Wild Nights

A walk on the wild side in New York City - and a glimpse of the evolving urban landscape of the twenty-first century and of the creatures who will rule it...


Though at first glance somewhat unlikely, it's a testament to the style and fizz of Matthews' writing that within pages of beginning her book on how the natural world is reclaiming the planet's megacities, focusing on New York, the reader is eating out of her palm like the tamest city sparrow... The book hums with refreshment and enlightenment at every turn and dances around its subject as gracefully and nimbly as a wild turkey (you don't think a turkey can be graceful? just read Wild Nights). Now, the book is not quite as terminally parochial as I've made out (and, anyway, anyone who has ever fallen for Manhattan is going to be thrilled by this revelation of another nightlife in that pulsating city) - after all, the dynamics of change within the great metropoli (London, Shanghai, Calcutta, Tokyo, Rio, LA, Mexico City, Lagos, Kuala Lumpur etc) are very similar, as are the tactics of the rodents, falcons, bears, birds, insects and amphibians who are finding new ways to thrive in each of these places. And it's worth stressing that the book is not non-human at all: the key players are the individuals who devote their lives to monitoring, intercepting and ameliorating the lives of their feathered, furry or fanged friends; and then there's the silent majority of humans who think too little, if at all, at the massive changes their species is inflicting on their immediate environment. It's a powerful book that becomes cumulatively political in the true sense because at no stage does it strike a single political pose or shoot a single politcal arrow. It's a liberating and mind-cleansing reading experience.