A review by librarypusa
On Animals by Susan Orlean

4.0

I trust in the fact that animals are pure in their hearts, efficient in their emotions. I admire that they don't seem to waste time hating each other if there isn't a specific purpose to it. Food, shelter, dominance, and love affairs seem to be the things that matter, and once those are sorted out, what else is there to say?

There is a lot of excellent writing ability on display here. While I expected the whole book to be what the last essay, Farmville, was like, I still quite enjoyed the book for what it was. Orlean's ability to hold your attention via directive pacing kept me there long enough to get emotionally invested, and her research made me stay till the end. Orlean's jumping off point is animals, but it's also a lot of history, microeconomics, a bit of politics, and a look into a hyper specific military program.

My favorite essays in this book are Where's Willy? and The Rabbit Outbreak.

Where's Willy is a biography of the orca that starred in the 1993 smash hit movie Free Willy. I've never watched that movie, only being vaguely aware of its existence via pop culture references. Orlean tells us in plain terms the sequence of events that happened to the orca, but adds real tear-jerking heart.

The orca, named Keiko, was gentle and intelligent. He was easy to love, and love him people did. This article would be a total downer if we were only told about the bleak conditions for captive orcas. Humor comes in via absurd scenes of Keiko-love that gripped every person that came across him. Absurdity persists as the human beings surrounding Keiko, from guests to tank owners to scientists to billionaires, coming from as far as Mexico and all the way up Iceland, desperately grasp but fail to determine how exactly do you love an orca in a way that is good for him?

The Rabbit Outbreak does not bank on sentiment. Strangely enough, it had thrill. It is about the circumstances that surround rabbit-human relations. The contradiction of rabbits as livestock/pet come to a head as the RHDV2 epidemic hits the USA. There is sociological dimension to containing a virus, which gave the article a morbid scope. Government agencies, matters of jurisdiction, meat industries, ecological questions, manufacturing logistics, shades of morality.

The narrative is propelled forward by the urgency of a spreading disease with an ~80% mortality rate and a virus that survives for weeks without a host. This essay is reminiscent of the 2011 movie Contagion, complete with the proliferation of social media-based fear-mongering (yes, they both have that!)

There were a few things about this book I didn't like, but it was more in the realm of our opposing views on certain topics. I am fine with most of those diverging opinions, some I consider flaws. These deductive flaws would be 1) considering hotels and condominiums as infrastructure hallmarks of "development" and

Spoiler

2) the implicit messaging of calling the USSR in 1980s Afghanistan as a "Soviet invasion" (which is correct) but calling the US forces occupying 2000s Afghanistan as "Operation Enduring Freedom." (Not a lot of freedom in the torture of detainees)

Overall, this book was great, a body of work from a career in journalism spanning 16 years. One couldn't ask for more when there's a crazy amount of knowledge collected from flying out to countries, attending several animal shows, conducting interviews and observations. But on top of all that, there's a great deal of polish in the writing, which made learning about all this random stuff enjoyable.