It is the third novel in her climate trilogy, a story of ocean survival told from the point of view of a young female spinner dolphin forced to survive in an alien bottlenose dolphin culture.
The story is based in real animal and environmental biology, and it is easy to call cetaceans people because they are so emotionally bonded as to follow one beloved member of their pod to death rather than abandon them. We hope and we fear that animals are more like us than we imagine, and vice versa.
When writing from an animal’s point of view, Paull imagines herself into another form as fully and physically and emotionally as she can. We all need help regaining that part of ourselves that is capable of wonder and empathy and shame-free responses. We are only going to solve our extremely urgent environmental crisis if we allow ourselves to care, with all our hearts.
Paull had to deeply investigate what her own species is doing to the ocean and its creatures. She had to understand the biology of every species she wrote about, such as spinner dolphins, bottlenose dolphins, humpback whales, pilot whales, the giant Napoleon Wrasse who changes gender according to the needs of the shoal, the puffer fish the bottlenose use to get high, the giant clams who filter pollution, and the parasitic remora fish.
The truth is far stranger and more amazing than anything Paull could make up—but it’s not enough on its own. We need to understand the pain of whaling and the destruction of the natural world. We are in this present and terrible environmental crisis because of a failure of imagination and empathy, and a veneration of greed.
Paull’s novel Pod is a reminder of the beauty and magic of cetaceans, who most surely know love, friendship, fun, culture, erotic entertainment, surfing, jokes, drug-taking, politics, and even fashion. It is also a call to action for us to recognize our responsibility for the environment and to care for it with all our hearts.
