NEVERMORE

by David Day, Maurice Wilson (Illustrator)

A Book of Hours is a distillation of thirty years of research and meditation by author and poet David Day, an acknowledged authority on the extinction of species. In its conception and approach, NEVERMORE is unlike any other natural history. It is shot through with a combined sense of wonder and savagery in vivid first encounters and last glimpses of each of these now vanished species. Its commentaries are a treasure trove of historic events and insights to be found nowhere else. And, through its elegies, a profoundly human response to this legacy is revealed. In A Book of Hours, we see how the fates of animals are linked to human Julius Caesar with the Aurochs, Marco Polo with the Elephant Bird, Christopher Columbus with the Eskimo Curlew, John Cabot with the Great Auk, Jacques Cartier with the Passenger Pigeon, Vitus Bering with the Steller Sea Cow, Charles Darwin with the Antarctic Wolf. A Book of Hours is a modern bestiary and a book of remembrance. It is beautifully illustrated by four distinguished wildlife artists; and is a tribute and requiem to vanished species. Creatures that are now as much mythical animals as the dragon and the unicorn; and can be found in the only place they may now in the human imagination.

160 pages, Paperback

First published February 1, 2012

About the author

David Day (b. 14 October 1947 in Victoria, British Columbia) is a Canadian author of over forty books: poetry, natural history, ecology, mythology, fantasy, and children's literature. Internationally he is most notably known for his literary criticism on J. R. R. Tolkien and his works.

After finishing high school in Victoria, British Columbia, Day worked as a logger for five years on Vancouver Island before graduating from the University of Victoria. Subsequently he has travelled widely, most frequently to Greece and Britain.

Day has published six books of poems for adults and ten illustrated children's books of fiction and poetry. His non-fiction books on natural history include The Doomsday Book of Animals, The Whale War, Eco Wars: a Layman Guide to the Environmental Movement, Noah's Choice and most recently Nevermore: A Book of Hours - Meditations on Extinction (2012).

His Doomsday Book was a Time Magazine Book of the Year and became the basis for the 100 part animated-short TV series "Lost Animals of the 20th Century".

David Days best-selling books on the life and works of JRR Tolkien include: A Tolkien Bestiary, Tolkien: the Illustrated Encyclopedia, Tolkien's Ring, The World of Tolkien and The Hobbit Companion.

Day's Tolkien's Ring was illustrated by academy award-winning artist Alan Lee, as was Castles, The Animals Within, Gothic and Quest For King Arthur.

Reviews

[Andrea McDowell · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nevermore is much better in concept than in execution, sadly: 24 species whose extinction was caused by humans, described in contemporary observations prior to extinction, modern scientific knowledge of the species where it exists, a beautiful illustration of what the animal looked like, and a poem about it by the author.

The illustrations were lovely and the contemporary observations were fascinating, but the poems just didn't do it for me. I think it must be hard to create 24 compelling literary works of art on essentially the same theme for a single volume; most of them ended up feeling forced to me.

However, I think the book accomplishes the author's primary aim of creating sympathy and grief for all of these vanished creatures, and reducing sympathy for the human slaughterers. It is very difficult to retain one's admiration for humanity when, over and over, the contemporary accounts of the species and their extinction are, "We found a new country with uncountable numbers of these animals, so innocent and unwary of us that they didn't know to run away, so of course we killed them all for fun."

[Brian Griffith · Rating 5 out of 5]

Day's collection of eyewitness accounts, brief tributary statements, and haunting poems of lamentation, turn grief into fine literary artwork. The text could be read aloud, sung, or screamed in memory of our animal holocausts.