Open Throat
'An instant classic' - The Guardian
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- €6.99
Publisher Description
Shortlisted for the James Tait Black Prize for Fiction
'An instant classic' - The Guardian
I’ve never eaten a person but today I might . . .
A queer and dangerously hungry mountain lion lives in the drought-devastated land under the Hollywood sign, overlooking the city that humans call ‘ellay’.
Lonely and fascinated by humanity’s foibles, the lion spends their days grappling with the complexities of their own identity, and ultimately the question: Do they want to eat a person, or become one?
'A bloody masterpiece.' - Melissa Broder, author of The Pisces
'Witty, emotional and gripping, Open Throat is a short but savage thrill ride' - The Independent
'Open Throat is Bret Easton Ellis meets mountain lion in the Hollywood Hills . . . it already has people talking' - The Sunday Times
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Hoke (The Book of Endless Sleepovers) gives voice to a Los Angeles cougar in his playful latest. Its provocative opening line sets the tone: "I've never eaten a person but today I might." The narrator admits they don't understand people, observing a group of hikers engaged in what the reader will recognize as a BDSM scenario involving a couple and a man dressed as Indiana Jones. During the day, the cougar hides unnoticed under the Hollywood sign. After dark, they venture into town. Their concerns are immediate—hunger, thirst, survival. Their relationship to their environment is sensual, with sights of running mice, the taste of a possum, or the sound of footsteps. The cougar longs for community, and Hoke sketches them as a quintessential outsider as a fire forces them out of their haunt and they form a surprising bond with a girl they call "little slaughter." The economical prose reads like poetry, with enjambment in place of punctuation and frequent paragraph breaks. By turns funny and melancholy, this is a thrilling portrait of alienation.
