Watching

A fascinating novel exploring the natural world by a Whitbread Award-winning author. A film project exploring the settlement of foreign animals in Great Britain brings six wildlife enthusiasts together in the remote English countryside. This amateur crew soon find themselves on the trail of a mysterious, predatory creature of local myth; in reality, two former members of a private animal collection that had recently closed nearby. During the course of their hunt, each character recounts their most profound and memorable experience of the natural world. These six stories and the main plot itself show that although our imaginations often negate rationality when faced with the unknown, there is a magic and mystery of the wild that cannot be explained away.;Judy Allen’s novel, “Awaiting Developments”, won the Whitbread Award, the Friends of the Earth Earthworm Award, and was Commended for the Carnegie Medal.