Open Throat by Henry Hoke

Open Throat is a short novel in which a queer mountain lion living in the Hollywood hills attempts to understand their own self and the humans around them. The lion roams the hills, not hurting humans, but trying to protect those in a homeless camp and not scare the hikers who don’t even see the lion mostly. But wilderness fires are a constant threat and when the lion is driven further into LA, a new friendship will change how the lion interacts with humans forever.

I heard saw this book raved about on a list of top LGBTQ books coming out in 2023, and the strange synopsis made me unsure if it would be great or impenetrable, but it turns out, it would be so good that it made me deeply invested in the perspective of a fictional lion grappling with selfhood and knowledge. So many of the lion’s thoughts as they react to what people say and do have such quiet sadness, and the almost stream-of-consciousness style works very well to suggest fluidity and playfulness in a book that is somehow both satirical and heartbreaking, with a strangely real sense of life on the margins, trying to find a place for yourself (even when you are a lion and that place is LA).

Both a commentary on modern society and a fresh way of exploring queerness and self, Open Throat is a book that is notable for the concept, but memorable for the way in which the lion becomes such a real character, and through such witty, poetic writing. A book I’ll find myself trying to recommend to people even when the summary sounds weird.