How to Be Human Audiobook By Paula Cocozza cover art

How to Be Human

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How to Be Human

By: Paula Cocozza
Narrated by: Alison Campbell
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Buy for $20.96

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You've seen a fox.

Come face to face in an unexpected place, or at an unexpected moment.

And he has looked at you, as you have looked at him. As if he has something to tell you, or you have something to tell him.

But what if it didn't stop there?

When Mary arrives home from work one day to find a magnificent fox on her lawn - his ears spiked in attention and every hair bristling with his power to surprise - it is only the beginning. He brings gifts (at least, Mary imagines they are gifts) and gradually makes himself at home.

And as he listens to Mary, Mary listens back.

She begins to hear herself for the first time in years. Her bullish ex-boyfriend, still lurking on the fringes of her life, would be appalled. So would the neighbours with a new baby. They like only wildlife that fits with the decor. But inside Mary a wildness is growing that will not be tamed.

In this extraordinary debut, the lines between sanity and safety, obsession and delusion blur in a thrilling exploration of what makes us human.

©2017 Paula Cocozza (P)2017 Audible, Ltd Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Psychological Thriller & Suspense

Critic reviews

"How to be Human is an intriguing and subversive debut, an eerie tale that acts on the reader like a ghost story, charged with the power of the ignored and the suppressed. If we disdain our animal selves, they trail us, shadowing us at dawn and dusk. Paula Cocozza shows us that the line between the wilderness and the city is thin, easily transgressed; the ghost breathing in the thicket is our own wild nature." (Hilary Mantel)
"Intriguing and unsettling...the tricky, shifting substance of relationships is so insightfully drawn and constantly surprises." (Laura Barnett, author of The Versions of Us)
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I'm finding it hard to review this book. It's beautifully written, but the themes are very disturbing and the characters - mostly annoying. I guess it's a win that it provokes emotion, but I just don't have it in me to give a book with unchecked, glorified delusions, abusive ex's and judgemental behaviors 24/7 more than 3 stars.

Tough to review

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