The premise of the book is that the author wants to know what it is like to be a wild creature - a Badger, an Otter, a Fox, a Red Deer and a Swift ...
... fine so far .. but he decides to try to live the life of each one of these ... hmmm ...
This did not bode well ... but who was this person with the seemingly mad ( and not mad in a good way ) idea ... ?
Well , it turns out that he is a Fellow of one of the Oxford Colleges, has a PhD in medical law and ethics, is a veterinary surgeon and a barrister and has a prodigious list of publications to his name on a wide range of subjects including philosophy, the biology of the spiritual experience and the evolution of altruism ...
I've read a lot of mediocre nature writing ( and some frankly terrible stuff ) over the years and was half expecting this to be just one more in that same mold ...
... so, still not entirely convinced ... I gave it a go ... and was hooked ...
The writing is sharp ... and it's funny ... 'funny' can be a dangerous thing to go for but this works ... and for a person with such a plethora of tangible talent he is remarkably self-effacing ...
I can get very tired of being told things by authors who think they have arrived at some particular 'truth' ... ( I remember Robert Bly having things to say about that ! ) but there is none of that ...
There is , on the other hand , a good deal of hard fact ... and interesting stuff ... and some very subtle references where he feels no obligation to labour a point ...
Mostly though , it is an adventure, an exploration , a quest for knowing something which is ultimately unknowable ... but a fascinating and highly entertaining one at that ...
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