Almost a decade ago a group of Canadian and British scientists made a remarkable observation about the social lives of sperm whales in the Sargasso and Caribbean seas. While mother whales dived deep to hunt for squid, others assumed the role of “allomothers”, caring for the calf at the water’s surface (the popular press referred to these whales as “babysitters”). The paper by the scientists was part of a growing body of eye-opening research into whales’ social behaviour, which centres on those close-knit groups called pods.
Pods, human as well as cetacean, come up repeatedly in Doreen Cunningham’s debut, Soundings, a striking, brave and often lyrical book that defies easy interpretation. It’s the story of a single mother and her two-year-old son, Max, and their journey to follow the whales that migrate from Baja California to the Arctic. But this is not really a work of natural history. Mother and son are in a state of turmoil and, like the whales they pursue, must navigate an environment that appears callous, if not hostile, and rely on friendship to get by. The experiences of the alienated pair are inseparable from their literary quarry, and as they travel up the Pacific coast, whale and human cultures seem to converge, eroding the gap between ourselves and our distant mammalian cousins.
