Title: The zoo where you're fed to God
First published: 1994
Description: The Zoo Where You're Fed to God is a haunting tale of love and reconciliation written by an acclaimed essayist, screenwriter, and poet. James Abbey, a successful surgeon, is a man so tightly wound that he could have a nervous breakdown in the middle of a crowd, and nobody would notice. And that's exactly what happens one day, when he finds himself at the zoo and starts hearing voices.

In The Zoo Where You're Fed to God, Michael Ventura takes us into the mind of a man whose ties to his family, his friends, and his world have suddenly unraveled, stranding him in a realm of eerie luminosity. Even though he understands that he is going mad, he finds something irresistible, even wonderful, about his new state of mind - and so he keeps coming back to the zoo, where he begins seeing into the very souls of the animals.

A tiger signals to him . . . a giraffe walks into another dimension . . . chimpanzees demonstrate love . . . and a rare antelope called the gerenuk shows how delicacy and dignity can survive in a harsh world.

It is only when James meets and befriends Lee, a cashier at a convenience store who sings in a rock band, that he starts to understand his eleven-year-old son, Eddie, who has been experiencing a breakdown of his own - which had left James and his ex-wife, Elizabeth, feeling helpless. But now, slowly connecting with a side of himself he didn't even know he had, James is able to begin reforging connections with his loved ones.

A love story, a tale of desperation and the search for peace, and a powerful personal saga of the hidden powers of the imagination, The Zoo Where You're Fed to God provides an unforgettable look at the human truth that lies behind the mask of madness.
Subjects: Fiction, Mental illness, Interpersonal relations, California, fiction, Los angeles (calif.), fiction
Places: Los Angeles (Calif.), California, Los Angeles
LC classification: PS3572.E5 Z43 1994