OUR STORE IS CLOSED ON ANZAC DAY: THURSDAY 25 APRIL
ABBEY'S BOOKSELLER PICK ----- I read this as the coronavirus was just beginning, the news slowly gaining more urgency with each day. Reading at night, outside the bedroom window the garden was alive with the squawks and rasps of flying foxes and possums. All of this only enhanced the dreamlike, dystopian mood that McKay creates here. Her story is of a strange 'zoo flu' that sweeps the globe, the effect of which is that people are suddenly able to understand the creatures - the birds, animals and insects. But this is no Disney or Doolittle moment with loveable and witty repartee with your dog and cat. No, McKay channels unsettling and nightmarish utterances from the animal kingdom as human life disintegrates into madness - people unable to cope with the revelations. Jean, mother and grandmother, is a rough diamond and her fraught relationship with Sue, her dingo companion, is compelling. Craig Kirchner
WINNER OF THE 2021 VICTORIAN PRIZE FOR LITERATURE
WINNER OF THE 2021 VICTORIAN PREMIER'S LITERARY AWARDS PRIZE FOR FICTION
A SLATE AND SUNDAY TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR
WINNER OF THE 2021 ARTHUR C. CLARKE AWARD
Out on the road, no one speaks, everything talks.
Laura Jean McKay is a writer and a lecturer in creative writing at Massey University in New Zealand. Her debut novel, The Animals in That Country (Scribe, 2020), won the 2021 Victorian Prize for Literature and the Victorian Premier's Literary Award for Fiction. She is also the author of Holiday in Cambodia (2013).
ABBEY'S BOOKSELLER PICK ----- I read this as the coronavirus was just beginning, the news slowly gaining more urgency with each day. Reading at night, outside the bedroom window the garden was alive with the squawks and rasps of flying foxes and possums. All of this only enhanced the dreamlike, dystopian mood that McKay creates here. Her story is of a strange 'zoo flu' that sweeps the globe, the effect of which is that people are suddenly able to understand the creatures - the birds, animals and insects. But this is no Disney or Doolittle moment with loveable and witty repartee with your dog and cat. No, McKay channels unsettling and nightmarish utterances from the animal kingdom as human life disintegrates into madness - people unable to cope with the revelations. Jean, mother and grandmother, is a rough diamond and her fraught relationship with Sue, her dingo companion, is compelling. Craig Kirchner
