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4.07 AVERAGE
4.07 AVERAGE
As followers of this blog know, I am attempting to read all the books featured in the Backlisted podcast and dividing them into phases (every 10 books consist of a phase). I’m now starting the third one and it’s a strong one.
The Animal Family can be described as delightful: A hunter finds a mermaid and she lives with him. After a bear and a lynx join the crew with a boy entering the fold.
That’s it really.
No adventures, no conflict, no villain. It’s just a bunch of unconventional individuals trying to live a conventional lifestyle as a family. We all know a family can comprise of any group and one can’t get a better example than this.
The book itself is a charming piece of work. The writing is clear and a little bit humor dotted in places. For it’s brevity (125 pages), The Animal Family packs a lot of emotion and one can’t help liking all the characters. My only gripe is that it’s out of print and I really do think this should achieve classic status.
The Animal Family can be described as delightful: A hunter finds a mermaid and she lives with him. After a bear and a lynx join the crew with a boy entering the fold.
That’s it really.
No adventures, no conflict, no villain. It’s just a bunch of unconventional individuals trying to live a conventional lifestyle as a family. We all know a family can comprise of any group and one can’t get a better example than this.
The book itself is a charming piece of work. The writing is clear and a little bit humor dotted in places. For it’s brevity (125 pages), The Animal Family packs a lot of emotion and one can’t help liking all the characters. My only gripe is that it’s out of print and I really do think this should achieve classic status.
lighthearted
relaxing
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
N/A
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
I found this book odd and mildly disturbing. A man gathers a family. But I don't think Animal Family is quite the right name for it. It starts with a mermaid. There is a definite tone of melancholy, and none of the creatures who join the family do so without great loss.
I loved the beginning of this book and the writing was beautiful, but I couldn't get past the violence of how "the hunter" acquired his animal family--by killing one's mother and stealing another from his family. That's not how family works! But I thought the relationship between the hunter and the mermaid was pretty nice--much happier than any other animal-spouse folktale I can think of (though I kept expecting it to take a downward turn, it never did).
My sister gave this to me as a gift almost forty years ago. I’ve read it many times. It comforts me when I’m alone.
I loved this book, but I am also fascinated and mystified by it. It will be in my mind for a long time.
The dream life, honestly. It makes you want to live with imagination and kindness as the core of your being.
Soft and strange and lovely in many many ways...and at the same time, the fantasy of a totally sufficient white* heterosexual family in a pristine and entirely unpeopled wilderness to which they have all come within the last generation is a colonialist one. It doesn't stop being a colonialist fantasy because Randal Jarrell wrote beautiful prose.
*The mermaid, of course, is technically not white. Her skin color is not specified but is mentioned as being dark. I do not think this invalidates the above critique.
*The mermaid, of course, is technically not white. Her skin color is not specified but is mentioned as being dark. I do not think this invalidates the above critique.
Fun and dreamy little story about a found family made up of a hunter and the creatures he befriends (starting with a mermaid friend). Each chapter functions as it's own little short story. Which makes the bizarre retconning of the whole story in the last chapter especially weird? It's like the editor said "test groups said this book made people want to be mermaids, gotta make it sound bad" and they hurriedly cobbled together a moral about human life being great because you can get bored-- also the rest of the stories didn't happen. Excuse me?
I'd make my own final chapter, where I reading it to small people.
I'd make my own final chapter, where I reading it to small people.
If you told me I could keep only one book from my childhood, this would be the one. So sweet and magical and simple and sometimes a little sad.