A collection of 3 loosely-connected stories, but only the last one is worth reading (but you have to read the first two to appreciate it). It's a meditation on humans as animals and our connection to the natural world that is, at times, lovely, but drags far too slowly for me to recommend it. It would have been a nice section of a larger short story collection if each story were 30-50 pages long, but at 335 pages, there wasn't enough narrative to sustain the allegories. Don't tarnish your memory of the luminous Life of Pi.