‘The Eyes & the Impossible’ by Dave Eggers   (2023) – 249 pages

There is Sonya the squirrel, Angus the raccoon, Bertrand the sea gull, Yolanda the pelican, Helene the goat, and of course, Johannes the dog who narrates this story of this group of animals, each with their disparate skill, working together to accomplish a critical goal.

“Yolanda landed with her usual chaos-clatter of wings and feet. Yolanda is a pelican, and a clumsy one, which is saying something, given all pelicans are clumsy, ungainly, unlikely in their shape and ludicrous in their flight.”

Freya, Meredith, and Samuel are bison; they have ruled the park for millions of years or more But wouldn’t they be happier on the mainland instead of on this tiny island?

When I heard about ‘The Eyes & the Impossible’ by Dave Eggers, my first impulse was to compose a list of all the adult novels I had read in which all the main characters were animals. However I found there were very few of these novels. My list did not extend much beyond ‘Watership Down’ by Richard Adams and ‘Animal Farm’ by George Orwell.

It seems to me that writers are missing a good bet by not writing more of these anthropomorphizing novels for adults that we remember so fondly from our childhoods.

When I was a child there was an entire series of children’s books by Thornton Burgess called Old Mother West-Wind which included as characters Peter Cottontail (later to be known as Peter Rabbit), Jimmy Skunk, Sammy Jay, etc.

As a kid, I did not read superhero comic books; instead I read comics with Donald Duck, his girlfriend Daisy Duck, his nephews Huey, Dewey, and Louie, and his rich Uncle Scrooge McDuck. And then there was Bugs Bunny, Elmer Fudd, Porky Pig, and their gang.

When I became a parent, I found that many of the books for little children had animals as their main characters such as the Russell Hoban series about the badger Frances – ‘Bedtime for Frances’, ‘Bread and Jam for Frances’, etc. George and Martha in the James Marshall series are two hippos. Then there were the ‘Curious George’ books about a funny little monkey.

There is something innately humorous about having animals talk and act like humans, and ‘The Eyes & the Impossible’ captures that. They are advertising this book for readers of all ages.

I doubt that it will be a classic like ‘Watership Down’, but it was a pleasant enough time for me reading this book.

Grade :   A