The Animals in That Country is a frighteningly timely story about a flu-like pandemic sweeping the country – what are the chances that author Laura Jean McKay, who was writing this book months if not years ago, would have known it would be published in the middle of a lockdown because of a pandemic? There is one very big difference one of the symptoms of this flu is being able to understand and communicate with animals…
The Animals in That Country asks what would happen if – for better or worse – we finally understood what animals were saying.
Jean is not your usual grandma. She’s rough and ready, an alcoholic and prefers the company of animals, particularly Sue, a dingo that lives in the animal park where she lives and works. She also enjoys the company of her granddaughter Kimberly who is the result of a brief relationship between park manager Angela and Jean’s son Lee – Lee left soon after the birth.
Jean’s existence is a tenuous one and she’s not what you would call reliable, but she loves Kimberly with all her heart and does her best to look out for her.
As disturbing news arrives of a pandemic sweeping the country, Jean realises this is no ordinary flu: its chief symptom is that its victims begin to understand the language of animals — first mammals, then birds and insects, too.
As the flu progresses, the unstoppable voices become overwhelming, and many people begin to lose their minds. When Lee turns up on Jean’s doorstep and proceeds to infect everyone at the animal park and then kidnap Kimberly so they can go and speak to the whales, Jean becomes desperate.
So begins Jean’s road trip with Sue, the dingo who Jean discovers identifies as part of her pack and calls her mother, to find Kimberly.
Author Laura Jean McKay has given readers an original, exciting and challenging book based on a mind-blowing premise. I haven’t been this excited by a new book for a while – it’s always wonderful to discover something that is completely outside of the box and that is definitely what The Animals in That Country is!
It will come as no surprise that Laura has a PhD from the University of Melbourne focusing on literary animals’ studies and is the ‘animal expert’ presenter on ABC Listen’s Animal Sound Safari.
While Jean travels the Australian landscape, she encounters some wild characters and unexpected events, and you’ll be alarmed by some of the revelations and fascinated by all the ways that animals communicate.
This book will stay with me for some time, but it will also make me think long and hard about what my pet dog is really saying when he looks up at me, why that bird in the tree in my backyard is looking at me and maybe even what the ants crawling across my letterbox are thinking. If there is one book that you remember reading while self-isolating chances are this will be it. Read it!
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