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Emma Starling was born with a healing touch, according to the midwife who said the infant she delivered cured her sciatica. People watched her for years, waiting for big things from her, but she only could hurry along minor healing, really. She left her small town of Everton, New Hampshire, for the real big things: college in California and medical school. But Emma dropped out of med school before it even got going, and months later, her mother has convinced her to come back home to be with her father. Clive has some kind of brain disease, which is causing tremors, confusion and hallucinations—he’s seeing animals indoors, as well as the ghost of long-dead naturalist Ernest Harold Baynes, who once lived in Everton and was a real-life Doctor Doolittle.
Emma isn’t thrilled to be home, not at all, but she has nowhere else to be. She is still angry at her father for his affair, and she has to deal with her younger brother again, who recently had a second stint in rehab for drug abuse. He’s clean for the moment, but these things aren’t guarantees.
On top of all that, Emma learns her best friend from high school has been missing for months, and her father is the only one trying to find her. Everyone, including the town’s two police officers, knows Crystal did drugs, and it’s likely she’s dead. But Clive is working hard every day to find her, putting up missing-persons posters and asking around everywhere for clues.
Unlikely Animals is on one layer a common-enough story about a young adult who’s trying to find her way in life and has to go back to her small town to deal with family matters. Those stories tend to lead to their heroines finding new meaning and a path for themselves. Another layer of the story is about a family coming to terms with the illness of one of the parents, in this case a type of dementia, and impending death. Yet another layer explores the opioid crisis and its horrible toll on individuals, families and communities. Add in the book being narrated at times by the ghosts of the town cemetery, who are cheering on the living, and it gets a little extra interesting. Next, add the layer of the real-life-naturalist Baynes, who plays a fairly big role in Clive’s last months, and it’s a lot more interesting.
Quirky, clever, unusual, poignant and big-hearted but light on its feet, Unlikely Animals is a novel with an unlikely mix of ingredients that had me smiling, chuckling, and cheering for the Starlings and, indeed, the whole community of Everton. What a charming book.
(For another poignant and charming book about love and grief, read Goodbye for Now.)
Rated: High. Profanity includes 10 uses of strong language, around 35 instances of moderate profanity, around 20 uses of mild language, and about 15 instances of the name of Deity in vain. There are maybe 10 vulgar or crude references. Sexual content includes some kissing, a few references to affairs and a couple of sex scenes but no detail past brief kissing. There are several spots where a character walks around without pants and underwear. Violence includes a few deaths: a character is mauled by a bear, a character is accidentally shot, a character is attacked by a boar, and a character dies because something falls on him.
*I received an ARC of this book in exchange for my honest review.
