I have never eaten a person, but today I might.
That is how Henry Hoke’s Open Throat starts. It hits you like a physical weight. It’s not just a sentence; it’s a mission statement for a book that is, quite frankly, one of the weirdest and most beautiful things to come out of the American literary scene in years. But here is the thing: if you go into this expecting a standard "talking animal" story or some Pixar-esque adventure, you’re going to be very confused.
People keep calling it a novel. It’s more of a prose-poem fever dream. It’s lean—barely 160 pages—and it moves with the terrifying, silent speed of the mountain lion that narrates it.
The Lion Under the Hollywood Sign
The "open throat" of the title isn't just about the physical hunger of a predator. It’s about the vulnerability of being alive in a world that wasn't built for you. Our narrator is a queer, genderqueer mountain lion living in the brush under the Hollywood sign. This isn't just a metaphor. The book is actually dedicated to P-22, the real-life celebrity mountain lion of Los Angeles who lived in Griffith Park and became a symbol of urban wildlife isolation before being euthanized in late 2022.
Henry Hoke doesn't give the lion a name. The lion doesn't need one. Instead, they give us a perspective that is sharp, fragmented, and deeply judgmental of the "hikers" who stomp through the hills.
The language is the first thing that trips people up. Hoke writes without traditional punctuation. No commas. No periods. Scarcely any capital letters except for "I." It’s meant to mimic the way a non-human might process the world—as a continuous stream of sensory input and misinterpreted human speech.
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The lion hears hikers talking about their therapists and their "scarcity mindset," but because the lion doesn't know the word, they hear it as "scare city." It’s a brilliant linguistic trick. It reminds us that for a wild animal, Los Angeles isn't a city of dreams; it is literally a scare city.
Why the "Queer" Label Matters
A lot of readers get hung up on why a mountain lion is labeled as queer. Honestly, it’s not about the lion having a political identity. It’s about the feeling of being outside the norm. The lion remembers a "kill sharer" from their past—a male-identifying cat—and the memories are tinged with a specific kind of longing and grief that feels inherently queer.
In a town like "ellay" (the lion’s phonetic spelling of L.A.), everyone is performing. The lion watches people from the shadows, seeing their secrets, their hookups in the caves, and their inherent violence. By making the lion queer, Hoke aligns the animal’s struggle for survival with the struggle of marginalized people. When a wildfire eventually forces the lion out of the hills and into the suburban sprawl, the book shifts from a nature study into a social critique that feels like a "Disney film on acid."
Fact vs. Fiction: The Two Henry Hokes
You’ve got to be careful when you search for this stuff. There is actually a bit of a "glitch in the matrix" regarding the name Henry Hoke.
- Henry Hoke (The Author): This is the real-life person who wrote Open Throat. He’s a Charlottesville native, an MFA grad from CalArts, and a brilliant writer who also penned the memoir Sticker.
- Henry Hoke (The Inventor): This is a completely fictional character created by Australian writer Mark Thomson. This "other" Henry Hoke is a legendary fake inventor of things like "pre-dug fence post holes" and "dehydrated water."
If you're looking for the book about the mountain lion, you want the first one. Don't go looking for blueprints for a "random excuse generator" unless you want to end up in a rabbit hole of Australian satire.
What Really Happens in the End?
Without spoiling the climax, the narrative takes a hard turn when the lion ends up in the home of a celebrity's daughter. This is where the "open throat" concept really comes to a head. There is a tension between the lion's predatory nature and the human desire to domesticate or "save" the wild.
The book asks a very uncomfortable question: is it better to be a hungry, free predator, or a well-fed, captive pet?
The ending is divisive. Some readers find it abrupt. I think it’s perfect. It doesn't give you the satisfaction of a clean resolution because nature doesn't give you clean resolutions. One minute you're the king of the hills, and the next, you're breathing in the "long death" of the 405 freeway.
How to Approach Open Throat
If you're going to read this, do it in one sitting. It's designed that way.
- Ignore the lack of punctuation. Don't try to "fix" it in your head. Let the words wash over you like a rhythm.
- Look for the wordplay. When the lion talks about "green paper" (money) or "the long death" (the highway), think about how much more accurate those terms are than the ones we use.
- Acknowledge the grief. This book is a eulogy. It’s a eulogy for P-22, for the disappearing wild, and for the parts of ourselves we have to kill to fit into a "civilized" society.
The "open throat" is a state of being. It's a hunger that can't be satisfied by food alone. Henry Hoke has managed to write a book that feels like it was clawed out of the earth. It's brutal, it's funny, and it will probably make you look at your own house cat—and your own city—a lot differently.
To get the most out of the experience, read it while listening to a soundscape of the Los Angeles hills at night. The sirens in the distance mixed with the crickets create the exact atmosphere Hoke is channeling. After you finish, look up the story of P-22’s life; seeing the real-world inspiration makes the lion’s internal monologue feel even more hauntingly real.