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New Animal
‘Ella Baxter’s debut novel is drenched in sex and death . . . there’s also much love . . . An intense, viscerally affecting book, with the quotient of tenderness to violence in an equal scale.’ - Sydney Morning Herald
Amelia is no stranger to sex and death. Her job in her family’s funeral parlour, doing make-up on the dead, might be unusual, but she’s good at it. Life and warmth comes from the men she meets online – combining with someone else’s body at night in order to become something else, at least for a while.
But when a sudden loss severs her ties with someone she loves, Amelia sets off on a seventy-two-hour mission to outrun her grief – skipping out on the funeral, running away to stay with her father in Tasmania and experimenting on the local BDSM scene. There she learns more about sex, death, grief, and the different ways pain works its way through the body.
It takes two fathers, a bruising encounter with a stranger and recognition of her own body’s limits to bring Amelia back to herself.
Deadpan, wise and heartbreakingly funny, Ella Baxter’s New Animal is a stunning debut.
Amelia is no stranger to sex and death. Her job in her family’s funeral parlour, doing make-up on the dead, might be unusual, but she’s good at it. Life and warmth comes from the men she meets online – combining with someone else’s body at night in order to become something else, at least for a while.
But when a sudden loss severs her ties with someone she loves, Amelia sets off on a seventy-two-hour mission to outrun her grief – skipping out on the funeral, running away to stay with her father in Tasmania and experimenting on the local BDSM scene. There she learns more about sex, death, grief, and the different ways pain works its way through the body.
It takes two fathers, a bruising encounter with a stranger and recognition of her own body’s limits to bring Amelia back to herself.
Deadpan, wise and heartbreakingly funny, Ella Baxter’s New Animal is a stunning debut.
240 pages, Hardcover
First published March 2, 2021
233 people are currently reading
25537 people want to read
About the author
Ella Baxter
2 books155 followersElla Baxter is a writer and artist living on unceded land of the Wurundjeri people. She is the author of New Animal, which was shortlisted for the Readings Prize for New Australian Fiction, the UTS Glenda Adams Award for New Writing, and was longlisted for the Republic of Consciousness Prize and the Matt Richell Award for New Writers.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 1,394 reviews
February 20, 2023
3.5 Stars: “New Animal” by Ella Baxter could have been called “she’s come undone!” Poor Amelia Aurelia finds herself in a tailspin when her mother unexpectedly dies. Amelia is stunned and more than confused as she has worked in her family’s funeral home business for years. She is a cosmetic mortician, and she takes her job very seriously. She asks the body, “how do you want to be seen?”, and the body tells her how to dress them and freshen them up. Amelia’s mother, Josie, is expert at helping the bereaved process their emotions. Josie is Amelia’s rock, her anker.
Amelia is a forthright narrator. I think it is this attribute that kept me reading. Amelia is so obliterated with the news of her mother’s passing that she runs away before the funeral. What transpires is a bit shocking, but everyone processes grief differently. Author Ella Baxter expertly writes about grief and the free-fall feeling that happens after the shock of absorbing the news. In Amelia’s case, she runs away to Tasmania to be with her biological father.
Amelia has used sex before to deal with her job as a cosmetic mortician. She wanted the raw sexual feeling of being alive. Unfortunately, she inadvertently gets mixed up in a BDSM community. Well, I’ve never been interested in “kink” nor would I have read this book if I had known how much “kink” info is garnered in this story! In fact, I had to do some sluicing to find out why I’m reading this, who recommended this? Well, it’s received an abundance of press, promising “a poignant, darkly comedic look at the human connection from a biting and original new voice, Ella Baxter.” Thus, I soldiered on.
What happened is that I learned more about S&M, or kink, than I ever wanted to know. But it was through Amelia’s eyes, and she was earnestly trying to work through her emotions. In fact, I am surprised I kept reading which shows how brilliantly Baxter wrote this into her story. What I liked about that message is that grief can make one do crazy and unexpected things, to go easy on ourselves when grieving, to be more compassionate with ourselves or anyone going through that process. Baxter also added some dark comedy which was helpful in absorbing the story. Did you know that you can get kicked out of an S&M place for being too strange?
This is to say that there is an Amelia in all of us. When we lose a person who is a bedrock to our existence, we come undone. Amelia struggled in a unique way, and we all will struggle in our own unique way. This is one of the best stories I’ve read about the extreme burden of grief. Baxter told it in such a crazy way that I shall remember this story for a long time!
I listened to the audio narrated by Maddy Withington. I enjoyed her voice.
Amelia is a forthright narrator. I think it is this attribute that kept me reading. Amelia is so obliterated with the news of her mother’s passing that she runs away before the funeral. What transpires is a bit shocking, but everyone processes grief differently. Author Ella Baxter expertly writes about grief and the free-fall feeling that happens after the shock of absorbing the news. In Amelia’s case, she runs away to Tasmania to be with her biological father.
Amelia has used sex before to deal with her job as a cosmetic mortician. She wanted the raw sexual feeling of being alive. Unfortunately, she inadvertently gets mixed up in a BDSM community. Well, I’ve never been interested in “kink” nor would I have read this book if I had known how much “kink” info is garnered in this story! In fact, I had to do some sluicing to find out why I’m reading this, who recommended this? Well, it’s received an abundance of press, promising “a poignant, darkly comedic look at the human connection from a biting and original new voice, Ella Baxter.” Thus, I soldiered on.
What happened is that I learned more about S&M, or kink, than I ever wanted to know. But it was through Amelia’s eyes, and she was earnestly trying to work through her emotions. In fact, I am surprised I kept reading which shows how brilliantly Baxter wrote this into her story. What I liked about that message is that grief can make one do crazy and unexpected things, to go easy on ourselves when grieving, to be more compassionate with ourselves or anyone going through that process. Baxter also added some dark comedy which was helpful in absorbing the story. Did you know that you can get kicked out of an S&M place for being too strange?
This is to say that there is an Amelia in all of us. When we lose a person who is a bedrock to our existence, we come undone. Amelia struggled in a unique way, and we all will struggle in our own unique way. This is one of the best stories I’ve read about the extreme burden of grief. Baxter told it in such a crazy way that I shall remember this story for a long time!
I listened to the audio narrated by Maddy Withington. I enjoyed her voice.
April 21, 2023
More of a 3.5 rounded up
I loved the beginning and end of the book. I was immediately interested in the story and felt like it was unique and quirky without being too artificial. The main character seemed relatable and real. However the middle section sort of turned her into a caricature and introduced shallow and flat side characters that added very little to the story.
I loved the beginning and end of the book. I was immediately interested in the story and felt like it was unique and quirky without being too artificial. The main character seemed relatable and real. However the middle section sort of turned her into a caricature and introduced shallow and flat side characters that added very little to the story.
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December 18, 2021Source of book: NetGalley (thank you!)
Relevant disclaimers: None
Please note: This review may not be reproduced or quoted, in whole or in part, without explicit consent from the author.
This was a very much a curate’s egg book for me. Good in parts.
Which is to say, it’s about sex and death, and while I was 100% here for everything it had to say about death, I bounced hard off the sex stuff. Particularly the BDSM orientated sex stuff because, if nothing else, it felt mean-spirited, badly researched, and included primarily for shock value, rather than because the author had anything meaningful about to say about BDSM as either a practice or a subculture.
Also—and forgive me a bit of personal bitterness here—but it’s increasingly bugging the shite out of me that women’s-fiction adjacent litfic (I’m also side-eying Sally Rooney here) gains endless credibility for centralising toxic sexual dynamics. Whereas an entire genre gets pissed on for depicting healthy, consent-driven relationships. Gah.
Anyway that’s not this book’s fault, although this book is part of the problem. The heroine, Amelia, works for her family’s funeral parlour, preparing the dead for, err, display. To deal with the thoughts and emotions such awareness of death and the body stir up, she spends her evenings seeking catharsis in anonymous sex. Then her mother dies and her own grief becomes too much to handle: fleeing from the funeral, she goes to stay with her biological father in Tasmania and randomly plunges into the BDSM scene because blah blah bodies blah blah emotions blah blah external versus inner pain.
On the positive side, while I’m in no position to judge the accuracy of the body preparation material, it was super fascinating, and I really appreciated the family dynamics (Amelia’s brother, for example, is just incidentally in a throuple which is presented on-page as positive and unremarkable) and the thoughts about death and grief and mourning as private versus social act.
But Jesus Christ the BDSM. Now listen I’m not putting myself forward as some kind of apologist for or defender of the Scene because, like any community of ultimately disconnected people, it has its prejudices and its toxicities and its deep-seated fucking problems. I am, frankly, not a fan. BUT the fact remains that the way the is book uses BDSM as a reflection of the heroine’s damaged emotional state is all kinds of fucked up. There are definitely some tropes that rang, err, scene-authentic like the red flag guy who is all like “I try to avoid aftercare as much as possible as it kind of impacts on the experience for me” and the other guy who is like “I don’t believe in safe words, I believe in intuition”. But everything else was just, like, perilously close to deranged—there’s the fact a guy literally draws blood with a bullwhip in a club setting and the entire place doesn’t immediately lose its shit or the fact she’s thrown into an actual live scene after about ten minutes of conversation about doming with the club owner. Or for that matter that, after she fucks up the domme scene because she’s been given no training, support or actual instructions (and is clearly in the middle of a nervous breakdown) they tell her she should probably sub again, even though one of the other dommes is pretty open about the fact subbing sucks (fun fact: obviously subbing sucks if you’re NOT A SUB). Or, indeed, should we talk about the fact that there is no monitoring at any point during either private or public club scenes, apart from a random bouncer who comments “It was obviously a fear scene” when the heroine is visibly traumatised.
And the thing is, it’s not so much the “inauthenticity” that bothers me. I’m genuinely not sitting here being “inaccurately depicted, according to my subject understanding, the logistics of BDMS clubs – 1 STAR”. And I’m definitely not saying abusive situations are not rife in kink, as they are rife in life, but I think the idea that abuse is, err, inherent to BDSM *because* it’s BDSM is fucked all the way up. Especially when the BDSM sections of the book are set up specifically to entrap the heroine in abusive situations and to present kink itself in the most grotesque and outlandish light possible.
To put it another way, the way New Animal presents BDSM is sort of the equivalent of that Mazes and Monsters starring Tom Hanks where some young people lose their grip on reality due to playing too much D&D. The problem there is not that the portrayal of D&D is inaccurate so much as the movie is using its own limited understanding of D&D to tell a story that has nothing to D&D, isn’t for people who are into D&D, and is, instead, pandering to an audience who want to feel justified in their belief that D&D is probably a bit weird and, y’know, could even be dangerous in some sort of way.
This is cheap and it doesn’t thrill me. And I don't care how insightful and interesting you've been about death alongside.
Relevant disclaimers: None
Please note: This review may not be reproduced or quoted, in whole or in part, without explicit consent from the author.
This was a very much a curate’s egg book for me. Good in parts.
Which is to say, it’s about sex and death, and while I was 100% here for everything it had to say about death, I bounced hard off the sex stuff. Particularly the BDSM orientated sex stuff because, if nothing else, it felt mean-spirited, badly researched, and included primarily for shock value, rather than because the author had anything meaningful about to say about BDSM as either a practice or a subculture.
Also—and forgive me a bit of personal bitterness here—but it’s increasingly bugging the shite out of me that women’s-fiction adjacent litfic (I’m also side-eying Sally Rooney here) gains endless credibility for centralising toxic sexual dynamics. Whereas an entire genre gets pissed on for depicting healthy, consent-driven relationships. Gah.
Anyway that’s not this book’s fault, although this book is part of the problem. The heroine, Amelia, works for her family’s funeral parlour, preparing the dead for, err, display. To deal with the thoughts and emotions such awareness of death and the body stir up, she spends her evenings seeking catharsis in anonymous sex. Then her mother dies and her own grief becomes too much to handle: fleeing from the funeral, she goes to stay with her biological father in Tasmania and randomly plunges into the BDSM scene because blah blah bodies blah blah emotions blah blah external versus inner pain.
On the positive side, while I’m in no position to judge the accuracy of the body preparation material, it was super fascinating, and I really appreciated the family dynamics (Amelia’s brother, for example, is just incidentally in a throuple which is presented on-page as positive and unremarkable) and the thoughts about death and grief and mourning as private versus social act.
But Jesus Christ the BDSM. Now listen I’m not putting myself forward as some kind of apologist for or defender of the Scene because, like any community of ultimately disconnected people, it has its prejudices and its toxicities and its deep-seated fucking problems. I am, frankly, not a fan. BUT the fact remains that the way the is book uses BDSM as a reflection of the heroine’s damaged emotional state is all kinds of fucked up. There are definitely some tropes that rang, err, scene-authentic like the red flag guy who is all like “I try to avoid aftercare as much as possible as it kind of impacts on the experience for me” and the other guy who is like “I don’t believe in safe words, I believe in intuition”. But everything else was just, like, perilously close to deranged—there’s the fact a guy literally draws blood with a bullwhip in a club setting and the entire place doesn’t immediately lose its shit or the fact she’s thrown into an actual live scene after about ten minutes of conversation about doming with the club owner. Or for that matter that, after she fucks up the domme scene because she’s been given no training, support or actual instructions (and is clearly in the middle of a nervous breakdown) they tell her she should probably sub again, even though one of the other dommes is pretty open about the fact subbing sucks (fun fact: obviously subbing sucks if you’re NOT A SUB). Or, indeed, should we talk about the fact that there is no monitoring at any point during either private or public club scenes, apart from a random bouncer who comments “It was obviously a fear scene” when the heroine is visibly traumatised.
And the thing is, it’s not so much the “inauthenticity” that bothers me. I’m genuinely not sitting here being “inaccurately depicted, according to my subject understanding, the logistics of BDMS clubs – 1 STAR”. And I’m definitely not saying abusive situations are not rife in kink, as they are rife in life, but I think the idea that abuse is, err, inherent to BDSM *because* it’s BDSM is fucked all the way up. Especially when the BDSM sections of the book are set up specifically to entrap the heroine in abusive situations and to present kink itself in the most grotesque and outlandish light possible.
To put it another way, the way New Animal presents BDSM is sort of the equivalent of that Mazes and Monsters starring Tom Hanks where some young people lose their grip on reality due to playing too much D&D. The problem there is not that the portrayal of D&D is inaccurate so much as the movie is using its own limited understanding of D&D to tell a story that has nothing to D&D, isn’t for people who are into D&D, and is, instead, pandering to an audience who want to feel justified in their belief that D&D is probably a bit weird and, y’know, could even be dangerous in some sort of way.
This is cheap and it doesn’t thrill me. And I don't care how insightful and interesting you've been about death alongside.
June 15, 2022
eroticism. grief. emptiness and the paradoxical search for it. human connection to the point of fusing with one another. bodily fluids, an awful lot of it. nature as a place to heal. motherhood. more grief. brutality. metamorphosis. bdsm as a way of coping or the necessity of coping to practise it. fatherhood & stepfatherhood.
and finally me in the corner screaming, crying and throwing up <3
and finally me in the corner screaming, crying and throwing up <3
June 15, 2022
RTC. I need some time to process this absolutely brilliant, masterpiece of a book.
WOW! Just Wow 🙏🏻
WOW! Just Wow 🙏🏻
June 19, 2023
PEARL RULED @ 53%
Absolutely not.
She's just told you her mother's funeral is today. She's clearly fragile. Your job as a dom is to understand that consent in that frame of mind IS NOT CONSENT and you are now abusing a psychologically vulnerable person. The promise of the first half went out the window and I am so very out of here.
Absolutely not.
She's just told you her mother's funeral is today. She's clearly fragile. Your job as a dom is to understand that consent in that frame of mind IS NOT CONSENT and you are now abusing a psychologically vulnerable person. The promise of the first half went out the window and I am so very out of here.
March 8, 2021
I LOVED THIS BOOK SO DAMN MUCH! Think Six Feet Under meets The Pisces crossed with all those great grief memoirs I love to read. Burning with grief and rage and pain and sadness, Amelia runs. She tries to her escape her body, her feelings, her emptiness through BDSM and the results are funny, vulgar (in the best way) and heartshattering. The prose, oh my god the prose! Electrifyingly good. I have all the tingles. This is the first time I’ve connected with a young writer using kink/BDSM as a narrative arc (sorry Rooney, Tu, Carty-Williams). Amelia puts her body on the line and I understood her brokenness, beauty and strength. Baxter takes every risk I love writers to take (and she’s funny!). The ambition, the rawness, the bold writing – this book has blood in its veins. I can’t formulate my thoughts right now but know this; I will not be shutting up about this book for a long time.
February 10, 2023
New Animal is Ella Baxter's debut novel. Notwithstanding the provocative blurb, this is fundamentally a book about grief, how we deal with tragedy in ways that can be personal and yet communal. I liked the premise but none of it worked for me. The prose hovers between overwrought and pedagogical, reminiscent of something written by a writer like Sarah Hall, which some people enjoy but whose earnestness isn't to my taste. Baxter puts a lot of sex in this novel, much of it described in detail. It felt like the frank descriptions of sex and kink were meant for readers unaccustomed to such things, like Baxter was opening a window into a mildly verboten world for an extremely sheltered person. I see the TV rights to the story have been sold, which is a great boon for a debut author. This might work better as a series, but in all likelihood I'll never know.
March 31, 2021
⭐️4 Stars⭐️
Oh wow this was different and like nothing I’ve ever read before! Some of the elements in this novel are confronting, it’s a story of a young woman’s journey through grief. New Animal is an impressive debut novel.
Amelia is a cosmetician/embalmer at her family’s mortuary business and she loves her work. She lives (In her own bungalow in the garden) with her complex family, her mum, her stepdad, her brother who is part of a throuple and then there’s her biological dad who lives in Tasmania and she loves them all dearly.
Amelia is a complex, openly honest twenty something year old who is committed and somewhat obsessed with sex/her dating App and a never ending string of one night stands who are quickly discarded after the sex.
With the sudden death of a family member Amelia is broken and flees to Tasmania to be with her biological dad, hoping to help cope with her grief. It’s not too long before she’s on her dating App and has a random hook up for the night who turns out to be a sadist. He introduces Ameilia to a BDSM club and this is where she becomes even more vulnerable as she tries to come to terms with her grief and loses control in a very unsexy way.
A fascinating and fast read about a young woman falling apart and her unusual coping mechanisms. Boldly written with a dark sense of humour.
Thank you to publishers Allen & Unwin for the opportunity to win a copy of the book.
Oh wow this was different and like nothing I’ve ever read before! Some of the elements in this novel are confronting, it’s a story of a young woman’s journey through grief. New Animal is an impressive debut novel.
Amelia is a cosmetician/embalmer at her family’s mortuary business and she loves her work. She lives (In her own bungalow in the garden) with her complex family, her mum, her stepdad, her brother who is part of a throuple and then there’s her biological dad who lives in Tasmania and she loves them all dearly.
Amelia is a complex, openly honest twenty something year old who is committed and somewhat obsessed with sex/her dating App and a never ending string of one night stands who are quickly discarded after the sex.
With the sudden death of a family member Amelia is broken and flees to Tasmania to be with her biological dad, hoping to help cope with her grief. It’s not too long before she’s on her dating App and has a random hook up for the night who turns out to be a sadist. He introduces Ameilia to a BDSM club and this is where she becomes even more vulnerable as she tries to come to terms with her grief and loses control in a very unsexy way.
A fascinating and fast read about a young woman falling apart and her unusual coping mechanisms. Boldly written with a dark sense of humour.
Thank you to publishers Allen & Unwin for the opportunity to win a copy of the book.
May 30, 2021
A short sharp and punchy debut by Aussie author Ella Baxter. It tackles death and grief in a whole new light. I love that the author doesn’t shy away from the uncomfortable, with some highly disturbing and impactful scenes and the authors ability to show the extreme sides of grief makes this book powerfully memorable. A delightful surprise and a great promising debut!
May 28, 2023
3.5/5 ngl that one scene with the tampon was traumatising
March 27, 2021
New Animal caught me in its web. It was extremely visceral and brilliantly written, both painful and redemptive to the reader.
It's interesting to read how easily one can incorporate adverse ways of living into their lives due to trauma/witnessing trauma/working amongst trauma. Our protagonist Amelia is a soldier on the battlefield of her own mind, putting herself through the ringer. A "wild woman", as her newly departed mother might have been, she's a mortician who spends her days dressing the dead and her nights fucking strange men off Tinder to feel something.
The progression of the book felt perfect. It wasn't too slow, or too quick, it told a specific story and didn't get into too much superfluous sidelines and tangents.
The ways that author Ella Baxter wove the physical with the mental, her vivid descriptions of how sometimes internal grief goes seeking external pain to mirror it, to highlight it, was amazing.
I originally gave New Animal four stars because I was thinking that there was something about the way that Amelia dealt with the abuse inflicted on her by a strange character that rubbed me the wrong way. However, I am going to change my review to five stars because Ella Baxter painted a clear picture of the ways that people get away with harm, and how that happens in reality. She illustrated how nothing happens to these men who are evil and inconsiderate under the guise of tip-toeing on the line of kink and bdsm culture. There are predators everywhere. She describes this in a particularly jarring pick-up scene where Amelia accompanies her man of the night into a dark back-lot leading to a unfamiliar underworld where there's no trust, because she's literally riding with a stranger.
One thing I will say, is that I haven't read a book quite like this one in about a year. Last book I read even close to this was Melissa Faebos, Abandon Me. I loved that book too and this one was equally as interesting. This is an accomplished debut in my eyes. Ella Baxter gets right up in some heavy topics and gives it her all.
Last thing - I can see a lot of folks not really meshing with this book. There are elements that disturbed me greatly. However, I feel like Ella Baxter unwrapped so many layers of numbing, pain and despair through intricately described scenes of personal turmoil, two-way mirror style self-inflicted brutality, humiliation and reflection. It ain't for everybody, but it's well worth the read.
It's interesting to read how easily one can incorporate adverse ways of living into their lives due to trauma/witnessing trauma/working amongst trauma. Our protagonist Amelia is a soldier on the battlefield of her own mind, putting herself through the ringer. A "wild woman", as her newly departed mother might have been, she's a mortician who spends her days dressing the dead and her nights fucking strange men off Tinder to feel something.
The progression of the book felt perfect. It wasn't too slow, or too quick, it told a specific story and didn't get into too much superfluous sidelines and tangents.
The ways that author Ella Baxter wove the physical with the mental, her vivid descriptions of how sometimes internal grief goes seeking external pain to mirror it, to highlight it, was amazing.
I originally gave New Animal four stars because I was thinking that there was something about the way that Amelia dealt with the abuse inflicted on her by a strange character that rubbed me the wrong way. However, I am going to change my review to five stars because Ella Baxter painted a clear picture of the ways that people get away with harm, and how that happens in reality. She illustrated how nothing happens to these men who are evil and inconsiderate under the guise of tip-toeing on the line of kink and bdsm culture. There are predators everywhere. She describes this in a particularly jarring pick-up scene where Amelia accompanies her man of the night into a dark back-lot leading to a unfamiliar underworld where there's no trust, because she's literally riding with a stranger.
One thing I will say, is that I haven't read a book quite like this one in about a year. Last book I read even close to this was Melissa Faebos, Abandon Me. I loved that book too and this one was equally as interesting. This is an accomplished debut in my eyes. Ella Baxter gets right up in some heavy topics and gives it her all.
Last thing - I can see a lot of folks not really meshing with this book. There are elements that disturbed me greatly. However, I feel like Ella Baxter unwrapped so many layers of numbing, pain and despair through intricately described scenes of personal turmoil, two-way mirror style self-inflicted brutality, humiliation and reflection. It ain't for everybody, but it's well worth the read.
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April 3, 2022Truly stunning. Phenomenal book
March 27, 2021
New Animal is the first novel by Australian writer and artist, Ella Baxter. When, on the first pages, the protagonist is filling awkward post-coital moments musing on the sort of funeral make-up she would do on the guy she’s with, the reader knows they are in for a very different read.
A year after her friend threw himself off a cliff, Amelia Aurelia is processing her grief and confusion, or perhaps avoiding it, with multiple casual sexual encounters via a dating app. She loves her job at Aurelia’s Funeral Parlour, is a qualified embalmer and talented at preparing the deceased for viewing.
When her mother dies after a fall down the stairs, it is probably little surprise that Amelia runs away to her birth father’s home in Tasmania, and then, in order to distract herself from the right-or-wrongness of her non-attendance at Josephine’s funeral, goes to a BDSM club with a stranger.
Baxter’s debut novel does illustrate how individuals process grief differently. The blurb is somewhat misleading: the fathers’ “intervention”, which only occurs in the final pages, is bizarre. While there is plenty of laugh-out-loud humour, much of it quite black, Baxter also includes a fair bit of explicit sexual description, there’s a generous use of expletives, and Amelia’s first session at Widow Maker has a definite “ick” factor, so this book will not be for everyone.
As well, readers of a certain vintage may have difficulty relating to Amelia’s reactions and behaviour; she seems almost entirely self-focussed and it is likely that the millennial generation will better identify with her mindset. Much of the descriptive prose is evocative, but the ending is rather vague, unresolved, and heavy on abstract symbolism. A quirky debut novel.
This unbiased review is from an uncorrected proof copy provided by Allen & Unwin.
A year after her friend threw himself off a cliff, Amelia Aurelia is processing her grief and confusion, or perhaps avoiding it, with multiple casual sexual encounters via a dating app. She loves her job at Aurelia’s Funeral Parlour, is a qualified embalmer and talented at preparing the deceased for viewing.
When her mother dies after a fall down the stairs, it is probably little surprise that Amelia runs away to her birth father’s home in Tasmania, and then, in order to distract herself from the right-or-wrongness of her non-attendance at Josephine’s funeral, goes to a BDSM club with a stranger.
Baxter’s debut novel does illustrate how individuals process grief differently. The blurb is somewhat misleading: the fathers’ “intervention”, which only occurs in the final pages, is bizarre. While there is plenty of laugh-out-loud humour, much of it quite black, Baxter also includes a fair bit of explicit sexual description, there’s a generous use of expletives, and Amelia’s first session at Widow Maker has a definite “ick” factor, so this book will not be for everyone.
As well, readers of a certain vintage may have difficulty relating to Amelia’s reactions and behaviour; she seems almost entirely self-focussed and it is likely that the millennial generation will better identify with her mindset. Much of the descriptive prose is evocative, but the ending is rather vague, unresolved, and heavy on abstract symbolism. A quirky debut novel.
This unbiased review is from an uncorrected proof copy provided by Allen & Unwin.
May 15, 2022
Look, I’m not part of the kink community, but even I can tell that Baxter really did them dirty in New Animal. Which makes this a really frustrating star rating to deliver, because the beginning and very end of this book are solid. (The middle, however, is an unfortunate detour.)
Baxter’s writing and Amelia’s voice are heartfelt, compelling, and clever. It’s a novel that’s pretty fun to read for the most part, with some lovely dissections of grief, mourning, and processing. Tragically, this should have all come together to form a fantastic debut, but I just cannot get over the disturbing feeling that Baxter punched down at a stigmatized group for the sake of “humor.” And that’s not something I freak with so it’s a no from me—not that anyone in this entire dang book would understand what “no” means anyway.
Baxter’s writing and Amelia’s voice are heartfelt, compelling, and clever. It’s a novel that’s pretty fun to read for the most part, with some lovely dissections of grief, mourning, and processing. Tragically, this should have all come together to form a fantastic debut, but I just cannot get over the disturbing feeling that Baxter punched down at a stigmatized group for the sake of “humor.” And that’s not something I freak with so it’s a no from me—not that anyone in this entire dang book would understand what “no” means anyway.
February 1, 2023
Longlisted for the 2022 Republic of Consciousness Prize, US & Canada
I feel an overwhelming reverence for everyone drawn to this industry. It takes a certain kind of person to be able to escort the deceased through their final transitions. There is an Ancient Greek word, psychopomp. It means a guide for the souls to the place of the dead, and the role of the guide is to stay with them until they are comfortable before leaving. In every funeral parlour in this country, people like Shell wait to accompany our loved ones to another place. It’s possible to find great beauty in this job. I knew it when I started and I know it even more so now. It is an honour to work with the dead.
Ella Baxter's New Animal was originally published by Allen & Unwin in Australia in 2021, and in 2022 in the US by Two Dollar Radio, and in 2023 by Pan Macmillan in the UK (from whom, via Netgalley, I received this ARC).
Two Dollar Radio, to whom the book was pitched as "Fleabag meets Six Feet Under," are the press nominated for the Republic of Consciousness Prize, US & Canada, for this work:
New Animal is a fascinatingly different novel, at least in subject matter if conventional in format. It begins with our first person narrator Amelia Aurelia mid-scene:
There is a man with kind eyes and crooked teeth in my bed. He’s facing me and smiling, preparing to talk. I cough once, loudly, because talking is unnecessary at this point. We both watched patiently as he prodded my vagina with his hangnailed finger, and we took turns sighing mid-thrust.
Afterwards, Adam squashes my memory foam pillow until it’s wedged beneath his armpit for support. He squints at my framed certificate hanging above the bookshelf. My stepdad Vincent paid for the framing in honour of all the technical skills I had to learn, because he likes to celebrate stamina and effort. My mother even made a cake.
‘Certificate IV in Embalming, awarded to Amelia Aurelia,’ Adam reads aloud.
Amelia, in her late 20s, is a cosmetic mortician in the small family funeral business run her step-father, her mother (who separated from her birth father when she was a few years old), her brother and the two partners in his 'throuple'.
Or at least that is what she does by day, whereas by night she has an active, if relatively conventional, Tinder-fuelled sex-life:
I’ve told people down at the pub that life rests like a layer of chiffon over a body: one puff of wind and you’re dead. It’s a revelation that doesn’t sit easily with most, but I’ve learned to adjust by compartmentalising. I can separate feelings into imaginary boxes inside the mind. In one box, I put all the delicate, fractured wounds of the bodies I see all day. I fill it up with uncomfortable emotions and images. Then, in another box, I shove all the vivid warmth and liveliness of the people I see at night. I need both boxes, one balancing out the other, me ping-ponging between them.
Amelia's description of the tricks and traumas of her trade is both engrossing and sensitively portrayed.
But her life, and the novel, takes a rather dramatic turn when waking in a stranger's bed after a particularly drunken night, she finds she has multiple missed calls - her mother has had an accident, and by the time she reaches the hospital has died.
Ask if they want to summon a mortician, the family reply that they are the morticians and spring into action. Amelia is hit hard by grief, and, rather self-centeredly, decides to cope by not helping with the funeral preparations, or even attending, but flying down to Tasmania to visit her birth father, en route making sure everyone she meets knows that she has lost her mother.
There her first sexual hook-up leads her into the world of BDSM and the local Kink scene, and some misadventures both portrayed in graphic detail, but also with a comic touch, as she rather spectacularly misjudges her first venture into domination, this fuelled by what she sees as her father's inability to understand her grief (and what the reader sees as two people coping in different ways):
I sit at the table and implode while looking at photos of my dead mother. I would rather fly to Abu Dhabi and bury myself alive and alone in the boiling sand, because it would still feel better than this. I am so mad that I could hit Jack with my fists to make him understand that it is unforgivable to make a grieving woman sit at a table and look at photos of her mother, who is right now being burnt to pieces, to specks, to dust. Unthinkable. This is more uncomfortable than painting a man in my menstrual blood, more uncomfortable than being flayed alive in front of a crowd. It is so uncomfortable that I need to feel something else of equal intensity. If anyone ever asks why I went back to the Widow Maker, I will tell them it’s because Jack pulled out photo albums of my mother, and I saw the face of the woman I loved—not radiating happiness or joy, but enduring a marriage that didn’t suit her.
But just as the novel seems to be turning into Fifty Shades it takes a rather different tone as, taking up work in a local funeral parlour chain (rather to the horror of her family who regard the chains as bandits), she finds healing while preparing a stillborn infant for burial.
I'm not really sure what to make of this one. The moving portrayal of the 'psychopomp' role of preparing someone's loved one for their final encounter and journey, jars rather with the graphic and comic portrayal of the Kink scene, and, as mentioned, in form this is rather conventional. A slightly odd choice for the RofC list but an interesting read - 3 stars.
I feel an overwhelming reverence for everyone drawn to this industry. It takes a certain kind of person to be able to escort the deceased through their final transitions. There is an Ancient Greek word, psychopomp. It means a guide for the souls to the place of the dead, and the role of the guide is to stay with them until they are comfortable before leaving. In every funeral parlour in this country, people like Shell wait to accompany our loved ones to another place. It’s possible to find great beauty in this job. I knew it when I started and I know it even more so now. It is an honour to work with the dead.
Ella Baxter's New Animal was originally published by Allen & Unwin in Australia in 2021, and in 2022 in the US by Two Dollar Radio, and in 2023 by Pan Macmillan in the UK (from whom, via Netgalley, I received this ARC).
Two Dollar Radio, to whom the book was pitched as "Fleabag meets Six Feet Under," are the press nominated for the Republic of Consciousness Prize, US & Canada, for this work:
Two Dollar Radio is a family-run outfit founded in 2005 with the mission to reaffirm the cultural and artistic spirit of the publishing industry. We aim to do this by presenting bold works of literary merit, each book, individually and collectively, providing a sonic progression that we believe to be too loud to ignore.
Two Dollar Radio was started in 2005 by Eric Obenauf and Eliza Wood-Obenauf, an idealistic, young married couple with a love of books, who now live in Columbus, Ohio, with their two children and their brick-and-mortar indie bookstore / vegan cafe, Two Dollar Radio Headquarters.
Land Acknowledgment: Two Dollar Radio acknowledges that this land where we live and work, commonly known as "Columbus, Ohio," is the contemporary territory of the Shawnee, Miami, Hopewell, and other Indigenous Nations, which comprised some of the roughly 80,000 Indigenous people forcibly displaced from their ancestral homelands east of the Mississippi River** through the Indian Removal Act of 1830. We would like to pay our respects as well as honor the culture, heritage, and resiliency of these and other Indigenous nations with strong ancestral ties to these lands, as well as individuals from Indigenous backgrounds in our community who continue to call central Ohio home.
New Animal is a fascinatingly different novel, at least in subject matter if conventional in format. It begins with our first person narrator Amelia Aurelia mid-scene:
There is a man with kind eyes and crooked teeth in my bed. He’s facing me and smiling, preparing to talk. I cough once, loudly, because talking is unnecessary at this point. We both watched patiently as he prodded my vagina with his hangnailed finger, and we took turns sighing mid-thrust.
Afterwards, Adam squashes my memory foam pillow until it’s wedged beneath his armpit for support. He squints at my framed certificate hanging above the bookshelf. My stepdad Vincent paid for the framing in honour of all the technical skills I had to learn, because he likes to celebrate stamina and effort. My mother even made a cake.
‘Certificate IV in Embalming, awarded to Amelia Aurelia,’ Adam reads aloud.
Amelia, in her late 20s, is a cosmetic mortician in the small family funeral business run her step-father, her mother (who separated from her birth father when she was a few years old), her brother and the two partners in his 'throuple'.
Or at least that is what she does by day, whereas by night she has an active, if relatively conventional, Tinder-fuelled sex-life:
I’ve told people down at the pub that life rests like a layer of chiffon over a body: one puff of wind and you’re dead. It’s a revelation that doesn’t sit easily with most, but I’ve learned to adjust by compartmentalising. I can separate feelings into imaginary boxes inside the mind. In one box, I put all the delicate, fractured wounds of the bodies I see all day. I fill it up with uncomfortable emotions and images. Then, in another box, I shove all the vivid warmth and liveliness of the people I see at night. I need both boxes, one balancing out the other, me ping-ponging between them.
Amelia's description of the tricks and traumas of her trade is both engrossing and sensitively portrayed.
But her life, and the novel, takes a rather dramatic turn when waking in a stranger's bed after a particularly drunken night, she finds she has multiple missed calls - her mother has had an accident, and by the time she reaches the hospital has died.
Ask if they want to summon a mortician, the family reply that they are the morticians and spring into action. Amelia is hit hard by grief, and, rather self-centeredly, decides to cope by not helping with the funeral preparations, or even attending, but flying down to Tasmania to visit her birth father, en route making sure everyone she meets knows that she has lost her mother.
There her first sexual hook-up leads her into the world of BDSM and the local Kink scene, and some misadventures both portrayed in graphic detail, but also with a comic touch, as she rather spectacularly misjudges her first venture into domination, this fuelled by what she sees as her father's inability to understand her grief (and what the reader sees as two people coping in different ways):
I sit at the table and implode while looking at photos of my dead mother. I would rather fly to Abu Dhabi and bury myself alive and alone in the boiling sand, because it would still feel better than this. I am so mad that I could hit Jack with my fists to make him understand that it is unforgivable to make a grieving woman sit at a table and look at photos of her mother, who is right now being burnt to pieces, to specks, to dust. Unthinkable. This is more uncomfortable than painting a man in my menstrual blood, more uncomfortable than being flayed alive in front of a crowd. It is so uncomfortable that I need to feel something else of equal intensity. If anyone ever asks why I went back to the Widow Maker, I will tell them it’s because Jack pulled out photo albums of my mother, and I saw the face of the woman I loved—not radiating happiness or joy, but enduring a marriage that didn’t suit her.
But just as the novel seems to be turning into Fifty Shades it takes a rather different tone as, taking up work in a local funeral parlour chain (rather to the horror of her family who regard the chains as bandits), she finds healing while preparing a stillborn infant for burial.
I'm not really sure what to make of this one. The moving portrayal of the 'psychopomp' role of preparing someone's loved one for their final encounter and journey, jars rather with the graphic and comic portrayal of the Kink scene, and, as mentioned, in form this is rather conventional. A slightly odd choice for the RofC list but an interesting read - 3 stars.
March 13, 2021
This was a truly exceptional debut novel which I read fast, but have been thinking over ever since and that is a good book, a book that makes you think.
This is a difficult one for me to review because all the things that attracted me to it in the first place, that made me want to read it, are there, yet end up not really representing the reading experience which fascinated me so much.
First, we have the main character, Amelia, who is a cosmetician at her families mortuary business. The whole book is Amelia's point of view and she is a fascinating character but not what I expected from the blub. The blurb suggests she is looking for a 'man' and has trouble getting close to people. There is a hint of funny social awkwardness due to her job. Well, Amelia is very poor at getting close to people, but that causes her no concern whatsoever. She is the champion of one night stands, dating apps are her tool of choice and one night stands are her hobby, recreation and relaxation all in one. She is perfectly at peace with this lifestyle and sees no reason to get close to people or change in any way. I loved the liberation of reading a young female character who is ok with her high sex drive and exercises it however she likes!
Amelia's relationship to her complex, flamboyant family is also unusual. She has her own bungalow in the garden, her own life and good relationship with her family all of whom she works with in the mortuary, except for her biological father who lives in Tasmania. Then when her mother has an accident, Amelia cannot cope with the expectations on her and flees to stay with her father in Tassie. Once there she reaches out (via dating app) for her routine hobby of sex, the hobby which takes her out of herself in a beautifully described way. This time however she ends up choosing someone who is heavily into kink - sadism in particular - and ends up in a club with him. Following that experience she kind of naturally rolls further into the kink scene.
Now, the paragraph above is true but I don't know that you will get a great picture of how the book will make you feel by reading that description. The real strength of this book is the sheer lushness of experience that one gets from reading Amelia from inside her own head. She is remarkably lacking in any form of introspection so it is odd how very vividly her experiences translate themselves to the reader.
This was described as a funny book. I would not say funny myself, there is a deep thread of humour running through the narrative, often dark and cynical, frequently confronting and invariably fascinating but never 'ha ha' type funny more the 'it is only funny because it is true' type funny.
But I am still not sure how how feel about the blurb on the back of the book: It reads a little bit like someone who read the book and was not quite sure what to make of it (Well, TBH that is kind of me as well). I suspect that everyone will take away a rather different experience from this book, for some the BDSM might be too much or Amelia's approach to sex too confrontational - though I found that gorgeously written - others will concentrate on the mapping of grief that occurs in the book also.
The description of Amelia's process of grief coping is very well done - Amelia herself does not much think about it. She experiences it, but cannot cope with the expectations of others that are put upon her. Her resentment at the demands made of her, things of her that she is not capable of giving leads her to flee to her father in Tasmania. I think it is a most excellent portrayal of the difficulty a grieving person has when they are forced into a process that does not suit them. Amelia had thought that she understood the grieving processes from her job but it becomes clear to her that in first person she has no coping methods. It is fascinating to read and I emphasised strongly with the resentment that can face you when you do not conform to other peoples expectations.
Many thanks to Allen & Unwin for the opportunity to read this debut novel as an Advance Reading Copy. I rather suspect that I will be thinking this one over for a long time.
This is a difficult one for me to review because all the things that attracted me to it in the first place, that made me want to read it, are there, yet end up not really representing the reading experience which fascinated me so much.
First, we have the main character, Amelia, who is a cosmetician at her families mortuary business. The whole book is Amelia's point of view and she is a fascinating character but not what I expected from the blub. The blurb suggests she is looking for a 'man' and has trouble getting close to people. There is a hint of funny social awkwardness due to her job. Well, Amelia is very poor at getting close to people, but that causes her no concern whatsoever. She is the champion of one night stands, dating apps are her tool of choice and one night stands are her hobby, recreation and relaxation all in one. She is perfectly at peace with this lifestyle and sees no reason to get close to people or change in any way. I loved the liberation of reading a young female character who is ok with her high sex drive and exercises it however she likes!
Amelia's relationship to her complex, flamboyant family is also unusual. She has her own bungalow in the garden, her own life and good relationship with her family all of whom she works with in the mortuary, except for her biological father who lives in Tasmania. Then when her mother has an accident, Amelia cannot cope with the expectations on her and flees to stay with her father in Tassie. Once there she reaches out (via dating app) for her routine hobby of sex, the hobby which takes her out of herself in a beautifully described way. This time however she ends up choosing someone who is heavily into kink - sadism in particular - and ends up in a club with him. Following that experience she kind of naturally rolls further into the kink scene.
Now, the paragraph above is true but I don't know that you will get a great picture of how the book will make you feel by reading that description. The real strength of this book is the sheer lushness of experience that one gets from reading Amelia from inside her own head. She is remarkably lacking in any form of introspection so it is odd how very vividly her experiences translate themselves to the reader.
This was described as a funny book. I would not say funny myself, there is a deep thread of humour running through the narrative, often dark and cynical, frequently confronting and invariably fascinating but never 'ha ha' type funny more the 'it is only funny because it is true' type funny.
But I am still not sure how how feel about the blurb on the back of the book: It reads a little bit like someone who read the book and was not quite sure what to make of it (Well, TBH that is kind of me as well). I suspect that everyone will take away a rather different experience from this book, for some the BDSM might be too much or Amelia's approach to sex too confrontational - though I found that gorgeously written - others will concentrate on the mapping of grief that occurs in the book also.
The description of Amelia's process of grief coping is very well done - Amelia herself does not much think about it. She experiences it, but cannot cope with the expectations of others that are put upon her. Her resentment at the demands made of her, things of her that she is not capable of giving leads her to flee to her father in Tasmania. I think it is a most excellent portrayal of the difficulty a grieving person has when they are forced into a process that does not suit them. Amelia had thought that she understood the grieving processes from her job but it becomes clear to her that in first person she has no coping methods. It is fascinating to read and I emphasised strongly with the resentment that can face you when you do not conform to other peoples expectations.
Many thanks to Allen & Unwin for the opportunity to read this debut novel as an Advance Reading Copy. I rather suspect that I will be thinking this one over for a long time.
October 1, 2022
Content Warnings: death, r*pe, blood, violence, themes of s*icide, pornographic content, stillbirth.
As someone who regularly recommends Boy Parts by Eliza Clark and In At The Deep End by Kate Davies, this book should have been right up my street. The themes of death, sex, BDSM and grief tick all my boxes. I love dark books with unlikable female main characters. This book, however, really missed the mark for me.
I have no real issue with the premise or plot of the novel. A mortuary scientist who has an unhealthy relationship with sex and grief is a great set-up for a book and Baxter offered some interesting plot developments throughout the novel. It was the execution of the book that really disappointed me.
Throughout the novel, I was struggling to understand if Baxter was purposefully keeping us at arm's length from Amelia or if that was a mistake. A distant, unreliable narrator can be a brilliant device for storytelling, but Baxter would hit me with passages of emotionally-driven reflections from Amelia about her grief that made me wonder if, in fact, I was supposed to be connecting with the main character. The lack of internal dialogue and backstory for Amelia meant her character felt very flat to me. I finished the book without a clear picture of who Amelia is. She is given these characteristics, such as seeing sex as perfunctory, which are interesting but are not explored in any depth or explained in any meaningful way. It felt as if Baxter was ticking boxes for a quirky, dark female protagonist without rooting these character traits in anything solid or foundational.
Furthermore, these character traits that require nuanced exploration, such as Amelia's relationship with sex, were inconsistent. Amelia is described as desiring to 'combine with someone else to become this two-headed thing with flailing limbs, chomping teeth and tangled hair.' She longs for a very grotesque, bodily experience of meeting with another breathing, writhing human. However, from the opening pages, she is disgusted by sweaty bed sheets and the idea of bacteria inside her urinary tract. These two versions of Amelia do not marry up. While it is true that someone can be simultaneously desiring something and disgusted by their reality, in this instance it made Baxter's characterisation of Amelia feel messy and ill-thought through.
This effect is worsened by the inconsistency of imagery Baxter employs in the novel. Within two pages, Baxter writes two different metaphors; one uses classical imagery of a goddess and the other uses the image of the shit being shaken out of a human body. The references are all over the place. The same can be said for Baxter's use of perspectives - she switches from first person to third person, sometimes in the space of one sentence. This could be used to a cool effect, but it doesn't feel purposeful enough to create an impression beyond confusion.
Unfortunately, Baxter's dialogue is disappointing too. It feels stilted and oddly paced, lacking the cadence and rhythm of a normal speech pattern. Odd details are provided in conversation that does not serve any relevance to the plot, but equally, necessary details are excluded when they are needed. Certain plot points bought up in dialogue are completely dropped and never explained. For example, Baxter mentions the death of Daniel and never unpacks the relationship Amelia had with this character. The plot point is not revisited in any meaningful way, despite one of the significant settings of the novel being supposedly linked to this character.
One of my biggest irks with novels is when they misrepresent a community. Baxter manages to misrepresent both the BDSM community and those who work in the mortuary sciences. The BDSM kink community, something close to my own heart and work, has struggled for decades to shed the stigma and shame surrounding itself. Baxter plays into many of the incorrect and damaging stereotypes of the community, using it for shock value and grotesque imagery. As someone who moves in these spaces, I felt let down by Baxter's portrayal. Though I am not knowledgeable in the field of mortuary sciences, it only takes a quick google and reading some other reviews by those in that area of work to see where Baxter went wrong. Research is invaluable if you are going to write about something unfamiliar to you - though I do not doubt Baxter did research, it would have been beneficial for her to consider her portrayal of these communities further.
Overall, this book fell very flat for me. As a debut author, I commend Baxter for her exploration of traditionally 'difficult' topics. I would suggest the two novels I mentioned at the beginning of my review as more nuanced books on the same topics. Baxter's execution needs refining and would have benefitted from some more heavy-handed editing. I hope Baxter grows as a writer and goes on to have a successful writing career - I would love to read one of her later pieces and see how she masters her craft.
As someone who regularly recommends Boy Parts by Eliza Clark and In At The Deep End by Kate Davies, this book should have been right up my street. The themes of death, sex, BDSM and grief tick all my boxes. I love dark books with unlikable female main characters. This book, however, really missed the mark for me.
I have no real issue with the premise or plot of the novel. A mortuary scientist who has an unhealthy relationship with sex and grief is a great set-up for a book and Baxter offered some interesting plot developments throughout the novel. It was the execution of the book that really disappointed me.
Throughout the novel, I was struggling to understand if Baxter was purposefully keeping us at arm's length from Amelia or if that was a mistake. A distant, unreliable narrator can be a brilliant device for storytelling, but Baxter would hit me with passages of emotionally-driven reflections from Amelia about her grief that made me wonder if, in fact, I was supposed to be connecting with the main character. The lack of internal dialogue and backstory for Amelia meant her character felt very flat to me. I finished the book without a clear picture of who Amelia is. She is given these characteristics, such as seeing sex as perfunctory, which are interesting but are not explored in any depth or explained in any meaningful way. It felt as if Baxter was ticking boxes for a quirky, dark female protagonist without rooting these character traits in anything solid or foundational.
Furthermore, these character traits that require nuanced exploration, such as Amelia's relationship with sex, were inconsistent. Amelia is described as desiring to 'combine with someone else to become this two-headed thing with flailing limbs, chomping teeth and tangled hair.' She longs for a very grotesque, bodily experience of meeting with another breathing, writhing human. However, from the opening pages, she is disgusted by sweaty bed sheets and the idea of bacteria inside her urinary tract. These two versions of Amelia do not marry up. While it is true that someone can be simultaneously desiring something and disgusted by their reality, in this instance it made Baxter's characterisation of Amelia feel messy and ill-thought through.
This effect is worsened by the inconsistency of imagery Baxter employs in the novel. Within two pages, Baxter writes two different metaphors; one uses classical imagery of a goddess and the other uses the image of the shit being shaken out of a human body. The references are all over the place. The same can be said for Baxter's use of perspectives - she switches from first person to third person, sometimes in the space of one sentence. This could be used to a cool effect, but it doesn't feel purposeful enough to create an impression beyond confusion.
Unfortunately, Baxter's dialogue is disappointing too. It feels stilted and oddly paced, lacking the cadence and rhythm of a normal speech pattern. Odd details are provided in conversation that does not serve any relevance to the plot, but equally, necessary details are excluded when they are needed. Certain plot points bought up in dialogue are completely dropped and never explained. For example, Baxter mentions the death of Daniel and never unpacks the relationship Amelia had with this character. The plot point is not revisited in any meaningful way, despite one of the significant settings of the novel being supposedly linked to this character.
One of my biggest irks with novels is when they misrepresent a community. Baxter manages to misrepresent both the BDSM community and those who work in the mortuary sciences. The BDSM kink community, something close to my own heart and work, has struggled for decades to shed the stigma and shame surrounding itself. Baxter plays into many of the incorrect and damaging stereotypes of the community, using it for shock value and grotesque imagery. As someone who moves in these spaces, I felt let down by Baxter's portrayal. Though I am not knowledgeable in the field of mortuary sciences, it only takes a quick google and reading some other reviews by those in that area of work to see where Baxter went wrong. Research is invaluable if you are going to write about something unfamiliar to you - though I do not doubt Baxter did research, it would have been beneficial for her to consider her portrayal of these communities further.
Overall, this book fell very flat for me. As a debut author, I commend Baxter for her exploration of traditionally 'difficult' topics. I would suggest the two novels I mentioned at the beginning of my review as more nuanced books on the same topics. Baxter's execution needs refining and would have benefitted from some more heavy-handed editing. I hope Baxter grows as a writer and goes on to have a successful writing career - I would love to read one of her later pieces and see how she masters her craft.
July 14, 2022
I don't want to be a hater but I really didn't enjoy anything about this book. I haven't seen any other reviews that mention this, but the writing was the worst part for me. It was immature, kind of a mess, and at worst just bad. The dialogue also felt unnatural and some of the details had me scratching my head—honestly I'd say it was giving 50 Shades, except more rapey.
May 4, 2021
2.5 stars. Definitely interesting, and enjoyable in parts. But also definitely not for me.
March 20, 2021
“Raw” is an over-used word for honest and forthright stories about sex and death, but that’s exactly what this book is: it’s the steak tartare of literature. Baxter could have easily veered into the smutty or the maudlin (or both!) with such a story, but she balances her unique brand of dark comedy with expertise that belies her early career status. I loved, loved, loved this book and snort-laughed all the way through.
My full review of New Animal is up now on Keeping Up With The Penguins.
My full review of New Animal is up now on Keeping Up With The Penguins.
November 1, 2021
beautiful stunning incredible jaw dropping phenomenal perfect flawless addictive astounding staggering bewildering astonishing breathtaking spectacular flabbergasting earth shattering sensational
September 28, 2022
i enjoyed it more than i thought i would!
if you've read this and thought amelia was frustrating/annoying, you've never experienced grief yourself
if you've read this and thought amelia was frustrating/annoying, you've never experienced grief yourself
February 21, 2025
Came for the BDSM, stayed for the exploration of grief and loss.
April 11, 2022
"You can always throw your body on the fire to keep others warm. I was already filled with petrol; he’s just a man-shaped match."
It has always been my dream to be a mortician. Ever since I was little, I've been fascinated with the dead and how they are prepped for the underworld. Yes, I was and still am morbid as f**k. So I'll read just about anything that has to do with a mortuary.
This story captured my attention just by the cover and synopsis. It kind of reminded me of my own life in a way and I had to read it. Amelia and I are similar in a lot of ways and I think that’s why I felt this story more deeply than others. There was an instant connection between me and Amelia. We each dealt with the pain of losing someone close to us in a similar fashion. I didn't go to clubs as Amelia did but I did do things that I now regret. We all grieve in our own way and it's never easy. We just have to take it one day at a time.
The story was great. Every single emotion put forth on those pages, you felt every single one of them. You grieved along with the family and your heart broke right alongside them. It was deeply moving and a tad bit bizarre. I think that's why I enjoyed it as much as I did. It wasn't your typical story of loss and grieving. I really liked this one.
New Animal was one hell of a debut and I loved it. Ella took us on a journey we weren't expecting and brought some light on things we never think about. This book bared its heart to us and its rawness shone through. It was an exceptional read and this is one author to look out for!
It has always been my dream to be a mortician. Ever since I was little, I've been fascinated with the dead and how they are prepped for the underworld. Yes, I was and still am morbid as f**k. So I'll read just about anything that has to do with a mortuary.
This story captured my attention just by the cover and synopsis. It kind of reminded me of my own life in a way and I had to read it. Amelia and I are similar in a lot of ways and I think that’s why I felt this story more deeply than others. There was an instant connection between me and Amelia. We each dealt with the pain of losing someone close to us in a similar fashion. I didn't go to clubs as Amelia did but I did do things that I now regret. We all grieve in our own way and it's never easy. We just have to take it one day at a time.
The story was great. Every single emotion put forth on those pages, you felt every single one of them. You grieved along with the family and your heart broke right alongside them. It was deeply moving and a tad bit bizarre. I think that's why I enjoyed it as much as I did. It wasn't your typical story of loss and grieving. I really liked this one.
New Animal was one hell of a debut and I loved it. Ella took us on a journey we weren't expecting and brought some light on things we never think about. This book bared its heart to us and its rawness shone through. It was an exceptional read and this is one author to look out for!
March 31, 2025
So many emotions packed in so little pages
Read
August 23, 2022Dnf ing this one. I really don't think I would enjoy this book. Couldn't connect with the writing.
The writing is good, don't get me wrong. But to me, the protagonist felt distant and detached, which I believe is intentional. This is not something I really prefer in my books.
Is she unlikable? I don't know since I wasn't that far into the book before I decided to quit.
All I can say is that I know that I wouldn't love it if I pushed through.
The writing is good, don't get me wrong. But to me, the protagonist felt distant and detached, which I believe is intentional. This is not something I really prefer in my books.
Is she unlikable? I don't know since I wasn't that far into the book before I decided to quit.
All I can say is that I know that I wouldn't love it if I pushed through.
April 23, 2022
4.5/5. this is very much the latest entry in the Sad Messy Girl canon which i know a lot of people are extremely tired of but honestly i love a sad messy girl book, so ! out of all the others the one it reminded me of most was luster by raven leilani, the way so much of it was spiky and uncomfortable and a little hurtful and not nearly enough of it was satisfactorily resolved by the end, but despite that i really really liked it anyway. the ending made me cry! recommending this along with everyone in this room will someday be dead by emily r. austin to bitches who are quite heavily medicated for extreme death phobia but can’t help repeatedly poking the bruise anyway
July 9, 2022
This short but intense novel from Two Dollar Radio is quite a jolt to the system! Amelia is a thirtyish year-old woman who works in her family's business as a cosmetic mortician. She loses her beloved mother suddenly in a freak accident and becomes consumed by grief in ways she can't explain or predict. Instead of attending her mother's funeral she runs off and quickly becomes involved in the world of BDSM. Hijinks ensue.
This might sound gimmicky but the balanced mixture of comedy and poignancy is just right, and Baxter's insights into grief's impact on the bereaved are sharp and true and brave. Can't wait for more from this talented author.
This might sound gimmicky but the balanced mixture of comedy and poignancy is just right, and Baxter's insights into grief's impact on the bereaved are sharp and true and brave. Can't wait for more from this talented author.
September 23, 2023
2 stars
Again a book I think tries to be edgy and modern, but has little substance. It's a pity. I lost my mom a couple months ago and I was hoping to get some insights from this or maybe an interesting interpretation of grief. I do think some interesting insights are made about the differences between the physical and emotional well being through sex and familial love, but they're sparse. Perhaps because the characters aren't exactly memorable.
I'm kind of disappointed because I truly thought this might be a new favorite.
Again a book I think tries to be edgy and modern, but has little substance. It's a pity. I lost my mom a couple months ago and I was hoping to get some insights from this or maybe an interesting interpretation of grief. I do think some interesting insights are made about the differences between the physical and emotional well being through sex and familial love, but they're sparse. Perhaps because the characters aren't exactly memorable.
I'm kind of disappointed because I truly thought this might be a new favorite.
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