I’m not a zoologist – let’s get that out of the way. Despite a lifelong interest in, and affection for, other species, I find taxonomy taxing. Latin names are, well, Latin to me. And I’m more likely to be found stuffing ducks with bread than staring at them through binoculars.
Still, I have researched this novel to the best of my ability. I devoured books and documentaries. I pestered naturalist friends and family with unanswerable questions. I looked into paper after paper on the senses of other species, on the physiology of the eye or on suggestive behaviour – such as how scientists have watched tigers seemingly seeing a distinction between red and green buckets, but only in a certain percentage of observations, which the scientists perceived as meaning . . . I honestly don’t know. And, eventually, I came to the conclusion that the pursuit of the particulars could blind me; that really my eye should be on the fundamental fleshiness of the living, breathing, feeling, 221.2kg beast in front of me. (And, yes, I did just look up the average weight of a tiger.)
For all the good that science achieves, it’s important not to lose sight of the fact that it’s a discourse of the third person; its aim, the seizing and solidifying of the other. Science permits only one Truth, one Reality. But what if there are other valid ways of knowing? What if the world is not one, but multitude, with as many ways of being as there are beings? What if literature were the opportunity to glimpse such refractions, thrown by the world as though from a diamond?
For to walk a mile in someone’s shoes is not just to take on an element of their embodied experience but to take part in their journey. Such skin-walking is the magic of fiction, which invites the reader not only to slip into the lived experience of other people but also to share, for a while, the cares and joys of their narrative journeying. My work here is therefore perhaps closer to that of a seamstress than a scientist; this novel, a fantastical wardrobe of skins.
So, while I make no claims for the factual accuracy of this novel, I hope instead that it might inspire you to a different way of questioning, sensing and feeling, of which Kit’s story is only the beginning. For we are all immersed alongside our brethren of tooth and claw in a world that is more spectacular, wonderful and uncanny than one creature alone could ever perceive.