Darwin's Wink : a Novel of Nature and Love, by Alison Anderson (New York : Thomas Dunne Books, 2004).
At dusk the woman stands at the edge of the island to watch the birds in flight above the lagoon. Hers is not a usual, distant, appreciative watching; she has a trained eye, and she looks for signs in the birds' flight, for the slow, imperceptive markers of evolution.
She is in a place where evolution can be witnessed in a bird's lifetime, not far from the island of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean. Two generations of Dutch and Portuguese explorers transformed an uninhabited fifteenth-century paradise into a laboratory for naturalists for centuries to come. -- from Darwin's Wink, by Alison Anderson
Open the pages of Alison Anderson's Darwin's Wink : a Novel of Nature and Love and you enter the tropical island of Mauritius and its offshore nature preserve, Ile aux Aigrettes, Egret Island, "a hatchling of coral reef." Fran, "closer to fifty than forty," works for an "independent foundation." Their goal is to "return the island to prehuman conditions." She has a passion for her work, especially her attempts to save the fictional "mourner-bird" from extinction, and a sadness and loneliness from the mysterious death of her lover and colleague, Satish. Fran has recently hired Christian, in his thirties, Swiss, and a former "delegate for the International Committee of the Red Cross." He, too, is consumed by sadness and loneliness after working in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Bosnia where his lover, Nermina, pregnant with his child, disappeared during the war. He is seeking refuge on Egret Island, "among the birds."
Other characters enter the pages -- Sean, Asmita, Bertrand, Jean-Baptiste, Monsieur Razel, even Charles Darwin who surfaces in Fran's thoughts. Egret Island is a model for evolution and survival. As Fran tries to save "the mourner-birds" and other endangered species, she is at the mercy of politics, greed, pollution, and nonnative species, including "tamarind, eucalyptus, banyan, casuarinas and flame trees, sugarcane; cats, dogs, mongosses, rats, asses, monkeys. Humans." Randomness -- "Darwin's wink" -- also threatens, for instance the randomness of a cyclone that can level the island in a matter of hours, setting back hopes for survival. The randomness that enters human lives is also part of the story. When an unexpected, near fatal, incident eases the emotional boundaries between Fran and Christian, they move toward each other for love, understanding, and comfort.
Throughout Darwin's Wink what's real and imagined interweave. While following the lives of Fran and Christian, readers get to know Egret Island, Mauritius, and the life they support. We can imagine the ride on the dinghy from Egret Island, "a short green poem of a place," across the lagoon to Mahébourg, bustling with people. There is the river gorge of the Black River and the coral reefs that almost surround Mauritius. While the "mourner-bird" is fictional, the other birds, wildlife, and plant life described in the book exist. The Mauritius Kestrel, "with the wisdom of its bright-eyed instinct," was once the world's rarest bird. As of 2000, between 650 and 800 soared above Mauritius. Still rare, but with an increasing population, the pink pigeon can be found on Egret Island and at several other sites. These are the pigeons that charm Christian in Darwin's Wink, so different from the pigeons he'd thought of as "airborne rats." "Imagine, he will say to Fran, the Piazza del Duomo in Milan covered in cooing pink pigeons...." Plants mentioned, such as the "precious orchid," Oeonilla aphrodite, with its lovely, delicate fragrance, exist and are unique to Mauritius. Death, extinction, survival, thread through the pages of Darwin's Wink. Both sad and hopeful, the book takes readers to a place where "you [can] imagine possibility."
Website
The Mauritian Wildlife Foundation: http://www.mauritian-wildlife.org/.
Learn about the foundation. There are photographs and information on island species, including the Mauritius Kestrel and Pink Pigeon. "Egret Island," Alison Anderson writes in her "author's note," "is based on a real island off the coast of Mauritius. Ile aux Aigrettes is indeed a nature preserve, established in 1965; rehabilitation work began in 1985 under the auspices of the Mauritius Wildlife Appeal [now the Mauritian Wildlife Foundation] and is ongoing; a visitors' center was opened a few years ago."
Lately I imagine a conversation with Charles Darwin. I tell him about the storm, the mourner-bird; I tell him about my life. The great man nods, agrees; we become quiet companions. And when I ask for some comfort, something in his scheme for those like me, he begins to stroke his beard, pensive. I wait, expecting to hear his deep, earnest voice pronounce words of thoughtful wisdom; instead what shakes me from within my dreamy musing is the sound of his full-hearted and unrepentant laughter. -- from Darwin's Wink, by Alison Anderson
Does Mauritius have seasons? For some, the heat blurs all difference into an accumulation of days whose surface is too smooth to be marked by time. But Fran can mark the seasons by the subtle changes in her world: seasons for breeding, for flowering, for molting; almost imperceptible shifts in air and water temperature, in cloud formation, wind direction. And the drama of cyclone season... For Fran cyclone season is a time of fear, when small animals disappear, fragile before the blizzard, buried beneath drifts of debris, avalanches of earth or wave. A cyclone, Fran knows, can extinguish a species, destroying its last habitat, killing its last fertile individuals; defeating natural evolution. The stochastic factor, or the act of God; Darwin's wink. -- from Darwin's Wink, by Alison Anderson
Golden Bats and Pink Pigeons, by Gerald Durrell (House of Stratus, 2003; first U.S. edition 1977)