Unlikely Animals
A Novel
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- ¥1,400
発行者による作品情報
“This tragicomic novel is heartfelt, touching, and delightfully quirky. You’ll fall in love with the offbeat cast of characters (both living and dead) and find yourself rooting for them right through the last page.”—Good Housekeeping (Book Club pick)
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.
ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The Washington Post, Book Riot • Longlisted for the Joyce Carol Oates Prize
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 medical school dropout, she’s come back to small-town Everton, New Hampshire, to care for her father, who is dying from a mysterious brain disease. Clive Starling has been hallucinating small animals, as well as having 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 judgment, 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 bring about 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.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Hartnett (Rabbit Cake) delivers a quirky ghost story set in present-day Upper Valley, N.H., inspired by the legacy of naturalist Ernest Harold Baynes. Emma Starling, 22, drops out of medical school to help care for her father, Clive, who is suffering from a rare brain disease. Clive was forced to retire from his professorship due to his hallucinations of animals and is now obsessed with finding Emma's high school best friend Crystal Nash, who has been missing for several months. When Emma becomes a substitute teacher for fifth graders, she's drawn back into all the drama of her hometown, including her brother Auggie's opioid addiction and her mother Ingrid's unhappiness. With the police unconcerned over Crystal's disappearance, Emma decides to work with Clive to solve the mystery. The ghosts of various dead townspeople weigh in throughout, such as "real-life Doctor Doolittle" Baynes, whom Clive reveres and who now tells Clive what to do. Others lend an amusing point of view to the proceedings ("one of the perks of being dead, omniscience within town limits," one of them says). While the jarring ending is hard to swallow, Hartnett's clever prose and brisk pacing will carry readers through. Hartnett's whimsical storytelling casts a spell.
