Eiren Caffall's debut, The Mourner's Bestiary, is an ardent elegy for her illness-haunted family and for the ailing marine environments that inspire her.
For centuries, the author's family has been subject to "the Caffall Curse": polycystic kidney disease, a degenerative genetic condition that causes fluid-filled cysts to proliferate in a person's enlarged kidneys. PKD can involve pain, fatigue, high blood pressure, kidney failure, and a heightened risk of brain aneurysm. Given Caffall's paternal family history, she expected to die before age 50.
Caffall's melancholy memoir spotlights moments that opened her eyes to medical and environmental catastrophe. When she was nine years old, she and her parents vacationed at a rental cottage on Long Island Sound. They nicknamed the pollution-ridden site "Dogshit Beach"--her mother spent idyllic childhood summers there, yet now "both the ecosystem and my father were slipping away." For the first time, Caffall became aware of her father's suffering and lack of energy. She realized that she, too, might have inherited PKD and could face similar struggles as an adult.
The book draws fascinating connections between personal experiences and ecological threats: "the Sound was dying, hypoxic... from an overwhelm of nutrients flooding an ecosystem--nitrogen, phosphorus, imbalanced saline--the same things that overwhelm a body when kidneys can no longer filter blood properly." Re-created scenes enliven accounts of family illness and therapeutic developments. The lyrical hybrid narrative, informed by scientific journals and government publications, is as impassioned about restoring the environment as it is about ensuring equality of access to health care. Personal and species extinction are just cause for "permanent mourning," but adapting to change keeps hope alive. --Rebecca Foster, freelance reviewer, proofreader, and blogger at Bookish Beck