Rating: 5/5
Review:
Readable and insightful
I didn't really expect to enjoy this book. I read it on a friend's recommendation and in
fact I enjoyed it very much. It is very well written and very insightful.
The story of English Animals is narrated in the first
person by Mirka, a 19-year-old woman from Slovakia who takes a job as a
general assistant with a couple who run a small country house and estate where
they hold weddings, game shoots and so on, and who becomes involved in
taxidermy. A love affair develops, and
people's responses to it and to Mirka in general are very well observed. I liked the skilful way that Mirka's history
emerged and how her growing into herself and how events around her unfolded,
along with a growing sense of menace and impermanence, so I won't give away any
story, but I became very involved with the characters and how they interacted.
Laura Kaye is exceptionally good at the details of
relationships and their subtleties and complexities. She captures beautifully in some of her
characters their simultaneous kindness and underlying selfishness and lack of
awareness. She also paints completely
convincing portraits of a range of more minor characters, all of whom are so
real as to be recognisable. She has
valuable things to say about the meaning of acceptance and bigotry,
self-fulfilment and belonging. I also
loved (well, loathed, but you know what I mean) the excellent portrait of a blinkered
man who is violently opposed to anything which might disrupt his ideal of England
(including foreigners like Mirka), but who prefers to live in France.
Mirka's voice is beautifully done; it is thoughtful,
slightly naïve and completely convincing in its directness and lack of idiom as
that of a young woman who speaks English very well but for whom it is not her
first language. I found the whole thing
readable and very involving; it's an excellent read, which left me with much to
think about afterward, and I can recommend it warmly.
(I received an ARC via Netgalley.)
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