To say a novel is life-changing feels cloying – but in this case, it’s not wrong

Talking animals have long been used in art as lenses through which to view ourselves. Whether it be the myriad creatures of Aesop's Fables, tyrannical pigs in George Orwell's Animal Farm, or a benevolent spider in E.B. White's Charlotte's Web, we anthropomorphise creatures to discuss broader themes regarding human existence.

Yet, in the process, we tend to omit their “animalness”, their carnal obscurity. Laura Jean McKay’s The Animals in That Country – a disquieting story of a virus that allows human–animal comprehension – is a significant volte-face from this trope.

Laura Jean McKay subtly animalises the world in her distinctive prose.Credit: Kyra Clarke

The book's atypical narrator is Jean Bennett, a tough-as-guts, alcoholic grandmother who works as a guide at an endangered wildlife park. Her life is a fractured one – both her husband, Graham, and son, Lee, have left her – and her relationships with those around her are abrasive at best. But a few things still bring her joy, namely her young granddaughter, Kimberly – "a toothpick in checks, with a mop stuck on her head" – and a particular dingo at the animal park, "sweet Sue".

Jean's world is abruptly upended, though, by the outbreak of "zooflu", an influenza-like virus that reportedly enhances communication between humankind and animals. The pathogen is swiftly on Jean's doorstep when she comes into contact with her son Lee, who is infected. The zoo goes into lockdown but it's too late: Jean, Kimberly, and other staff all quickly contract the virus.

At first, the afflicted only understand mammals, but gradually the illness encompasses birds, reptiles, even insects. Amid the resulting bedlam, Lee kidnaps Kimberly, his daughter, and together they head south, apparently intent on communing with a pod of whales. Determined to get them back, Jean teams up with Sue the dingo and sets off in her campervan to find them.

Credit:

The genius stroke of The Animals in That Country is the preternatural “body talk” of its animals. McKay’s creatures don’t speak in the Doctor Dolittle sense; instead, they emanate fractured meanings “in stench, in calls, in piss, in tracks, in blood, in s---, in sex, in bodies”. The virally inflicted interpret this as a sort of hallucinated “animalese”, depicted in-text as discordant segments broken up into poem-like stanzas. “The bosom / is a plot / between the feet and the / ground,” says a kangaroo, describing its joy of being in the air.

Some word associations are simpler – "glitter" is human sweat; "puddle" is a drink of water; and "sky meat" is Sue's term for crows. But most phrases dip into abstraction or the outright bizarre. At one point, a cow, broadcasting its need to be milked, cries, "F--- my / clumpy teats / where are they." Lion King this isn't.

The world in which this pandemic unfolds is dreamlike yet familiar. McKay’s prose is distinctively Australian, from the arid descriptions of the book’s dystopic, Wake in Fright-esque outback to Jean’s penchant for “sausage-like guys that look like they’re about to burst their skin”. To great effect, McKay subtly animalises the world, resulting in a landscape as immersive as it is unnerving. Gunships rest like “sharks on the horizon”. Jean’s campervan takes off like “a baby elephant”. Even the penis of one of Jean’s lovers lays limp like a “dead slug”.

The Animals in That Country takes its name from a poem by Margaret Atwood, one that envisions a land where animals have "the faces of people" and are treated as equals. At the poem's end, Atwood laments that in our reality, this country, animals have only animal faces: "Their deaths are not elegant. // They have the faces of no one." For a moment, McKay offers a brief glimpse out of this country, a captivating peek beneath the thin veil between us and the animal kingdom.

It may seem incongruous to recommend a story about an airborne virus in the current climate, but The Animals in That Country is an apt escape. It is an affecting book, one that gets remarkably close to the unknowable wildness of animal sentience. When I first saw Ceridwen Dovey’s superlative cover praise of McKay’s work as “life-changing”, it felt cloying. But in the unsentimental sense she’s right: something in you shifts.

The Animals in That Country
Laura Jean McKay, Scribe, $29.99

Jack Callil is assistant editor of Australian Book Review. Twitter: @Jack_Callil