Tiger! By Geoffrey Malone
October 4th 2011 21:00
My library has hit the six hundred mark. The sad part is due to the fact they have been stored so neatly on my Borders bookcase, it doesn’t even look like I own that many books – but I do.
With my books all organised now, you would think it would be easy to do another cull. No, because I have gotten rid of so many books in the past that I’m now down to the ones I absolutely treasure and will read again. Which leads to more umming and ahhing.
Hence my hesitation to buy this book, especially when I’m not a fan of tigers. I prefer domestic cats and lions. But when I realised the plot was about tiger poaching, I decided to get it.
Beautifully written, Tiger! is about Kuma the tigress and her cubs and their close calls to death. Their enemy ends up killed by the poachers; the description simple but gory enough for the reader to imagine how horrific the whole process is.
What impressed me about this book was Malone skilfully narrates that poaching debate is not as black and white as it first seems. It’s the classic tale of the people at the bottom being driven by economic desperation to take on such unpleasant work for relatively little money while the big guys at the top reap all the profits. That said, I finished the book feeling sad and angry that tigers are being killed for traditional Chinese herbal medicine which does not seem to have any proven benefit.
“It’s the power of the mind,” said Fred.
“The placebo effect,” I added.
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