OPEN THROAT, by Henry HokeThere is a moment toward the end of “Open Throat,” Henry Hoke’s slim jewel of a novel, where the narrator, a mountain lion living in the desert hills surrounding Los Angeles’s Hollywood sign, falls asleep and dreams of Disneyland.
We first meet the mountain lion — who uses they/them pronouns, per the publisher’s description, and identifies as queer — in somewhat happier times.
Although hungry and losing their natural habitat to commercial development, they enjoy eavesdropping on privileged hikers as “they decide what is good or bad about their therapists,” and visiting “town,” where their “people” live: an encampment of unhoused people whose eventual eradication forces the mountain lion to flee.
Told in fragmented prose (I have the urge to reproduce it here with line breaks intact, like poetry), “Open Throat” follows this survival journey as we learn about the lion’s past loves and losses in crushing flashbacks.
“A father to a kitten is an absence,” the lion remembers, “a grown cat to a father is a threat.”
Persons:
Henry Hoke, ” Henry, sharer ”, ”
Organizations:
Hollywood
Locations:
“, ”