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3.92 AVERAGE
3.92 AVERAGE
Animal-narrated stories (ie Watership Down, Frost Hares, Memoirs of a Polar Bear, etc) are not everyone’s cuppa, but if they are yours, I cannot recommend A Black Fox Running highly enough. I was spellbound, and I don’t throw that word around a lot. Describing nature in my own writing gives me hives, and as a reader I often skim or skip long stretches of descriptive scenery. Brian Carter does it beautifully, effortlessly, seamlessly for the entire book and I read every leaf, every blade of grass. You can see, smell, hear and taste everything. Gorgeous writing, and a story I was surprisingly invested in. I absolutely loved it.
adventurous
dark
emotional
medium-paced
adventurous
dark
emotional
hopeful
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
This is a wonderful, wonderful, wonderful, nature-loving, life-affirming, joy of a book. I’d never heard if it before, and found it in a bookshop in Tavistock in July. It has cemented my love of Devon and, in particular, Dartmoor.
Life has been interesting for me recently, and thus spoke to my heart in a very meaningful way. It’s now, certainly, one of my favourite books ever.
Life has been interesting for me recently, and thus spoke to my heart in a very meaningful way. It’s now, certainly, one of my favourite books ever.
This is a book in the tradition of Watership Down, but about Foxes. The hero of this story is a black fox named Wulfgar and of his nemesis, Scoble the trapper, in the seasons leading up to the pitiless winter of 1946. It is both a portrait of place and a gripping story of survival. He's sort of the badass alpha male (yet sensitive) of the foxes who reside around these particular moors in England. All isn't too great for him though because there is murderous hunting dog, The Lurcher, who is owned by an equally deranged trapper who would like to kill the poor fox.
The Lurcher quite possibly steals the show when the book focuses on him as a main character. He likes to kill things, and all of his thoughts are crazy, must kill everything to make the voices in my head and the stars up above happy variety.
One of the decent humans is a small boy, who we learn at the end of the book has the same first name as the author. The book, while written in 1982, takes place in the late 1940's, making it not just a meta-fiction trick but rather a re-imagining of what the author saw as a boy and mythologizing it. As breathtaking in its descriptions of the natural world as it is perceptive in its portrayal of damaged humanity.
The Lurcher quite possibly steals the show when the book focuses on him as a main character. He likes to kill things, and all of his thoughts are crazy, must kill everything to make the voices in my head and the stars up above happy variety.
One of the decent humans is a small boy, who we learn at the end of the book has the same first name as the author. The book, while written in 1982, takes place in the late 1940's, making it not just a meta-fiction trick but rather a re-imagining of what the author saw as a boy and mythologizing it. As breathtaking in its descriptions of the natural world as it is perceptive in its portrayal of damaged humanity.
dark
mysterious
reflective
slow-paced
adventurous
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
The nature lingo was too confusing for me 😭
I found this quite hard to get into but once I found the flow I was hoooooked! I love the tension between fox and man and how well Carter explores the conflicted relationship between them. It’s quite sad to see how foxes suffer at the hands of man simply because of an outdated view and tradition. I really loved this. Just thought it was a little too long for what it was!
dark
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
While the prose itself is gorgeous, the plot progression seems lost. I love the concept of a nihilist outlook on what makes a ‘good death’ to these foxes, but it’s not explored nearly as much as I was hoping it would.
Honestly, go for fox & the hound first.
Honestly, go for fox & the hound first.