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readwithjoshie 's review for:
Talking Animals
by Joni Murphy
Thank you to ZG Stories and Book*hug Press for this gifted copy of Talking Animals by Joni Murphy in exchange for an honest review.
Talking Animals follows an alpaca named Alfonzo, a PhD candidate in urban behaviour and a public servant at City Hall, who finds himself wrapped up in a plot with his friend Mitchell (a llama) and Pamella (a lemur) to upend the status quo. What follows is a series of strange encounters and a lot of musings about the state of the world, the land, and the sea.
My key take aways from this novel are few because I feel like most of it went over my head. What I liked the most was the commentary on the fact that all of our struggle as a society never really works to change the status quo. The ceaseless progress we feel we have made often turns out to further support the harmful, patriarchal systems that exist. There was a lot of wonderful commentary on corporate America / the world, the environmental degradation at the hands of capitalism, and corruption in general (lovely to read this as I continue to watch the news in 2020 as the current US administration falls apart at the seams. Sayonara!). I also really liked the characters and the wry humour infused into this novella. It made me laugh at many different points; the writing is extremely clever and concise.
What I didn’t like: The last third to half of the novel fell apart for me. It kind of felt a bit like a fever dream? The novel played with different types of structures: the hum of a song, a dream, a pamphlet. This personally did not work for me, but I can see its allure for other readers. The climax of the novel felt anti-climactic; I hoped for something more after the steady build up. I’ll be honest, I got some serious Animal Farm vibes from this book – but, Animal Farm just did it better, in my opinion.
Read If: you like books with anthropomorphized animals, social commentary and criticism, and books that are a slow-burn. Not much plot to this one, but a lot of philosophical issues to ponder.
2.5 stars!
Talking Animals follows an alpaca named Alfonzo, a PhD candidate in urban behaviour and a public servant at City Hall, who finds himself wrapped up in a plot with his friend Mitchell (a llama) and Pamella (a lemur) to upend the status quo. What follows is a series of strange encounters and a lot of musings about the state of the world, the land, and the sea.
My key take aways from this novel are few because I feel like most of it went over my head. What I liked the most was the commentary on the fact that all of our struggle as a society never really works to change the status quo. The ceaseless progress we feel we have made often turns out to further support the harmful, patriarchal systems that exist. There was a lot of wonderful commentary on corporate America / the world, the environmental degradation at the hands of capitalism, and corruption in general (lovely to read this as I continue to watch the news in 2020 as the current US administration falls apart at the seams. Sayonara!). I also really liked the characters and the wry humour infused into this novella. It made me laugh at many different points; the writing is extremely clever and concise.
What I didn’t like: The last third to half of the novel fell apart for me. It kind of felt a bit like a fever dream? The novel played with different types of structures: the hum of a song, a dream, a pamphlet. This personally did not work for me, but I can see its allure for other readers. The climax of the novel felt anti-climactic; I hoped for something more after the steady build up. I’ll be honest, I got some serious Animal Farm vibes from this book – but, Animal Farm just did it better, in my opinion.
Read If: you like books with anthropomorphized animals, social commentary and criticism, and books that are a slow-burn. Not much plot to this one, but a lot of philosophical issues to ponder.
2.5 stars!