Feral City

The last time I stood on a subway platform in Toronto, I noticed a soot-grey mouse foraging for goodness knows what in the tracks. Sad little sight. But nature is enterprising in the modern city—and, it seems, increasingly diverse. Within Ottawa’s limits I have been surprised by muskrats, foxes and deer. This summer at the eastern edge a moose blundered into a schoolyard and got itself shot. To the south the coyote population is sufficiently brash to bring the trappers out. In fact, this particular character is raising human hackles across North America—as Orion magazine recently reported, Canis latrans is “the new dog in town.”

What a pleasure to find in Fauna, Alissa York’s latest novel, such a tenderly observed inventory of a city’s feral denizens, from subway mice to red-tailed hawks. In fact, her species count ranges widely in time and terrain: associated with almost every scene, character, back story and memory (and with a good many...