Fantastic New Novel: ‘The Awareness’

the-awareness-cover.jpg“The Awareness” is a riveting new novel from Gene Stone and Jon Doyle that envisions a time when all animals suddenly gain a universal consciousness and rise up en masse against humankind.

Told through the eyes of four protagonists, “The Awareness” is a book for anyone who’s grappled with humanity’s oftentimes brutal treatment of animals.

We were lucky enough to chat with Gene about the origins and themes of the novel.

1. Can you talk about the overall inspiration for the novel?

I’ve written several books about veganism, including “Forks Over Knives” and (with Rip Esselstyn) “The Engine 2 Diet,” and am now working with Gene Baur on his forthcoming book about Farm Sanctuary. There are many other non-fiction books about plant-based diets out there as well. It’s amazing how many have been published in the last decade, and quite a number of them are terrific. But there hasn’t been much fiction.

I strongly believe that one of the best ways to get people to pay attention, and perhaps even convince them to change their ways, is to tell stories — stories that, if you’re lucky, are so much fun to read that you don’t necessarily know that there’s an agenda behind the story. So I decided to try my hand at creating a story that would be both entertaining for any reader, but would perhaps also trigger some deeper thoughts about the relationship between humans and animals.

2. You’ve chosen as your animal protagonists a bear in the Rockies, a “circus elephant,” a factory-farmed pig, and a dog with a human family. Why did you choose these characters and how do they reflect our deeply contradictory attitudes toward animals?

I wrote this book with my friend Jon Doyle, and we spent a great deal of time trying to figure out which animals would be the most archetypical. We decided eventually that we wanted an animal who was a human companion (the dog, although I love cats so much I had to include one in the dog chapters); an animal who was being raised for food (the pig); an animal being mistreated for human entertainment (the elephant); and an animal who had no contact with humans — that’s the bear. This allowed us to show how differently humans treat various animals; the dog has been loved, the elephant abused, the bear feared, and the pig, well, the poor pig, we didn’t even give her a name, just a number, to show how little humans think about our food products.

3. What about your personal relationship with animals? How has that evolved throughout your life?

Like so many people, I’ve always loved animals. I grew up with a dog whom I loved dearly and still think about, and have had cats all my adult life, both ones that are my companions, and rescues that I foster until I can find a home for them. And I’ve been a vegetarian for two decades.

But despite my love for animals I only became a vegan about six years ago. I feel absolutely terrible about that long gap of time. What was I thinking? Eating eggs and dairy is not the way to love and respect animals. I need to make up for all that lost time, and that’s why my goal is to write as many books as possible to help others see what it took me so long to understand.

4. With which character from the novel do you most identify?

That’s a little like asking a parent which of his children he loves the most. I love all four characters, as well as Clio the cat, the ferret, and the goat. Jon and I want to write a sequel in which both those guys get more play. But I suppose at this exact moment the pig is the character with whom I identify the most, particularly when she walks through the human house and begins to wonder what her life might have been like if she had been able to raise a family and watch them grow, as the humans did. Her sorrow and regret hurt me.

But tomorrow, I might say it’s the elephant I care most about, because the pain she felt as a youngster resonates so strongly with me, as does her desire for revenge. And sometimes it’s the dog with his inability to choose between love and conviction. Or the bear, with his Godlike ability to see what others can’t. Creating these characters was the most enjoyable part of the book.

5. Mercy is an important theme in the book. After all humanity has done to animals, do you think we deserve it?

That’s such a powerful question! Much of the time I don’t believe we do. How did we get to this place where 98 percent of Americans say they love animals, yet don’t think for a moment about how they are treated. But I would like to think that if this scenario ever actually happened, that animals did get universal consciousness and communication skills, they would be better than humans and could find a place in their hearts where they could forgive us.

Wouldn’t it be remarkable if the next stage of evolution on earth was one where empathy and compassion were valued more than anything else — by all creatures?

6. It’s been said that when you finish reading a great novel you walk away changed. How do you hope your book changes people?

The book’s title is a bit of a double entendre; ostensibly it refers to the fact that one day the animals get what we’re calling, for lack of a better word, awareness (and I do think they have much more awareness right now than we give them credit for). But in my mind the book is really about changing the awareness of humans. If people read this book and their awareness of the way we treat animals is at all affected, then the book did its job.