Cover Image: Open Throat

Open Throat

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Member Reviews

Unique point of view and concise story. Great book for the reader who is looking for something different.

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Open Throat is an adventure in creativity, chock-full of symbolism and metaphor. It is also an abundantly engaging and entertaining story that should give you pause. The book is dedicated to a wild mountain lion (P-22) who lived in Giffith Park until his death in 2022. Our narrator is a young, lonely, queer mountain lion roaming the hills of Los Angeles, his territory diminished to a patch of land under the HOLLYWOOD sign. He keeps watch over a homeless encampment and is a keen observerof the haves and have nots and the people who wander the trails for various purposes. Most don't bother to look up from their phones and might as well have walked in circles in their backyards. He does not hurt them though he could, he definitely could.

There are fires and earthquakes and droughts and floods. Inevitably, our cat must come face to face with humans because we, with our greed and sense of superiority have destroyed his habitat and called him the intruder. I don't think I spoiled the ending by telling you this. It is the only way it could have ended, the only way it can end but I was on his side the whole way. I closed the book thinking, "Shame on us."

I received a drc from the publisher via NetGalley. Many thanks.

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Beautiful prose and a unique reading experience. A moving, felt book, I really enjoyed this one. Went down quick and stayed for a while.

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I will always want to read an MCD book, and the concept of a gay cougar narrating a story had me immediately in on reading this one. I will say that I didn’t ultimately have a problem with this one, I just found it to be thoroughly “fine.”

My expectation was zaniness, maybe some satire, and a good bit of sex. Instead, you get a fairly fast paced meditation on what it means and who should be labeled as a monster. It reminded me less of the club scene from Wicked (iykyk) and more of the stories from What We Fed to the Manticore.

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This book had an interesting concept and was written well, but I just didn’t like it. It was a quick read, and at moments I chuckled at the narrating mountain lion, but nothing really stuck with me too long.

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What a strange and lovely book! Told from the perspective of a queer mountain lion who lives beneath the Hollywood sign, in the city he calls “ellay”, in a stream-of-consciousness style; the story follows our narrator as he listens to the hikers who pass him by, searches for food and water, and does his best to evade a number of obstacles, from highways to wildfires to the temptation to eat a person.

I read this in two sittings, and was very reluctant to put it down. The story was engaging and the narrative voice was SO captivating; vulnerable and lonely and plaintive, hovering somewhere between prose and poetry. My single criticism is that a few parts of it felt a little unfinished — this may well have been purposeful, given the general mood and vibe of the book, but I think it could have used a little more time and expansion on a few events.

Full of heart and charm, alternately funny and serious, and written in a lovely and unique voice — if you’re in the mood for something unusual, quick, and captivating, I’d definitely recommend OPEN THROAT. Thanks so much to MCD Books and Netgalley for the advance copy!

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Thanks to Netgalley and FSG for the ebook. We get to spend a few days with a very hungry mountain lion who lives in a large park in Los Angeles. Scavenging for food and thinking constantly of eating a human, we go back in time to see how this lion ended up here and the vast equalities from the homeless camps throughout the park, to a rich house nearby. A slim and very entertaining book.

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really beautiful novella, exploring themes of identity, queerness, displacement, nature, nurture, family, and belonging. love the musings on the limits of language! special!

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Conceptually? Loved this. I really try to take my time with short reads because there's usually so much to unpack within them and it's really easy to breeze past the real good nuggets. This one had some really solid nuggets that struck me... However, I'm downrating this from four stars to three because there wasn't really a rhyme or reason as to why and what the lion was able to conceptualize vs what they couldn't. That was constantly throwing me off.

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Open Throat is a book that took me completely by surprise and left me in awe once I finished reading it. This short, powerful read is one that will leave an impression.

Henry Hoke has created such a unique story and weaved a web with words that will ensnare you and leave you wanting more.

Simply brilliant!

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Good god, what an astounding book. Devourable (pun sorta intended, sorry-not-sorry) in a single sitting, and in fact perhaps meant to be read that way -- Hoke's narrator is, yes, a mountain lion who is, yes, intrigued by and interested in humanity as possibly more than just a meal (although never quite *not* a meal). How this book fits so so so much into such a short length is a magic trick par excellence, managing to contemplate queerness and the patriarchy and family structures and what it means to *want* and climate change / human-made disasters and the beautiful flow of the natural world... it's one of the best things I've read in years years years. Absolutely magnificent.

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This book is so short that I feel like I can't say much about it for fear of giving anything away. However, I will say that I loved reading from the point of view of an animal. It was such a unique way to convey this story and just quite fascinating to feel like you were finally privy to the thoughts that go on in an animal's head. We all wonder what they can and cannot understand about our actions and dialogue, and this book attempts to answer those questions, with a dash of humor at times.

I recommend this book to those who don't mind misspelled words (even if it is intentional) and to those who just enjoy a fresh perspective. It was just such an odd little delight and the ending had my mouth AGAPE.

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OPEN THROAT by Henry Hoke is a short novel where the narrator is a mountain lion in the hills of Los Angeles. The big cat has to find food, avoid humans, and navigate dangerous freeways. There is an awareness of the cat, but also a naivety of the human world. I found the writing absolutely compelling and I really couldn’t stop reading. I loved this book for it’s ability to transfigure the reader directly into the head of this mountain lion. The writing is snappy and has messages about people (and animals) living on the edge of society.

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My review appears on Boston's The Arts Fuse -

https://artsfuse.org/275818/book-review-open-throat-animal-talk/

I do not award stars.

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Henry Hoke’s "Open Throat" is a sly little work of fiction.

At less than 200 pages, it’s more of a novella than a novel, allowing for it to be read in an afternoon. The pages turn easily as its fun, and different, to be in the head of a queer mountain lion.

Which is where the slyness comes in. The prose is basic, expectedly so, since a mountain lion is our narrator, but the simplicity of the writing is deceptive. Because when I first finished reading, my immediate thought was that I wanted more from the lion. I didn’t think the lion said enough, and I wanted greater insight into the human condition from the perspective of an animal bystander.

But then I reflected and soon realized how wrong I was. The lion, not only do they say a fair amount, but they also show us quite a bit as they roam L.A. We learn of their personal story, along with the inner conflict between their animalistic nature and the humanity that tugs at their heart. And we see earthquakes, floods, the current political environment, the homeless epidemic … and yes, the numerous ineptitudes of the human race … all through their wise, sharp eyes.

This lion knows their stuff. What a mind, and what a voice.


My sincerest appreciation to Henry Hoke, MCD, and NetGalley for the digital review copy. All opinions included herein are my own.

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The nitty-gritty: A unique glimpse into the mind of a mountain lion as he navigates the hazards of Los Angeles.

“I’ve never eaten a person but today I might”

Open Throat has such a great concept. The story is told from the perspective of a lone mountain lion who lives in the hills near the Hollywood sign, and we follow the lion as he searches for food and water, protects people in a homeless camp, listens to hikers as they walk by his lair (and learns a lot from their conversations) and is forced to flee into a residential neighborhood, where he meets and befriends a teenaged girl. The story is extremely short—I read it in a matter of hours over the course of an afternoon—and because of this it left me with a vague feeling of dissatisfaction. The author’s inspiration was real life Los Angeles mountain lion P-22, who unfortunately died about six months ago, and I do love that Hoke paid tribute to him. But despite some emotional moments and clever observations about life and society, the story takes a weird turn in the last quarter of the book and went off the rails for me.

There isn’t a plot per se, as this is more or less a “day in the life of a mountain lion.” But here’s what I liked. The lion's thoughts are written in a poetic, stream of consciousness style, as he reminisces about how he came to “ellay” after being run out of his home by his aggressive father. There’s a poignant part about how he lost a friend to the “long death” (the highway), a constant source of fear for any wild animal living too close to civilization. I loved the way he learns things from all the hikers:

“I know I live below the hollywood sign because the hikers say oh look we’re below the hollywood sign and they say can we get all the way up there and they ask which letter would you jump off”

He doesn’t know the words for everything he sees, but he’s able to describe them so that the reader understands, like when he sees fireworks:

“I hear the sky crackle and fall down around me”

Oddly, he has no desire to kill humans, and he goes out of his way to protect “his people” in the homeless camp, even killing a coyote who tries to attack one of them. It was strangely satisfying to see how Hoke made such a fierce predator into a sympathetic cat with almost human-like qualities.

Eventually, the realistic descriptions of hunting for food and avoiding brush fires devolve into a weird, dreamlike tale, and this is where the story lost me. The lion meets a girl he calls “little slaughter” (for some reason) when he wanders into a residential neighborhood. The girl feeds him and they become friends, I guess? She hides him in the basement and tells him about Disneyland. And then he has a dream about going there with her and riding all the rides, and no one questions the fact that a mountain lion is riding Splash Mountain with a teenage girl. Normally I enjoy magical realism in stories, but here it was so jarring that it had the opposite effect on me. I also thought the ending was way too abrupt, and I didn't like the way the mountain lion's story ended. 

And I need to throw in a quick rant before I finish this review. Why is it that every writer who sets their story in Los Angeles includes an earthquake? I laugh every single time, because everyone assumes earthquakes are a daily occurrence here and they’re not. I’ve lived in Southern California my entire life and have only experienced a handful of earthquakes in all that time, at least ones worth mentioning. OK, rant over!

So yes, I enjoyed parts of Open Throat, but ultimately the story fizzled out and left me confused. Recommended if you enjoy unusual stories from an animal’s point of view, but don’t expect a riveting plot or a satisfying conclusion.

With thanks to the publisher for providing a review copy.

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A beautiful read. Wish it had been longer but the length fits. A story worth telling. Makes me wonder how my cats see me.

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I loved this strange, beautiful book. A queer unnamed mountain lion who lives under the Hollywood sign and just wants to be where the people are? Come on, who could resist such a story?!

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Happy to highlight this new release in “Loud & Proud,” a round-up of new and notable reads for Pride Month, in the Books section of Zoomer magazine. (see column and mini-review at link)

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A sharp and unique little novella told from the perspective of a mountain lion living in the hills of Los Angeles. If you are a bleeding heart for animals and the impacts of climate change and globalization on wildlife habitats, this one is for you.

There was a pervasive melancholy and loneliness throughout the writing, or maybe that's just what I felt, reading about this animal whose territory is becoming smaller and smaller, who no longer is afforded privacy and silence from the humans constantly around them. This novel did a great job of not overwriting, as I could see this drawn out to ill effect. There was just enough plot, just enough sentiment to be compelling and heartbreaking; to feel like you were beside the lion and experiencing the world through his eyes. Perhaps unsurprisingly, there is some scathing commentary about humanity and humans, though our lion does not have ill-will toward humans. It's just that seeing humans described through the eyes of a wild animal... we seem so foolish and trite, and I think that must be the author's intent– to force us to look in the mirror at our self-importance and realize what a joke it is.

I didn't fully understand the idea of the mountain lion being framed as queer, as there is no mention of the lion's sexuality whatsoever. Perhaps this went over my head.

I'd recommend this book to anyone looking for a slim volume that packs a punch.

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