New Animal
17 February 2022
Imprint: Picador
Synopsis
‘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...
Details
17 February 2022
420 minutes
Maddy Withington
9781529074833
Imprint: Picador
Reviews
Baxter’s writing is so forthright, her protagonist so raw and unmediated in her feelings, thoughts and flailing at the “arrowhead of sorrow” that New Animal makes for compelling reading . . . an intense, viscerally affecting book, with the quotient of tenderness to violence in an equal scale.Sydney Morning Herald
Baxter is fascinated with the female body, which “trots everywhere with you like an indebted lover”, and how it assimilates extreme emotions . . . Self-destructive anti-heroines are in vogue, but what Amelia’s story makes clear is how under-represented female sexuality still is.'The four best debut novels to read in 2022', Telegraph
There's a compelling quality to [Amelia's] honesty that recalls Raven Leilani's Luster or the sex-addicted eponymous narrator of Leila Slimani's Adele. As with these books, Baxter focuses on the ways in which pain works its way through the body.Irish Times
There’s not one expected detail here . . . Excellent.Glamour