“Wilderness is not a luxury but a necessity of the human spirit”.
Edward Abbey
These words come to mind when you read about the barely habitable Zoo City, the setting of Lauren Beukes’ book. Gritty and futuristic, there is danger lurking in every corner. Our resourceful heroine, Zinzi December is keeping her head above the murky water by running her own 419 scams. She also finds lost things. Saying Zoo City is the bottom of rock bottom feels like understating facts. And ex-drug addict, ex-celebrity news reporter and ostracised by family and friends after unintentionally getting her brother killed, Zinzi should know.
It is a world in which you get to wear your worst mistakes on your body for all to see, without any chance of redemption. Think of your biggest mistake and your biggest shame manifesting as an animal that you carry around all day. A result of a genetic mutation, the human-animal pairing is called ‘being animalled’. The animal is the last physical transformation that has to be for the characters in this world to survive and thrive when hostility abounds day and night. They have to call on their wildest selves.
I finished reading Zoo City in a couple of days. It was that good. I am already missing it. The world that Lauren Beukes has created fascinates me. In my own quiet fashion, what this means is that I am completely obsessed.
In a lot of ways, this idea of your mental or emotional state manifesting as an animal reminded me of something my friends’ mother used to say. It was a warning against ‘letting other people give you their monkey’. Her theory is that we all carry a monkey on our backs/shoulders, that is, everyone has a weight to carry around. And to be careful of people who unload all their troubles on you. Because if you are not careful, you only end up buckling under not only from the weight of your own monkey but their monkey as well as they walk away with a spring in their step. As light as a feather. She never lied.
