Publishers Weekly
★ 08/21/2023
Stony Brook University ecology professor Safina (Becoming Wild) shares the moving story of how he and his wife, Patricia, rescued and rehabilitated an orphaned eastern screech owl they named Alfie. Safina, a licensed wildlife rehabilitator, took in the bird in 2018 after receiving a tip about a baby owl that had fallen out of its nest. Nursing Alfie back to health, the Safinas let her roam freely about their house and gradually acclimated her to the outdoors, keeping the owlet first in a chicken coop and then leaving the coop door open so she could come and go as she pleased. Safina continued providing Alfie meals until she learned to hunt on her own, and she eventually found a mate, dubbed Plus-One, with whom she raised a brood. Philosophical musings on humanity’s beliefs about nature add intellectual rigor to the heartwarming story; Safina laments how Plato’s view of the spiritual world as distinct from and superior to the material world led Western society to devalue nature, a perspective Safina contrasts critically with Native American cultures that believe animals are “thinking and emotional beings who have minds, communicate among themselves, act with agency on their own behalf.” Stirring and ruminative, this is an excellent complement to Irene Pepperberg’s Alex and Me. Agent: Jennifer Weltz, Jean V. Naggar Literary. (Oct.)
Sy Montgomery
"Carl Safina has written a book of great wisdom and beauty, full of drama and insight. How right to choose an owl, symbol of learning, to help us see anew the twinned truths of compassion and connection—gifts our kind desperately needs to keep our world alive."
People
"Irresistible."
Isabella Rossellini
"Little Alfie unleashed a meditation about life itself and how our culture has shaped our way of seeing the world and our place in it. A unique book that is scientific and spiritual at the same time."
Wall Street Journal - Julie Zickefoose
"Alfie’s story is wonderfully told, drawing back night’s curtain on these feisty and intelligent birds."
Science - Barbara J. King
"Safina’s expansive gratitude for the natural world illuminates every page.... Just like humans’ lives, the lives of owls follow a narrative arc, and it is a pure joy to discover, chapter by chapter, Alfie’s own arc as she matures, mates, and raises a family."
Michael Sims
"Like Blake, Safina sees the world in a grain of sand, holds infinity in the palm of his hand. In addition to Blake’s poetic insight, Safina brings a great deal of scientific knowledge to his work.... Safina’s interrogation of each interaction results in provocative, insightful asides, a pulling-together of the many tributaries of attention to a particular animal, employing his career in the life sciences and the vast reading of world literatures and philosophies."
Psychology Today - Marc Bekoff
"A must-read. This wonderful story offers a life-changing and moving account.... [A] landmark and deeply personal book."
Frans de Waal
"The rescue of a little screech owl brings Carl Safina the unexpected joy of companionship and propagation of the species, leading him to philosophize about humanity and how much we’re part of nature. A delightful read!"
Scott Weidensaul
"This is a book about a foundling owl, and infinitely more. As it turns out, the universe and all its mysteries, our relationship with our wild kin and a better future for ourselves and the planet—all are reflected through the prism of an eight-inch ball of feathers named Alfie. Carl Safina has never been more eloquent, or more urgent. Alfie & Me is masterful."
starred review Booklist
"A wonderfully intimate account.... Interwoven with Safina's broad experience with other cultures’ views on animals and the world and of how they related to Alfie’s life, and richly illustrated with photographs, this a beautifully illuminating work of up-close natural history."
The Guardian - Kim Heacox
"In his new book, Alfie and Me, Carl Safina, one of the United States’ best science and nature authors, adopts an injured owl and writes: ‘Our deeply shared history as living things is why we had the mutual capacity to recognize each other, and be brought into relationship by that strange binding called trust.’ The healing, Safina discovered, goes both ways."
Jennifer Ackerman
"The book is brilliant. It made me laugh, weep, marvel ... at Alfie, at humanity, at you, Carl, and your remarkable insights and sensibility. Bravo! May Alfie and her book soar!"
Kirkus Reviews
★ 2023-07-14
An award-winning ecologist examines his transformative connection to a bird.
When Safina, the author of Beyond Words and Becoming Wild, rescued a screech owl nestling, he did not foresee the transcendent relationship he would forge with the tiny bird that he named Alfie. He and his wife nursed her back to health, hoping to release her into the wild once she was healed. But when her flight feathers were slow to emerge, Safina worried about her ability to fly; then he worried that she would not molt, also putting her in peril. He worried, too, that her “protracted protective custody” would interfere with her hunting instincts. “Did Alfie realize that she was an owl?” he wondered. As Safina lyrically recounts his observations of and interactions with Alfie, he reflects on spirituality, reverence, and the contrast between Indigenous, traditional Asian, and Western ways of being and knowing. Indigenous peoples, he writes, “understand the world as relationships,” while Western thinkers such as Plato, Descartes, and Bacon proclaimed mind-body dualism that taught us “to loathe our natural selves” and underlies our estrangement from nature. He argues vociferously against the materialistic reductionism that he sees prevalent in modern biology. “I happen to find the material world rather wondrous,” he writes. Alfie, he asserts, “is a seer of things, a holder of deep innate knowledge.” She has brought him the gift of perceiving “what is possible when we soften our sense of contrast at the species boundary.” Although photographs of Alfie reveal an adorable bird—in one, she kisses Safina on the lips—readers may be put off by his portrayal of her in human terms: When she responds to a male’s courtship, for example, he describes them as hesitant lovers; when they finally copulate, he calls them honeymooners, “performing a mainly emotional function.” Nonetheless, the author amply conveys a sense of Alfie’s “consistent magic” and essential mystery.
A fervent homage to a dynamic, interdependent universe.
