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A review by tklassy
Pod by Laline Paull
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
5.0
I will always love sea creatures. And this small but oh so might book broke my heart.
Ever since I was a kid I've absolytley loved reading books from the point of view of animals and that's never changed.
Ea captured my attention from the first page. There was an underlying melancholy throughout the short book by Paull that was devastating, wrenching, real. It was the melancholy of grief – of creatures, having to somehow figure out new ways of life as their world fall apart. And the saddest thing about this is that it’s all happening right in our oceans. I think I will be haunted for a long time by the jarring warning calls of the whale, by the dying coral and polluted water. This book managed to make Climate change, devastatingly, visceral, and borrowed under my skin and scratched at me again, and again, and again. I appreciate that the book doesn’t romanticise the inherently, violent life of animals. There is an acknowledgement of the truly cultural practices (somewhat argue biological - why not both?) that could be a reality for the sea creatures. But once you realise it’s there, the human impact is never far from the surface. How are use animals to our advantage and discard them or how we feed them only so that we can murder them later. One reviewer stated that they couldn’t connect with the characters because they weren’t human, but I felt I could perhaps connect with them more because of this.
This book was not an easy read - but it was so worthwhile. To think of human centred environmental change from animals perspective was shattering.
Ever since I was a kid I've absolytley loved reading books from the point of view of animals and that's never changed.
Ea captured my attention from the first page. There was an underlying melancholy throughout the short book by Paull that was devastating, wrenching, real. It was the melancholy of grief – of creatures, having to somehow figure out new ways of life as their world fall apart. And the saddest thing about this is that it’s all happening right in our oceans. I think I will be haunted for a long time by the jarring warning calls of the whale, by the dying coral and polluted water. This book managed to make Climate change, devastatingly, visceral, and borrowed under my skin and scratched at me again, and again, and again. I appreciate that the book doesn’t romanticise the inherently, violent life of animals. There is an acknowledgement of the truly cultural practices (somewhat argue biological - why not both?) that could be a reality for the sea creatures. But once you realise it’s there, the human impact is never far from the surface. How are use animals to our advantage and discard them or how we feed them only so that we can murder them later. One reviewer stated that they couldn’t connect with the characters because they weren’t human, but I felt I could perhaps connect with them more because of this.
This book was not an easy read - but it was so worthwhile. To think of human centred environmental change from animals perspective was shattering.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Sexual assault and Violence