Jim Brown reviewed Eradication: A Fable
a fable for an invasive species
This book is really well written. I bought it because the book design was incredible and because it was billed as a "fable." It did not disappoint. Here's a passage in which the protagonist plays jazz on an instrument he fashioned from a goat horn. His audience for this performance is a goat who he has named Harmony:
"The first time Adi played 'Stella by Starlight,' cycling through his old club and crib-side standards, Harmony kept silent. But an hour later, when he played it again under a sky so star-spattered and cosmos-smeared that the song seemed not just befitting but ordained - this time Harmony joined in, rising to her hooves and bleating so gently and forlornly that after a while Adi lowered the horn to just listen. Her voice was deep and warbly, devoid of the staccato blats heard commonly up and down the island, and all …
This book is really well written. I bought it because the book design was incredible and because it was billed as a "fable." It did not disappoint. Here's a passage in which the protagonist plays jazz on an instrument he fashioned from a goat horn. His audience for this performance is a goat who he has named Harmony:
"The first time Adi played 'Stella by Starlight,' cycling through his old club and crib-side standards, Harmony kept silent. But an hour later, when he played it again under a sky so star-spattered and cosmos-smeared that the song seemed not just befitting but ordained - this time Harmony joined in, rising to her hooves and bleating so gently and forlornly that after a while Adi lowered the horn to just listen. Her voice was deep and warbly, devoid of the staccato blats heard commonly up and down the island, and all the other goats yielded to her voice, choosing to listen like Adi was. Splitting his gaze between the starlight and the firelight, the only conclusion he could muster was that everything in nature, which meant everything everywhere, was more intricate and indecipherable than an outcast man on an obscure island could possibly fathom. The thought was a surrender yet in its wake trailed a peculiar solace, a sudden disburdening: if the questions could be answered then the strain of asking them must be futile. After a while he laid himself down in a soft hollow of sand, still listening to her sing as his eyelids slipped closed." (126)