Review by Booklist Review
Darlington has a problem with otters. She's obsessed with the critters. She sets out on an "otter odyssey" that has her traipsing through all kinds of landscapes in Great Britain over the course of about a year to find these creatures in the wild. Darlington tracks them primarily by their paw prints and droppings. She seems to spend considerable time examining their spraint (dung), which she notes "smell[s] like perfume," akin to lavender and jasmine tea. Throughout her quest, she interacts with and learns from other otter aficionados. In tracking wild otters, the plucky author-adventurer encounters challenges along the way, including an encounter with a wild boar. Her reverence for the Eurasian otter (Lutra lutra) leads her to elevate the animal to an almost mythic status. Darlington views otters as playful predators, nomadic and secretive. Nocturnal stealth is this carnivore's super power. Otters might sleep about 12 hours a day, but their activities support the health of watery ecosystems. An at times peculiar though wholly affectionate, informative, and bubbly work of nature writing.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Darlington (The Wise Hours) burnishes her reputation as a gifted nature writer with this vivid examination of the behavior, biology, and evolution of otters. She notes that the aquatic animals were "one of the earliest mammalian carnivores," appearing 30 million years ago as members of the mustelid family, which includes weasels and badgers. Over time, members of the mustelid family diversified to pursue different kinds of prey (pine martens evolved to hunt rodents in trees while otters developed to prowl waterways). Pushing back against otters' reputation for being "cuddly and playful," Darlington explains that males bite females so hard during copulation they leave permanent scars and often kidnap pups "from their mothers and expect her to hand over her catch of shellfish before the stolen pup is returned." Though Darlington's travels around Britain looking for otters in the wild proved unsuccessful, the sparkling prose ensures her account of the search never flags: "Without the dazzle of a torch, the moon is all quivering reflections. I stare over a bridge at the flicker beneath." Darlington also provides disquieting discussions of how European settlers in America's Pacific Northwest nearly hunted otters to extinction, and how oil spills and overfishing continue to threaten the animals' ability to survive in the wild. The result is an entrancing look at a complex animal. Agent: Clare Conville, C&W Agency. (Feb.)
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
A celebration of a wily mammal. Nature writer Darlington, author of The Wise Hours, has been enchanted with otters since childhood, and she recounts her travels across England, Scotland, and Wales in search of the elusive creature. She devoted a year to plodding across moors, wading through marshes, walking along peat bogs, traversing rivers, and swimming in the sea, and she records her journey in precise, poetic prose. She read widely, met others obsessed with otters, and visited nature sanctuaries. Early in her exploration, she spotted one: "Just over a metre in length, he has the dimensions of a male or dog otter, with a broad, flat head, large back feet and a long, tapering tail. It's the magnificent ruff of whiskers that surprises me, and the bulk of him, the fur sleek from fishing out in the loch." Although otters have few natural predators, they live "on a knife-edge," needing "to be resilient and versatile enough to cope with sudden fluctuations in food sources, pollution incidents and other environmental changes such as floods and the encroachments of human activity." Those challenges have not kept them from returning to territories where they have long thrived, but they have proven perilous when otters have been run over when crossing roads. Darlington became an expert at tracking otters by following their droppings, and she teaches us about their evolution, behavior, and life cycle. She evokes in sensuous detail the flora and fauna (including a threatening wild boar and swarming midges) that she encountered along the way, as well as the detritus of modern life: discarded diapers, plastic water bottles, fast-food packaging, and more. Her immersive year proved revelatory: Rainer Maria Rilke, she observes, put it aptly: "There is no part of the world that is not looking at you. You must change your life." Darlington delivers another delightfully lyrical nature chronicle. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
