IN THEIR WORDS
IT WAS WHILE Paula Cocozza was helping neighbors tidy up a patch of scrubland near her house in east London a couple of years ago that she found the inspiration for her debut novel. Sensing she was being watched, she turned to see a fox peeking through the brambles. Over a period of weeks, a sort of communication began: The fox kept leaving holes inside holes Cocozza had dug and moving rolls of turf. In How to Be Human, Cocozza takes that animal behavior and turns it into the story of what happens when Mary, a human in emotional disarray following a messy breakup, embarks on a relationship with Fox, a Vulpes vulpes.
It’s an odd, ambitious premise, but Cocozza—a journalist with the Guardian—makes it work, the plot following what the author describes, over the phone from London, as Mary’s “emotional rewilding.” When Mary asks Fox to move in, the reader doesn’t flinch, perhaps because we mostly see him—masculine, bold— from Mary’s perspective.