review of a novel about Gilbert White's tortoise Timothy--

"So it is with humans," Timothy explains. "Quickness draws their eye. Entangles their attention. What they notice they call reality. But reality is a fence with many holes, a net with many tears." Just as Melville revealed the ambivalence of the natural, Timothy sees ambivalence in the human: "The truth of my time among humans. As subject to their neglect, their forgetfulness, their most trivial intentions, as I am to their malice. As vulnerable to their wonder as their loathing." Yet there is cause for hope, even sympathy. "Sense of wonder rising within him," Timothy observes of the aging White. "Not at the beauty of nature alone. But at what it knows."