Photo Paula Cocozza Credit Christian Sinibaldi

HOW TO BE HUMAN By Paula Cocozza 278 pp. Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt & Company. $26.

Paula Cocozzas hypnotic first novel, How to Be Human, features 34-year-old Mary Green and the urban fox that takes up residence in her London garden. Mary, who as a girl wrote letters to herself to stem acute loneliness, welcomes the vulpine caller. The fox is soon leaving tokens for her, the kind a knight pledges before going into battle. She begins to call him a friend. Within weeks, theyve formed a natural intimacy. In this suspenseful tale animal and human behavior begin to meld, even reverse, and whos dangerous and whos endangered is not always clear.

Mary fetishizes her fox with Jamesian granularity: She understood his show of nonchalance was the disguise for an as yet unarticulated intention. The novel is dynamic with contrasts: the fecund and the fallow. The single and the paired. The urban and the wild. His jaws slackened to liberate his tongue, and he licked his lips with her thoughts. In short order, the fox has possessed her. Time is measured by his visits, his winks, his yawns. His poise today was a stillness with caveats: Every hair bristled with his power to surprise. Mary plies his attentions to her psychic wounds, and who can begrudge her that? Who has not wanted to believe that an animal loves her? If, as I do, one likes to dwell on the handsome presence of animals, and on the rustlings of various leaves, grasses and insects, this novel satisfies and delights. But even greater pleasure is to be had from the dark side of Marys enchantments.

The opening pages present a confounding mystery: Who or what has placed a baby on Marys steps? Next door, Michelle and Eric, with their two small children, seem troubled; Mary perceives them as the classic stressed and self-absorbed young family, somewhat perplexing to all but those in the same straits. She even conjectures, persuasively, that they dont really want the baby shes a crafty one, Mary. When she ventures into their domestic midden she begins to seem like a predator, a fox in a henhouse (indeed, eggs of all kinds are a recurring motif); the narrative balance is wonderfully sly and assured throughout. The mystery surrounding the baby deepens and twists. Readers may slowly come to realize they are on thrillingly unstable ground, waiting to see how far afield Mary will go.

And go she does. Where ones uneasiness sets in will be a personal matter. Is it when Mary leaves her own scent in the garden, by way of a strategic squat? Or is it only once shes gone full-on feral? How soon might one wonder if the fox loves her back, or if hes been outfoxing her all along? And Marys ex, Mark, is a disturbing bystander, on the face of it a clingy pest. But is he as bad as all that?

Cocozza cleverly blurs our capacities to judge Marys narrowing world. I wanted to root for this spirited underdog all the way. But is that who she really is? She might be the eloquently rationalizing Humbert Humbert of the neighborhood, or maybe the spooked and high-strung governess in The Turn of the Screw, losing herself in an obsession. Or, in the end, maybe just another fragile soul trying to get by, chasing a dream of happiness: She tried to keep up, but at some perfect point where distance equaled darkness, he began to silver and fade for her, as if his fur were intercut with nights invisible stripes, and it was no longer possible to know for sure if she was seeing him or seeing the night behind him. One thing is sure: Mary bends whats at hand to her needs. What more does it take to be human?

Elizabeth McKenzies most recent novel is The Portable Veblen.

A version of this review appears in print on June 25, 2017, on Page BR13 of the Sunday Book Review with the headline: Fox and Friend.

See the article here:
When the Fox Becomes a Friend - New York Times