Number 7- Open Throat- Henry Hoke

This was an impulse buy late last year due to that intriguing cover. that and the blurb saying it was from the POV of a mountain lion living underneath the Hollywood sign.

I love that weird stuff like this is considered mainstream enough to land on the "Look At These New Books" shelves in my local Waterstones.

Basic story- a cougar/mountain lion is living in the hills above L.A (Ellay) and underneath the Hollywood sign. When a fire forces him down from the mountain, he ends up in Ellay itself. To say any more would be spoilers.

It's written in short snappy sentences. The only punctuation in the entire narrative is the capitalised "I" that the narrator uses to refer to himself. Otherwise there are no commas, no full stops, no capital letters or quotation marks.  When reporting things said by the human characters, the text is italicised.

It's a very quick and easy read. I'm not sure the lion's POV is completely convincing all the way through- in particular, a dream sequence we're told about shows knowledge it couldn't possibly have, but other than that it seems feasible.  

In the small subgenre of "narrated by animals", this is a worthy addition. Good to see something other than a dog telling the story.