't wait to see what Cocozza continues to write!
December 10, 2017
The synopsis for this book is so unusual it pulled me straight in.
Marys life is in utter turmoil when she notices a fox keeps visiting her garden and unusually he isn't scared of her. Emotionally fraught and at her lowest she thinks she's been chosen by him to be helped as he seems to want to stick around and they build up an usual friendship as he delivers her amusing random gifts.
As Marys mental health deteriorates I became wary if the fox was real or a figure of her imagination.
This isn't a book you read where you will always feel comfortable, it will leave you pondering long after you have put it down. The tale is so unique, dark and thought provoking it's just so wacky and the author plays your emotions well with such talent.
My thanks go to the author, publishers and Netgalley for this arc in return for a honest review.
Marys life is in utter turmoil when she notices a fox keeps visiting her garden and unusually he isn't scared of her. Emotionally fraught and at her lowest she thinks she's been chosen by him to be helped as he seems to want to stick around and they build up an usual friendship as he delivers her amusing random gifts.
As Marys mental health deteriorates I became wary if the fox was real or a figure of her imagination.
This isn't a book you read where you will always feel comfortable, it will leave you pondering long after you have put it down. The tale is so unique, dark and thought provoking it's just so wacky and the author plays your emotions well with such talent.
My thanks go to the author, publishers and Netgalley for this arc in return for a honest review.
July 9, 2018
This was such a strange and oddly mesmerizing reading experience that I'm not sure how to describe it. "How To Be Human" definitely is one of the weirdest but most thought-provoking books I've ever read. Definitely a storm of emotions.
The story begins with a magical encounter and, as most magical things in literature, there are dark edges behind every bright corner. There is a couple of hidden meanings and unanswered questions that I wanted to have answers for. The plot was a combination of Fantasy and Magical Realism, so if you are into something like that, you'll probably like this book. Some plot points could be predictable, but it didn't lessen my enthusiasm to find out what happens.
This is a story about moving on after a certain chapter in your life comes to an end and learning how to be your own person. It's about finding a new purpose, even after all lights seem to be gone. It's about opening your heart to new, unexpected things and experiences. It's about life in general and the many curveballs it often throws at us. The story focuses on familiar topics that have been explored over and over again in Fiction, but "How To Be Human" feels unique and fresh in a way that I really loved.
There were passages in the book that resonated deeply with me. I was taken aback by how much I was relating to the main character and everything she was going through, as well as her wise and insightful thoughts on relationships, motherhood, and friendships. Even though many things were different, our thoughts were alike in various points.
As far as the characters and the writing style go, I was pleasantly surprised with how much I liked them. There is magical realism in the story, so some of the characters aren't what you could call "real", but let me assure you that they are unique and memorable. The writing style was beautiful, for the lack of a better word. It flowed gently and with amazing fluidity. The short passages written from the fox's point of view were odd and almost poetic in both the form and the message. I loved them, though. And if you are worried now, there were only a few of them. Haha, don't be alarmed.
Coming to the end of this review, I want to mention that I was particularly satisfied with the ending. It was a very appropriate ending for this type of story. Yes, I wanted a couple of more answers, I'm not going to lie, but the closure was there nonetheless. Some things are best left to the imagination and this was a book that you need to ponder over long after you've finished it.
All in all, it was definitely a positive reading experience for me. Sorry for being kind of vague and abstract, but I don't know what else I could say about this book. I'm just going to mention that the suburban English setting gave a thrilling, ethereal and magical aura to the whole story. I can't put my finger on what specifically made this book work for me, as it was a combination of many things, sometimes even contradictory to each other, but I'll definitely be following Paula Cocozza's future works carefully. Let me know your thoughts!
The story begins with a magical encounter and, as most magical things in literature, there are dark edges behind every bright corner. There is a couple of hidden meanings and unanswered questions that I wanted to have answers for. The plot was a combination of Fantasy and Magical Realism, so if you are into something like that, you'll probably like this book. Some plot points could be predictable, but it didn't lessen my enthusiasm to find out what happens.
This is a story about moving on after a certain chapter in your life comes to an end and learning how to be your own person. It's about finding a new purpose, even after all lights seem to be gone. It's about opening your heart to new, unexpected things and experiences. It's about life in general and the many curveballs it often throws at us. The story focuses on familiar topics that have been explored over and over again in Fiction, but "How To Be Human" feels unique and fresh in a way that I really loved.
There were passages in the book that resonated deeply with me. I was taken aback by how much I was relating to the main character and everything she was going through, as well as her wise and insightful thoughts on relationships, motherhood, and friendships. Even though many things were different, our thoughts were alike in various points.
As far as the characters and the writing style go, I was pleasantly surprised with how much I liked them. There is magical realism in the story, so some of the characters aren't what you could call "real", but let me assure you that they are unique and memorable. The writing style was beautiful, for the lack of a better word. It flowed gently and with amazing fluidity. The short passages written from the fox's point of view were odd and almost poetic in both the form and the message. I loved them, though. And if you are worried now, there were only a few of them. Haha, don't be alarmed.
Coming to the end of this review, I want to mention that I was particularly satisfied with the ending. It was a very appropriate ending for this type of story. Yes, I wanted a couple of more answers, I'm not going to lie, but the closure was there nonetheless. Some things are best left to the imagination and this was a book that you need to ponder over long after you've finished it.
All in all, it was definitely a positive reading experience for me. Sorry for being kind of vague and abstract, but I don't know what else I could say about this book. I'm just going to mention that the suburban English setting gave a thrilling, ethereal and magical aura to the whole story. I can't put my finger on what specifically made this book work for me, as it was a combination of many things, sometimes even contradictory to each other, but I'll definitely be following Paula Cocozza's future works carefully. Let me know your thoughts!
June 18, 2017
This book was not for me, at all. I finished it mostly because I felt guilty about abandoning a book that I just spent 25$ on, and just a liiiittle bit because I needed to know just how far this crazy woman would go with her fox relationship.
Mary is certifiable. She breaks up with her boyfriend of 5+ years, with whom she had an incredibly toxic relationship, over the fact that she can't commit to marriage and children. It starts off with Mary being depressed and unproductive at work. Understandable, given the situation. But then she cranks the crazy up to 11 by deciding that clearly the fox in her backyard wants to be her boyfriend, otherwise why would he leave garbage on her steps? And the insanity unfolds from there.
Now, that premise sounds entertaining at least, right? Nope. Somehow the author managed to take all of this nonsense, and make it a slog to get through. For one, her writing style is all over the place. She starts off with a few sections of weird choppy verse that (I think?) are supposed to be the fox's thoughts (though as the novel wears on it becomes clearer that these are just Mary projecting what she thinks the fox is thinking onto him). But she drops that, and instead has these odd paragraphs about the fox's history and his previous mate, again written as the fox. But then that stops too apart from the occasional half-sentence mixed in with the rest of the novel. I suppose what she was going for was more and more integration between Mary and the fox as their "relationship" grew, but it comes off more as if she forgot how she was structuring the book a third of the way in.
Mary is also the most boring crazy person ever. Everything she says and does is just so matter-of-fact, but to the point of utter blandness. She doesn't seem to be aware of anything going on around her, she exists purely in this little bubble of her house and her fox. It's dull, and doesn't make for interesting reading. Especially given that the subject matter is more than a little uncomfortable at times, it would have been nice to have something to pull me back into the story when it got awkward, but there never was.
Really the only reason this is getting 2 stars and not one from me is because the author deserves some kudos for a) coming up with an original idea (if not a very good one) and b) not resorting to bestiality, which was nice.
Mary is certifiable. She breaks up with her boyfriend of 5+ years, with whom she had an incredibly toxic relationship, over the fact that she can't commit to marriage and children. It starts off with Mary being depressed and unproductive at work. Understandable, given the situation. But then she cranks the crazy up to 11 by deciding that clearly the fox in her backyard wants to be her boyfriend, otherwise why would he leave garbage on her steps? And the insanity unfolds from there.
Now, that premise sounds entertaining at least, right? Nope. Somehow the author managed to take all of this nonsense, and make it a slog to get through. For one, her writing style is all over the place. She starts off with a few sections of weird choppy verse that (I think?) are supposed to be the fox's thoughts (though as the novel wears on it becomes clearer that these are just Mary projecting what she thinks the fox is thinking onto him). But she drops that, and instead has these odd paragraphs about the fox's history and his previous mate, again written as the fox. But then that stops too apart from the occasional half-sentence mixed in with the rest of the novel. I suppose what she was going for was more and more integration between Mary and the fox as their "relationship" grew, but it comes off more as if she forgot how she was structuring the book a third of the way in.
Mary is also the most boring crazy person ever. Everything she says and does is just so matter-of-fact, but to the point of utter blandness. She doesn't seem to be aware of anything going on around her, she exists purely in this little bubble of her house and her fox. It's dull, and doesn't make for interesting reading. Especially given that the subject matter is more than a little uncomfortable at times, it would have been nice to have something to pull me back into the story when it got awkward, but there never was.
Really the only reason this is getting 2 stars and not one from me is because the author deserves some kudos for a) coming up with an original idea (if not a very good one) and b) not resorting to bestiality, which was nice.
May 23, 2017
This is not a novel about how to be human: it's a novel about how to use an animal as a cheap metaphor for making a very middle-class, white, urban life transition. Despite the jacket blurb's claim that Cocozza "shows us that the line between the wilderness and the city is thin, easily transgressed," the protagonist never gets far beyond her too-human self in her sentimentalized, naive fantasy of having an urban fox as a boyfriend.
There are so many wonderful memoirs about human and animal relationships (The Peregrine, The Goshawk, H is for Hawk) and so many powerful novels in this tradition (from Black Beauty and Call of the Wild onward), but Cocozza seems to have remained untouched by any of her predecessors' insights. At times she experiments with a kind of fox prose style as she pretends to show us life from the fox's point of view, but she succeeds only in creating an ungrammatical, pretentious, pointlessly evasive sort of impressionistic poetry that says more about how humans (or one human) think that animals think, rather than how they actually might.
Given the state of things right now, as we live through the Sixth Extinction and the Anthropocene, it seems to me unconscionable that anyone could write about urban wildlife so glibly and so, essentially, nostalgically. Little serious consideration is given to the ethical problems of exterminating pesky urban wildlife, beyond the protagonist's own personal infatuation with one animal and how his loss would affect her. And yet the London sparrow, for centuries a multitudinous, ubiquitous presence in that vast, densely populated city, no longer exists, for causes that scientists have yet to pin down, but that surely are human-related.
Sadly, neither the author nor the protagonist seem to see the essential contradiction between the protagonist's two main desires: having a baby and protecting a fox, as if the expanding near-nine million population of London can possibly accommodate both, especially with the frankly perverse sort of animal-phobic characters that populate this novel. It's impossible for me to imagine anyone catching sight of a fox feeling anything but a sense of wonder, but everyone in this novel besides the protagonist regards them as fearsome beasts, more like dire wolves than the diminutive, three-foot long creatures that scrabble for life at the city's fringes.
If the author wanted a more fitting metaphor for her protagonist's early-mid-life crisis, I think perhaps a quaint old car or fixer-upper in the country might have done, and she might have left the poor foxes alone.
There are so many wonderful memoirs about human and animal relationships (The Peregrine, The Goshawk, H is for Hawk) and so many powerful novels in this tradition (from Black Beauty and Call of the Wild onward), but Cocozza seems to have remained untouched by any of her predecessors' insights. At times she experiments with a kind of fox prose style as she pretends to show us life from the fox's point of view, but she succeeds only in creating an ungrammatical, pretentious, pointlessly evasive sort of impressionistic poetry that says more about how humans (or one human) think that animals think, rather than how they actually might.
Given the state of things right now, as we live through the Sixth Extinction and the Anthropocene, it seems to me unconscionable that anyone could write about urban wildlife so glibly and so, essentially, nostalgically. Little serious consideration is given to the ethical problems of exterminating pesky urban wildlife, beyond the protagonist's own personal infatuation with one animal and how his loss would affect her. And yet the London sparrow, for centuries a multitudinous, ubiquitous presence in that vast, densely populated city, no longer exists, for causes that scientists have yet to pin down, but that surely are human-related.
Sadly, neither the author nor the protagonist seem to see the essential contradiction between the protagonist's two main desires: having a baby and protecting a fox, as if the expanding near-nine million population of London can possibly accommodate both, especially with the frankly perverse sort of animal-phobic characters that populate this novel. It's impossible for me to imagine anyone catching sight of a fox feeling anything but a sense of wonder, but everyone in this novel besides the protagonist regards them as fearsome beasts, more like dire wolves than the diminutive, three-foot long creatures that scrabble for life at the city's fringes.
If the author wanted a more fitting metaphor for her protagonist's early-mid-life crisis, I think perhaps a quaint old car or fixer-upper in the country might have done, and she might have left the poor foxes alone.
February 28, 2017
If Goodreads offered the option to do half-stars, I'd give 3.5 to this book, splitting the difference between the solid 4 it deserves for concept and the 3 it deserves for execution.
The idea behind the book is intriguing. It's a deep exploration into loneliness, into the way the walls we build to protect ourselves can all too easily turn into cages. It's a thesis on whether whether human beings have - and should - overcome our more animal instincts. It's a love song to finding inner strength in unexpected places.
At its core, How to Be Human is a comparison of one woman in two relationships - Mary and Mark, and Mary and the fox. Rather deliberately, the human relationship is so twisted and disturbing that it makes the animal relationship seem normal and healthy by comparison.
It's a passionately introspective character study, and unfortunately it succumbs to one of my biggest pet peeves for stories of this type: the character in question is far too self-aware, throughout the book, of her own shortcomings, drives, and growth. The protagonist, Mary, often opines at length upon her own story, to the point where she blatantly points out metaphors between her feelings and the events happening around her.
Where the book lost the most points for me was in the way it treated Mary and Mark.
Overall, I found this book to be a bold examination of an interesting woman's self-imposed isolation, albeit one that occasionally gets a bit lost in the woods.
The idea behind the book is intriguing. It's a deep exploration into loneliness, into the way the walls we build to protect ourselves can all too easily turn into cages. It's a thesis on whether whether human beings have - and should - overcome our more animal instincts. It's a love song to finding inner strength in unexpected places.
At its core, How to Be Human is a comparison of one woman in two relationships - Mary and Mark, and Mary and the fox. Rather deliberately, the human relationship is so twisted and disturbing that it makes the animal relationship seem normal and healthy by comparison.
It's a passionately introspective character study, and unfortunately it succumbs to one of my biggest pet peeves for stories of this type: the character in question is far too self-aware, throughout the book, of her own shortcomings, drives, and growth. The protagonist, Mary, often opines at length upon her own story, to the point where she blatantly points out metaphors between her feelings and the events happening around her.
Where the book lost the most points for me was in the way it treated Mary and Mark.
Overall, I found this book to be a bold examination of an interesting woman's self-imposed isolation, albeit one that occasionally gets a bit lost in the woods.
May 25, 2017
As much as I enjoy strange novels, especially those that take familiar topics and give them an unusual angle, "How to Be Human" was a bit more than I bargained for in that regard, testing my personal definitions of what uncomfortable and creepy literature is. The novel does a wonderful job at presenting Mary as a convincing character that transcends the typical woman in crisis, even though her backstory - disliking her job, breaking off her engagement, not wanting to have children - is familiar enough to most readers. Even the premise of her finding comfort and a kind of support through a fox is interesting. Where things fall through is in the execution and the way in which this relationship is manifested. The breaking point for me was probably the moment when Mary attends the BBQ and has told people she is seeing someone, answering that he couldn't make it when asked why she came alone. That "someone" is the fox, and it is this development of a kind of romantic tie to the fox that began to test my comfort level. Similarly, readers who might have the same reaction will probably then have their patience further tested by the lengthy descriptions and musings Mary makes of the fox, which is also characteristic of the novel in general. In this regard, I also found "How to be Human" rather dull in places, as it captured what, based on my earlier impressions, is a rather bland English society, regardless of wealth or position. There was just something overall bland about it that raised the question of why I should continue to reading the novel despite all these things. I ended up largely skimming after the halfway mark as a result. "How to Be Human" will find its target audience and interested reader, but I didn't end up being either of those. It was a bit much to handle, and while some passages were captivating, the novel is largely of a wonderful premise being pulled in different directions in the final embodiment they take on.
June 20, 2017
What an interesting and unusual novel this was. First, there’s the writing, which is to die for. Second, there’s the dream-like storyline. The two combined make this a novel readers won’t forget after putting it down the final time. It’s effect is subtle and hallucinatory.
Mary is a little bit nutty. We soon find out why. Mark has left, at her insistence, but still. Unforgivable things were said. There’s the coffee stain on the wall from the final fight that ended it. There’s the hint of trouble at the office, with its implications of threatened termination due to excessive tardiness. Neighbors, Eric and Michelle, and the neighbors’ two children, George and baby Flora, live beyond the conjoining wall of Mary’s house and theirs. Then there’s the fox. The fox lives in the wild open land behind Mary’s townhome, a place of abandoned dressers and thistle. A rare small woods, isolated between housing tracts old and new.
The story’s told almost entirely from Mary’s viewpoint, and she can’t be trusted. She doesn’t even trust herself. Mary hasn’t been able to move on, after her relationship with Mark ended. Mark, who we slowly find out, was not exactly benevolent, and may even have been, shall we say, a tad controlling? A tad quick to encourage Mary’s dependency on him? A bit undermining?
The fox gets his say. I loved the way the author gave him his voice. It’s sensory, and choppy, and it works. Fear for him kept me reading.
An engaging, haunting read, filled with an intangible anxiety cleverly held just out of grasping range. I look forward to reading whatever this author writes next.
Mary is a little bit nutty. We soon find out why. Mark has left, at her insistence, but still. Unforgivable things were said. There’s the coffee stain on the wall from the final fight that ended it. There’s the hint of trouble at the office, with its implications of threatened termination due to excessive tardiness. Neighbors, Eric and Michelle, and the neighbors’ two children, George and baby Flora, live beyond the conjoining wall of Mary’s house and theirs. Then there’s the fox. The fox lives in the wild open land behind Mary’s townhome, a place of abandoned dressers and thistle. A rare small woods, isolated between housing tracts old and new.
The story’s told almost entirely from Mary’s viewpoint, and she can’t be trusted. She doesn’t even trust herself. Mary hasn’t been able to move on, after her relationship with Mark ended. Mark, who we slowly find out, was not exactly benevolent, and may even have been, shall we say, a tad controlling? A tad quick to encourage Mary’s dependency on him? A bit undermining?
The fox gets his say. I loved the way the author gave him his voice. It’s sensory, and choppy, and it works. Fear for him kept me reading.
An engaging, haunting read, filled with an intangible anxiety cleverly held just out of grasping range. I look forward to reading whatever this author writes next.
April 7, 2017
An Urban Pastoral.
In this extraordinary debut, the lives between sanity and safety, obsession and delusion blur in a thrilling exploration of what makes us human. I am impressed with this coruscating, and bright new writer. She graduated from one of the top Universities--East Anglia, where other top writers like Ishiguru, went on to become great writers . She understands exactly how the human mind works, and how we get to be obsessional, and how to eradicate this truly dreadful state.And her main character Mary is enmeshed in this state. And she is also a depressive, explosive and damaged soul. But what really is remarkable is her relationship with a fox she calls Red.This new friend starts to bring Mary various intriguing trophies:A rag doll, a shoe---even a live baby!!
Mary has a history of failed relationships. Mark her ex, becomes a stalker---and a real pest.
For all her pointless and tragic absurdity, she sinks deeper and deeper into a quagmire of compulsive, obsessional behavior, that has tragic consequences. This is not as it seems, or purely about an urban fox. It is about finding herself, a journey of discovery; of deep pain;unsettling emotions that are thrown into disarray. All these culmination in the real art of How to be Human.
A huge thank you to NetGalley and the publisher, for a free ebook, in exchange for a PRAC (Professional Review Advanced Copy) unbiased in any way, and reflecting coruscating glimpses into the mind of an enigmatic bruised and troubled soul. Read this remarkable novel, and you too will know what it is to be truly human.
In this extraordinary debut, the lives between sanity and safety, obsession and delusion blur in a thrilling exploration of what makes us human. I am impressed with this coruscating, and bright new writer. She graduated from one of the top Universities--East Anglia, where other top writers like Ishiguru, went on to become great writers . She understands exactly how the human mind works, and how we get to be obsessional, and how to eradicate this truly dreadful state.And her main character Mary is enmeshed in this state. And she is also a depressive, explosive and damaged soul. But what really is remarkable is her relationship with a fox she calls Red.This new friend starts to bring Mary various intriguing trophies:A rag doll, a shoe---even a live baby!!
Mary has a history of failed relationships. Mark her ex, becomes a stalker---and a real pest.
For all her pointless and tragic absurdity, she sinks deeper and deeper into a quagmire of compulsive, obsessional behavior, that has tragic consequences. This is not as it seems, or purely about an urban fox. It is about finding herself, a journey of discovery; of deep pain;unsettling emotions that are thrown into disarray. All these culmination in the real art of How to be Human.
A huge thank you to NetGalley and the publisher, for a free ebook, in exchange for a PRAC (Professional Review Advanced Copy) unbiased in any way, and reflecting coruscating glimpses into the mind of an enigmatic bruised and troubled soul. Read this remarkable novel, and you too will know what it is to be truly human.
June 26, 2017
reading this felt like having a nervous breakdown
Read
July 19, 2017How To Be Human by Paula Cocozza.
Review by Galen Weitkamp.
Mary is recently divorced, childless yet of childbearing age. But this the reader doesn’t know yet. The first line of the novel, How To Be Human, is, “There was a baby on the back step.” Mary lifts the beautiful bundle and holds her tightly. She does not call the police. She peers out into the garden and remembers three weeks prior when the fox made his first appearance.
“He was lying in the garden. He had chosen an ostentatious spot for a doze...The complacency of his posture struck Mary as a provocation...She understood his show of nonchalance was the disguise for an as yet unarticulated intention...What did he want? He had come to her garden and no one else’s.”
Over the weeks the fox continues to visit Mary. It becomes clear, through Cocozza’s language, that Mary is probably projecting behaviors and intentions onto the fox that don’t actually apply. Then it becomes less clear. Does Fox reciprocate Mary’s interest and attention? What is the nature of this relationship between Fox and Mary? Is Fox learning to be human, or is Mary?
It is through the lens of this affair that Mary confronts the emotional strictures of her other relationships: her failed marriage with Mark and the strained bond with her mother.
Paula Coccozza’s narrative is arresting and full of metaphor. Her prose is at times almost poetic. She is especially adept at concisely conveying subtle nuances and shifts in the mood and the sensibilities of her characters.
Review by Galen Weitkamp.
Mary is recently divorced, childless yet of childbearing age. But this the reader doesn’t know yet. The first line of the novel, How To Be Human, is, “There was a baby on the back step.” Mary lifts the beautiful bundle and holds her tightly. She does not call the police. She peers out into the garden and remembers three weeks prior when the fox made his first appearance.
“He was lying in the garden. He had chosen an ostentatious spot for a doze...The complacency of his posture struck Mary as a provocation...She understood his show of nonchalance was the disguise for an as yet unarticulated intention...What did he want? He had come to her garden and no one else’s.”
Over the weeks the fox continues to visit Mary. It becomes clear, through Cocozza’s language, that Mary is probably projecting behaviors and intentions onto the fox that don’t actually apply. Then it becomes less clear. Does Fox reciprocate Mary’s interest and attention? What is the nature of this relationship between Fox and Mary? Is Fox learning to be human, or is Mary?
It is through the lens of this affair that Mary confronts the emotional strictures of her other relationships: her failed marriage with Mark and the strained bond with her mother.
Paula Coccozza’s narrative is arresting and full of metaphor. Her prose is at times almost poetic. She is especially adept at concisely conveying subtle nuances and shifts in the mood and the sensibilities of her characters.
September 5, 2019
This book made me feel very uncomfortable. But not in a bad way. The kind of uncomfortable that makes you squirm, but otherwise leaves you wanting to feel this way, just for a little longer because the feeling is so unique. I don't know how to describe this book, but I can see it as one woman's descent into madness, taking her abusive ex-husband, overly sanctimonious neighbours, and her life with it. And... She falls in love with a fox. Yeah. The fox makes it all uncomfortable, because the fox, being a keen, smart animal, seeks out the comfort of Mary, and she seeks his.
But in a weird, twisted, she is definitely in a breakdown way. In the end, the only character in the book who isn't someone you wouldn't be friends with is the fox. Even the side characters are a little off. Nobody here is quite human, but ironically, the fox is.
Perhaps that is what makes me feel most uncomfortable about this book.
But in a weird, twisted, she is definitely in a breakdown way. In the end, the only character in the book who isn't someone you wouldn't be friends with is the fox. Even the side characters are a little off. Nobody here is quite human, but ironically, the fox is.
Perhaps that is what makes me feel most uncomfortable about this book.
September 13, 2022
to mialo taki potencjal, zwlaszcza na koncowke (!) a wyszlo cos tak slabego ze szkoda gadac. autorka ma bardzo interesujacy i wciagajacy styl pisania ale co z tego skoro historia jest bez sensu
June 5, 2017
This is a dull book is about a stupid, dreary woman with contemptible desires. She lives somewhere near London and wants a baby, but she didn't want one soon enough for her insane boyfriend, who leaves/doesn't leave her.
The book has a lot of stuff about how magical and wonderful procreation is, which made me want to vomit. Lady in book seems undeterred by her disgusting environment and the obvious dysfunction of the family sharing a backyard with her.
The transformation of the main character doesn't go far enough. It would have been better to give Mary a scrap of introversion so she could see the truth of what her situation was, and perhaps then grow a spine?
The book has a lot of stuff about how magical and wonderful procreation is, which made me want to vomit. Lady in book seems undeterred by her disgusting environment and the obvious dysfunction of the family sharing a backyard with her.
The transformation of the main character doesn't go far enough. It would have been better to give Mary a scrap of introversion so she could see the truth of what her situation was, and perhaps then grow a spine?
January 16, 2019
This was one of the most disturbing books I’ve ever read, but I kinda enjoyed it? I’m not really sure how I feel about it to be honest.
June 25, 2017
Meh. Imaginative story, but it just wasn't for me.
May 7, 2017
A strange, disturbing book, about one woman's obsession with a fox. It opens when the protagonist finds a baby on her doorstep. She becomes convinced a fox lurking in her garden has given it to her. Soon she becomes enraptured, and even attracted to, the fox or the idea of the fox. Her unraveling forms the progression of the book.
The fox is an interesting animal for the author to have the heroine obsess over. Its use in fables lends a fabulistic or fable-like meaning to this story, which is ultimately about the precariousness of sanity and the confusing, sometimes disturbing, nature of modern relationships.
The book is well-written, and Mary's slow progression away from reality very well described.
The sexual element here to the relationship between Mary and the fox (at least from her point of view) is one of the disturbing elements that left a bad taste in my mouth. Part of the author's point, but not enjoyable, for me.
Thank you to the author and publisher for a review copy.
The fox is an interesting animal for the author to have the heroine obsess over. Its use in fables lends a fabulistic or fable-like meaning to this story, which is ultimately about the precariousness of sanity and the confusing, sometimes disturbing, nature of modern relationships.
The book is well-written, and Mary's slow progression away from reality very well described.
The sexual element here to the relationship between Mary and the fox (at least from her point of view) is one of the disturbing elements that left a bad taste in my mouth. Part of the author's point, but not enjoyable, for me.
Thank you to the author and publisher for a review copy.
June 17, 2017
What a very strange book this is! On the one hand a serious attempt to describe a woman's unravelling after the break up of a five year relationship, on the other a really weird account of her relationship with a fox that visits her garden. I don't dispute that you can encourage foxes and other wildlife by feeding them or even just by showing that you mean them no harm and initially the storyline is plausible. However after some really slow parts the novel suddenly descends into farce and is quite uncomfortable to read.
I don't dispute the author's ability but I have to admit to skip reading parts, particularly the fox sections, in order to finish it.
My thanks to Netgalley for this copy but it wasn't for me.
I don't dispute the author's ability but I have to admit to skip reading parts, particularly the fox sections, in order to finish it.
My thanks to Netgalley for this copy but it wasn't for me.
June 17, 2017
Just not the book for me, never really grasped where the author was trying to take me with this character.
September 24, 2018
I loved this book. I loved the fragility of the main character. And I loved how her re-connection to nature via the fox served to show how disconnected we all are: from the earth, from our neighbors, even from ourselves. The idea of something wild roaming the streets and gardens of London, despite its best efforts to put a stop to such goings-on, is appealing to the wildness left in my own soul.
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