Tag: animals

Unlikely Animals by Annie Hartnett (Literary Fiction)

Writing: 4/5 Plot: 5/5 Characters: 5/5

Wonderfully fun and engaging book — one of the most creative I’ve read in a long time.

Emma was born with “The Charm” — magic hands that could heal injuries in her small New Hampshire community. But the charm appears to have deserted her as she is called back from medical school (which she never exactly started) to “heal” her rapidly declining father. As part of his degenerative brain disease, he sees things — hordes of rabbits, stray cats, and a long-dead naturalist (Ernest Harold Baynes — the real life Dr. Doolittle!) who keeps him company. You would assume these were all hallucinations but then the narrator of the book is the collective “we” of the local grave dwellers who provide occasional opinionated commentary on events. And from here it just gets weirder and more fun. Despite tackling a number of disturbing issues: the opioid crisis, degenerative brain disease, a missing person, and drastic and unintentional life plan changes, this novel is always cheerful and always fun. A highly responsible stray dog, an expensive imported Russian fox, and some pretty adorable 5th graders join the living and the dead in the cast.

Some random fun quotes:
“That’s why we like living with animals so much; they exhibit their joy so outwardly, remind us how to be better alive.”

“Emma found that Moses had ripped open a bag of flour on the couch, another way the dog was dealing with his separation anxiety: challenging himself to make messes that were increasingly difficult to vacuum up.”

“Auggie rolled his eyes toward his skull, and Emma regretted hoping Auggie could pull his life together. In fact, she didn’t care if anything good ever happened to him.”

“It was her wedding china, but she didn’t care. Her marriage wasn’t doing her any favors lately.”

“And Clive knew he was loving, really loving, when he remembered to be.”

“Nothing to be embarrassed of. Just the imperfect human body having a hard time.”

Thank you to Ballantine Books and NetGalley for providing an advance copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. The book will be published on April 12th, 2022.

Zoo City by Lauren Beukes

Writing: 4/5 World Building: 4/5 Plot: 4.5/5 Characters: 4.5/5

A “wow” book for me — a blend of African style juju, speculative fiction twists, and a hard boiled detective story. Real noir. I hadn’t heard of Lauren Beukes before but can’t wait to read more — luckily she is prolific.

Zinzi Lelethu December is our first person narrator — the “animalled,” ex-junkie, hard-boiled, Sam Spade style character with a hefty past just struggling to survive in a dark environment. Hints of being a post-apocalyptic, or at least a post-civilized world, it frankly sounds pretty close to parts of South Africa today — Zoo City is full of the hustle vibe. “Zoos” refer to the intense people-animal pairings that come unrequested to many of those who have committed a crime — Zinzi’s animal is a sloth; boyfriend Benoit’s a mongoose. Zoo City is the area of Johannesburg that has become a hustler ghetto for the animalled.

Zinzi is a finder of lost things — the “talent” that came with the acquisition of her animal. This helps her see webs of connection between people and the things they have lost. While this brings her some remuneration, she works off the bulk of her large drug debt by writing the form letters and processing the responses for current affairs sympathy scams. She is depressingly good at it. In the midst of her self-loathable existence as a petty criminal, she is offered a great deal of money to find someone. And then things start going very wrong.

Although there isn’t a great deal to like about Zinzi, we can’t help but root for her the whole time. I believe this is because we love flawed characters who have or are developing a strong moral sense. While Zinzi makes her way through an unsavory underground, she starts to gain a real sense of right and wrong and develops an interest in actually making something better.