UNLIKELY ANIMALS

An absurdist, laugh-out-loud family drama about intergenerational healing.

Never a truer word was spoken than when the ghostly inhabitants of the Maple Street cemetery in Everton, New Hampshire, who are the choruslike narrators of this novel, rationalize that “a good story doesn’t always follow an arrow.” In what begins as a slow-paced, meandering tale, Emma Starling, a natural healer and former golden girl of small-town Everton, drops out of medical school and moves back in with her parents. Her father, Clive, who's dying from a mysterious brain disease, is having hallucinations of animals while being haunted by the ghost of (real-life) local naturalist Ernest Harold Baynes. When Emma assumes legal guardianship over her rapidly deteriorating father, the two become embroiled in his dementia-induced obsession: a seemingly hopeless search for Emma’s childhood best friend, Crystal, a heroin addict who has been missing for almost six months. The first quarter of the book seems like a mess of disparate parts: What does the ghost of New Hampshire’s own Dr. Doolittle have to do with the opioid crisis, boomerang children, saintly healing powers, or a Westworld-esque hunting preserve for millionaires? But the reader’s patience is rewarded as Hartnett skillfully draws the string. This tragicomedy delivers as Clive takes a stab at adult parenting before dying and Emma navigates layers of ambiguous loss. Some plot twists feel a little more forced than others. However, the overall message—that any life lived, even just a few extra months of it, is a miracle rife with potential—is a balm for our challenging times.

An anthem for the boomerang generation.