Fierce Kingdom

“And here they are where death is shoving its bloody snout in their faces, and she has not considered it, not really… That is what you do when you have a child, isn’t it, open yourself up to unimaginable pain and then try to pretend away the possibilities.”

I LOVED this book. It’s no spoiler to say this is a story about something bad that happens in a zoo, and even so, within the first ten pages I was practically yelling for Joan to get out of the zoo. (Also not a spoiler: It’s not a story about the parking lot outside a zoo!)

I was reading with my own personal favorite four-year-old in mind, and I loved Lincoln and the tiny details of his relationship with his mother. The prose is tense and tightly written, with no spare syllable taking up space. Highly recommended.