The way this book was written actually caught me off-guard, and not just because of the many instances where animals are calling each other asses! In terms of the language used, although I knew that this book is rather old I never expected it to be quite so posh, and to even sprinkle in a little bit of French now and then. Makes me wonder what age the original audience was intended for, since I don't think even Alice in Wonderland had this kind of vocabulary. Sadly this book also dates itself by the inclusion of anti-Romani racism, where a character's first thought upon seeing a Romani traveler was to think about jumping him 🫩 Another question I have about the writing is... what exactly are the rules here?? Animals can all speak to one another, and yet there's mention of animals keeping other animals as pets, or in the case of horses, either the animals are all big enough to ride horses or the horses themselves are shrunk down enough to critter size. At one moment you'll be hearing about how tiny an animal is, and the next you'll get a scene where they're all roughly the same size as one another, and at another time their houses are so big that several birds can perch at once. And these animals also have no qualms about eating any cut of pig or any kind of sausage... It's implied that there are humans in this world, and I think there may have even been humans as a side characters (since it was never once mentioned if they were an animal or what kind), and so I guess animals and humans are just all the same size?? I guess the worldbuilding is up to interpretation. Oh but Christianity does exist in this universe and Goat Jesus died for your sins so write that down

I know that a lot of people say that they prefer Nao's chapters over Ruth's but I have to say that I think that Ruth's chapters being written in a more formal tone that jars against Nao's writing is something that actually gives the story more depth. The contrast between them is compelling, and so your first impression of them both is that they are complete opposites. It's only as the story continues and you see the parallels of their lives that you really start to see the boundaries between the two begin to blur. At times, I didn't know how to feel about the magical realism aspect - I normally enjoy it, but there were times here where it teetered a little too much on the fantastical side and started to pull me out. Luckily though, it never went overboard and so I found the ending to be satisfying enough. I do like that there are aspects of the story that were never answered and that we're left to wonder about, because that open-endedness feels really on-brand for the messaging of the story. The moral: you have your whole life ahead of you! Snap out of it! Snap out of it! Snap snap snap! Live!