Second Nature by Alice Hoffman
I just finished reading Second Nature by Alice Hoffman. I was into it at first, then it slowed down for a while, then I just sort of hurried through it to the end. (WARNING: moderate spoilers following)
Second Nature is about Stephen, a man raised by wolves who is found by trappers and turned over to a hospital, and Robin, the woman who introduces him to life among humans. It is about love and all its manifestations, and about the darkness that can exist in any human.
Love exists in so many relationships in this book. Robin and Roy. Robin and Stephen. Stephen and Connor. Old Dick and Ginny. Old Dick and Stephen. Robin and Michelle. Connor and Lydia. Michelle and Lydia. Stuart and Kay. Roy and The Doctor. Erotic love, familial love, adoring love, new love, old love, earned love. There was Michelle, mother of Lydia, who worked as a high school guidance counselor but when she realized her daughter was growing up she found the advice she usually gave to other parents much harder to swallow. There’s Robin and Roy and their teenage son Connor, all of them judging one another for the way they handle their intimate relationships. And then there’s Old Dick, a wonderful character, the grandfather and main caregiver to Robin and Stuart, a man who didn’t seem to give a damn about his family but as you learn more about him you see what he does value — courage and the adventurous spirit. He’s a modern take on early American lit figures, the man who values land and exploration.
Second Nature also takes place on an island, which adds a sense of claustrophobia and inevitability to all this tension, that there is no way to escape love. Or death (no man is an island, anyone? oh, the irony). And this love, this love that has everyone on the island up in arms, thrives off a single unspoken rule here, a rule that drives Stephen crazy as he tries to adjust to living among men vs wolves:
When it comes to love, you mustn’t speak.
Don’t ever say what you’re truly feeling. Don’t ever say what you mean. And those who do pay a price in this book. That is what compelled me the most in this book, the way it always went back to Stephen and his animal tendencies from living amongst the wolves, and one of the best parts was Stephen’s reflection on acting on impulse. To act on impulse AND not be wrong. There is no debate in the woods, no time to question if something is or is not the right move. There is only a moment to do it, and do it right, or suffer the consequences. And entering a world of humans where every move is scrutinized and everything can mean something else, and lo, even the people you least suspect can turn out to be the worst kinds of people anywhere – it’s almost too much for Stephen. He’s gone from living amongst wolves to humans, or is it the other way around?
The reason I continue to read Alice Hoffman, above all, is because I am a fan of magical realism. I’m a fan of believing that a man could be raised by wolves and after a few months of hanging with the humans would simply fit in. I’m also a fan of Hoffman’s descriptive passages, of blood in ice, of cold weather and warm bodies, of our beautiful world.
I leave you with this passage and you can decide for yourself if this book is up your alley:
One afternoon, when the light was cool and bright, Stephen went into the kitchen to fix their lunch, and when he returned he found Old Dick crying. All at once Stephen realized what had been happening during those hours when they didn’t speak: he had been learning to tell what it was Old Dick wanted just by looking at him. That he should ever know a man as well as he knew one of his brothers was disturbing, but it was also a simple fact. Stephen put their plates of soup down on the night table, then bundled Old Dick in a blanket, the heaviest one he could find, and carried him downstairs. It was nothing to carry him. Stephen felt he could have gone on forever, but he stopped in the center of the lawn, where the pile of scarlet leaves was scattered on the grass. This was all Old Dick wanted, to see the sky, not through glass but as it truly was, a blue dome so brilliant it could bring tears to a man’s eyes.
