Now for something completely different (with apologies to Monty Python).
‘Foxspell’ has that somewhat stultifying categorisation of ‘Young Adult Fiction’, but don’t be put off by that, nor that it is a novel with doses of magical realism. It is an engaging coming-of-age story on the urban fringe of an Australian city, a book of family dynamics, humour and angst. But this, of course, is not enough for inclusion here: what makes it special is its evocation of what it’s like to be ‘animal’, to exist in a different consciousness, in the raw and exhilarating physicality and immediacy of the natural world.
The main character – Tod – lives on the edge of many worlds: adulthood, the city and the bush, school, family, even of human perception. At night, he is transformed into a fox: “Tod himself was thinking without words, in instant pictures that leaped into his mind in response to the world around him…his senses were sharp and alert to everything…he was overwhelmed by a mass of sounds and smells…he had to practise moving like a shadow through the undergrowth of the quarry floor, learning how to feel the earth beneath each paw, using its energy as though he were growing out of it”.
In this state he is free of the alienation that marks so much of the human and teenage condition, is comforted by the certainties of the natural world, excited by its raw pleasures. Of course, it is a world he must ultimately leave, and the consequences are dire.
A superficially simple story about growing up, it asks much deeper questions about what it is to be human, what we have lost, and how – if at all – it is possible to bridge the worlds of Nature and human society.
1 Rubinstein, G. 1994. Foxspell. Hyland House, South Melbourne, Australia.
