Her prose, previously published in literary outlets such as Granta, is luminous. She finds clues that unlock how humans have engaged nature-tales of greed, aggression, wonder, desperation, longing, nostalgia, love, curiosity and obsession. In the whale, Giggs truly does find the world. Yet it is Giggs’ poetic and insightful analysis that elevates this book into something unforgettable. She travels to Japan to eat whale and discusses them with others-at dinner parties with friends and in small university offices with academics. She has pursued whales herself, visiting decomposing whales, going whale watching and, as a child, reaching out a small hand to touch a whale skeleton in a museum (a skeleton whose provenance she later traces, wondering how so many dead whales came to hang in museums).

Her investigation is historical, cultural, biological and personal. Whale eyes, whale tongues, whale noises, whale skin: Giggs explores the contours of humans’ obsession with whales over time in terrific specificity. As this opening anecdote suggests, Giggs has an eye for unforgettable and disturbing details that probe at the ancient and ongoing relationship between humans and whales. To avoid contaminating other wildlife, whales euthanized with Green Dream are then hauled to a dump, where they decompose with human waste. Instead, a poison informally known as Green Dream must be shot by the gallon into the whale. She learns that whales cannot be euthanized through a shot to their brain or heart such acts would only increase the creature’s suffering.

As the crowd takes selfies with the heaving leviathan, Giggs approaches an official who might be called upon to euthanize the whale. Australian writer Rebecca Giggs opens her book, Fathoms: The World in the Whale, with a disturbing scene: A crowd has gathered to observe the death of a beached whale, a process that can take days as the whale’s insides boil beneath its blubber.

Fathoms by Rebecca Giggs