English Animals

Mirka is not really a countryside kind of girl, but in moving to Sophie and Richard's house in the middle of nowhere, she's signed up for a lot more than she bargained for. This book had so much heart and such vivid descriptions that it often felt like I was sitting in the kitchen with one of Sophie's delicious meals in front of me. I'm quite keen on taxidermy, so it was good to learn a little more about it, particularly from Mirka's point of view.

Rural England: it's often filled with more quirky oddball characters per capita than the cities - alongside a mixture of deep conservatism, old money and fear of outsiders. Imagine moving to the countryside if you were an Eastern European immigrant and a lesbian? That's Mirka, and when making endless coffees at a central London Pret becomes too tedious, she accepts a job on Richard and Sophie's farm. He's a shit taxidermist and she hosts weddings on the family estate. They're messy, creative drunks who are desperate for a child, or at least something to shake up their small world. So Mirka makes the perfect distraction to life on the farm, even if not all the locals are quite so welcoming. This book was a surprising treat: quite a perceptive depiction of modern life in the British countryside viewed through the eyes of someone who is clearly an outsider, with a tension that sneaks up on you. A great holiday read.

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.)