Description
Book SynopsisA 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.
''Bewitching!'' New York Times
''Heartfelt, touching and delightfully quirky'' Good Housekeeping
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 s
Trade Review
A wondrous and wonderful story filled with unforgettable characters, both living and dead . . . an instant classic * Jeff VanderMeer, New York Times bestselling author of the Southern Reach trilogy *
Hartnett's whimsical storytelling casts a spell * Publishers Weekly *
An absurdist, laugh-out-loud family drama about intergenerational healing * Kirkus Reviews *
I devoured Annie Hartnett's Unlikely Animals. She's created a beautiful menagerie set inside a troubled household and their small New Hampshire town; a delightful mess of tenderness, grief, and despair, but most important, hope * Kristen Arnett, New York Times bestselling author of Mostly Dead Things and With Teeth *
Unlikely Animals possesses such tenderness and empathy for a world that wears us down and ruins us, a world that sometimes offers a glimmer of hope, and Hartnett knows how to turn up the brilliance of that light and wield it to do magical things * Kevin Wilson, New York Times bestselling author of Nothing to See Here and The Family Fang *
Hartnett masterfully balances a story of deep loss with the perfect amount of hilarity and tenderness * Booklist (starred review) *
This is a big novel doing big things. It bears some similarity to Hartnett's much- loved first novel, Rabbit Cake. . . . But Unlikely Animals is a broader, brassier, and even more fiercely tender story. In this, her second novel, Hartnett lands an astonishing leap as a storyteller * The Rumpus *
Wistfully charming . . . This unapologetically genre-bending tribute to life and death, and the beautiful weirdness found in both, has potential to spark exceptional book club discussions * Shelf Awareness *
Bewitching! * New York Times *
[A] a magical, soul-stirring read about family and the ways we put ourselves back together * The Washington Post *
Heartfelt, touching and delightfully quirky * Good Housekeeping *
A moving novel about family, friendship and loss that manages to be both at times quirkily surreal as well as rooted in the realities of small-town life * Choice *
