Author(s): Ella Baxter

Fiction

A stunning, heartbreakingly funny debut novel from a brilliant new literary voice. Sex, death, grief, running away...only one of these makes Amelia feel like a new animal. It's not easy getting close to people. Amelia's meeting a lot of men but once she gets the sex she wants from them, that's it for her; she can't connect further. A terrible thing happened to Daniel last year and it's stuck inside Amelia ever since, making her stuck too. Maybe being a cosmetician at her family's mortuary business isn't the best job for a young woman. It's not helping her social life. She loves her job, but she's not great at much else. Especially emotion. And then something happens to her mum and suddenly Amelia's got too many feelings and the only thing that makes any sense to her is running away. It takes the intervention of her two fathers and some hilariously wrong encounters with other broken people in a struggling Tasmanian BDSM club to help her accept the truth she has been hiding from. And in a final, cataclysmic scene, we learn along with Amelia that you need to feel another person's weight before you can feel your own. Deadpan, wise and heartbreakingly funny, New Animal is a stunning debut.  

CONSTANT READER STAFF REVIEW: RICHARD

Amelia Aurelia is a young woman working in the family funeral business, specialising in make-up prep for open casket funerals. She’s also aimless and unmotivated and finds release in daily one-night stands. Then a sudden death in the family sets her into a spiral of sex, escape and ultimately family reconnection and self-discovery.

Ella Baxter’s debut is in part a dark comedy of manners but in the main a touching look at grief, family and identity. These are well-trod paths for Australian literary fiction, but New Animal feels wholly original. The jokes are uproarious when they arrive – her stepdad Vincent is a fantastic comic creation – although be warned not for the squeamish or prudish. But the book is mainly about coming to terms with life, identity and accepting our bodies and our mortality.

New Animal is a compelling, fast read that I found funny and touching.