The urban fox walks a line between the ordered world and one of wildness. It carries a lot of symbolic weight on its back. In Guardian feature writer Paula Cocozza’s debut novel, How to Be Human, the fox offers liberation but also collapse.

Mary, who has recently ended a relationship with a controlling man, becomes fascinated with the fox that prowls her neighbourhood – a fascination that grows into obsession. The fox is everything she seeks and needs. She wants to make him hers.

She stops going to work. She stops speaking to people, she’s unravelling, but because Cocozza puts us, mostly, inside Mary’s mind, her actions seems rational, her love pure. Some passages are narrated from the fox’s perspective and Cocozza pulls off the tricky task of marrying these two approaches. The results are unsettling, the writing often vivid and rich, even if Mary, on occasion, seems to fade into the words.

• How to Be Human by Paula Cocozza is published by Hutchinson (£12.99). To order a copy for £11.04, go to bookshop.theguardian.com or call 0330 333 6846