The Animals in That Country (2020) by Laura Jean McKay

Book Review

The Animals in That Country (2020) 

by Laura Jean McKay

   The Animals in That Country, by Australian author Laura Jean McKay ticked several boxes that made me want to read it.   First, it's a prize winner from another English speaking country that won an international award (Arthur C. Clarke) as well as a domestic award (Victorian Premier's Literary Award.)  At this point, with a well publicized release in both the UK and the US, it counts as a borderline literary/science fiction cross-over sensation.  And did I mention the original publisher was a small press in Australia?

    It is always a fair bet that if you even hear about a book from another English language country getting a wide release in the United States, it means that book has what it takes to be a hit with both critics and audiences.  Otherwise, a publisher wouldn't even bother.  This is a different phenomenon then when books published in other English language countries get released in the US without a separate campaign- that's just a dumping, or cross-posting situation.

   The idea of The Animals in That Country is that a virus infects the population and allows them to understand what animals, and eventually insects, are saying.  One might naturally suppose that this means that humans can "talk to animals" but that isn't really the case- the reality turns out to be much more horrifying, as humans face the consequences of their casual cruelty to most of god's creatures.  The narrator- is Jean, a washed-up, alcoholic grandma who ekes out a living as a hanger-on at an outback wild life park in Australia, serving at the sufferance of her daughter-in-law (now separated from her son), who runs the park. 

   The plotting is conventionally genre, but the writing is not, and anyone who doubts that McKay is a writer of literary fiction trying to make a name for herself in the kiddie pool might consider that the name of this book comes from a poem by Margaret Atwood, who knows something about the line between genre and literary fiction.   What isn't conventionally genre is the writing, particularly McKay's deft handling of the animal voices.   The Animals in That Country is deeply unsettling and worthy of the international audience it has obtained.