Unlikely Animals

Unlikely Animals

Annie Hartnett

Enjoyment: Quality: Characters: Plot:

A lost young woman returns to small-town New Hampshire under the strangest of circumstances in this one-of-a-kind novel of life, death, and whatever comes after from the acclaimed author of Rabbit Cake. It was a source of entertainment at Maple Street Cemetery. Both funny and sad, the kind of story we like best. Natural-born healer Emma Starling once had big plans for her life, but she's lost her way. A med school dropout, she's come back to small-town Everton, New Hampshire to care for her father, dying from a mysterious brain disease. Clive Starling has been hallucinating small animals, as well as visions of the ghost of a long-dead naturalist, Ernest Harold Baynes, once known for letting wild animals live in his house. This ghost has been giving Clive some ideas on how to spend his final days. Emma arrives home knowing she must face her dad's illness, her mom's judgement, and her younger brother's recent stint in rehab, but she's unprepared to find that her former best friend from high school is missing, with no one bothering to look for her. The police say they don't spend much time looking for drug addicts. Emma's dad is the only one convinced the young woman might still be alive, and Emma is hopeful he could be right. Someone should look for her, at least. Emma isn't really trying to be a hero—but somehow she and her father set in motion just the kind of miracle the town needs. Set against the backdrop of a small town in the throes of a very real opioid crisis, Unlikely Animals is a tragicomic novel about familial expectations, imperfect friendships, and the possibility of resurrecting that which had been thought irrevocably lost.


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  • Karimartin
    Aug 30, 2024
    Enjoyment: Quality: Characters: Plot:

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  • bookgang
    Mar 30, 2025
    Enjoyment: Quality: Characters: Plot:

     
    Envelope yourself in the pitch-perfect narration of Mark Bramhall, whose audiobook roster includes Charlotte's Web and a 48-hour narration of Robert Chenow's Grant).

    Ultimately, I count it among the most captivating audiobook experiences I've ever listened to and among my favorite books of 2023.

    The book opens with an author's note thanking the local historians who shared the good gossip about Ernest Harold Baynes, born in 1868 and who died in 1925, the real-life Dr. Doolittle of New Hampshire and "alleged total ladies man."

    In this laugh-out-loud literary fiction novel set in small-town New Hampshire, the collective narrator of the town's deceased inhabitants provides an omniscient and humorous viewpoint of small-town happenings.

    Emma is a remarkable and magical child born to Clive and Ingrid Starling..or so the local headline news shares. Her gift of healing is so distinct that she insists the hands of the newborn baby had cured her sciatica while delivering the child.

    Emma, now a dejected dropout medical student, comes home to care for her father, who is suffering from hallucinations and tremors. He has been let go from his position at the University and is plagued by visions of Ernest Baynes.

    Our narrators say, Ernest is a real-life ghost, not a hallucination.

    Compounding his confusion, her father has become fixated on Emma's best friend from childhood, who has gone missing.

    But, in a town riddled by the opioid crisis, it is hard to say where she has gone though.

    While the setup sounds heavy, this is a hopeful and surprisingly lighthearted selection. As the ghost of Ernest enters his powers, this story takes hilarious turns that make you laugh until you cry.

    I want to add a small content warning that some elements might be challenging for anyone close to someone with dementia. There are poignant scenes of anticipatory grief when you know what is to come with losing a parent.

    And honestly, I had anticipatory grief while reading this story because I knew once I finished it, I would never get to read it for the first time again.

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