Title: The animals in that country
Author: Laura Jean McKay
Published: April 2020 Publisher: Scribe
Category: Fiction
This debut novel by Laura Jean McKay is fabulous speculative fiction. It’s fast-paced, easy to read and poses big questions in a light way.
The novel is premised on the question, what if humans could understand animals? McKay, who is an expert in animal communication and ethics, invites readers into the borderland where relationships between humans and animals unfold, but where humans cannot usually understand what animals say or why they act in certain ways. As McKay states in the prologue, ‘Tell me she (Sue the dingo) doesn’t know something about the world that you and me haven’t ever thought of.’
The reader journeys with Jean Bennett, a grandmother who works in a wild animal park in Central Australia as she navigates her complicated family and a world infected by a novel flu. The novel’s publication date, April 2020, means this flu was probably conceived before the COVID-19 pandemic. Rather than shortness of breath, this flu gives humans pink eyes and the capacity to understand animals––first, furry animals, then birds and reptiles. At its most extreme, the flu allows humans to understand the almost infinite cacophony of insects, other bugs and microbes.
Jean, the protagonist, and Sue, the dingo who is her constant companion, showed me the power of family relationships in human and animal worlds. Conflicts that arise in Jean’s human family and the flu-affected society are set against Sue’s world of animal ethics, which hinge on loyalty to the pack, mating and the pragmatics of survival. Communication between humans and animals opens up these worlds where ‘bitch’ means different things to a man and a dingo. Jean and Sue show us ways of navigating the animal in humans and, in the process, reveal a standpoint where animal ethics and human insights can sometimes coalesce.
I read this book twice as a new grandma. What I learned from Jean Bennet the first time was about the pervasive power of hierarchies in human relationships. The story shows how humans read animals and relate to them in ways that are both hierarchical and scary. But on my second reading, I saw new things. There were critical turning points that I’d missed in the rollicking pace of this story. But I also saw how Jean, Sue and their relationships opened up larger questions about humans, our Earth and all those who sail with us as our Earth cycles through space and time. My key take home message was about respect and how a grandma can keep respect alive through certain kinds of love, loyalty and lore, which is so much more than British-Australian law.
Reviewed 1 September 2020
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