Voice of the Wild: 9an Anthology of Animal Stories

This curious collection of fiction and nonfiction about wild animals from a group of 19 talented writers gathers well-created, insightful prose from the best of sources and yet fails to shed light on the themes of wildness it promises to explore. Set on several continents--from Kipling's primeval India to the abundance of Isak Dinesen's Africa of abundance to the rugged American West of Tom McGuane--these stories most frequently chronicle the hunt, but also seek to tell of natural lessons learned by men of animals, by animals of men, and by both of themselves. Elephants, porcupines, grizzlies, antelope, porpoises and other species appear in these pieces. But Beard has excerpted nearly all of these selections from larger works, and in the process shorn away meaningful context and obscured the variety of perspectives she means to highlight. The narrow focus leads to monotony, and in spite of its evocative writing the anthology begins to read like a survey switching from one creature to the next. The brief, wistful excerpt from Saint-Exupery's The Little Prince seems egregiously abstract in this company. This is by no means an exhaustive gathering of wildlife writers--many good ones are excluded. Nor are these obscure, little-known works--several have been made into motion pictures, and most of the authors (Rudyard Kipling, Jack London, Elspeth Huxley, Gavin Maxwell, Ernest Thompson Seton) are widely read. Yet the insights here come only in the narrowest of glimmers. (Dec.)