In celebration of this week’s podcast featuring Catherine Chidgey and her fantastic new novel, The Axeman’s Carnival, I decided to write a post on animal narrators.
I think it’s fascinating when authors choose to write from an animal’s POV (we all remember having to do this writing exercise in elementary school, right? I always wrote from the POV of a whale. I couldn’t tell you why.)
I’ve broken things down into two sections: books I’ve read and books I haven’t read.
This book, the first in a series, is told from the POV of a saucy, TV-loving crow in a post-apocolyptic tale. I loved this unique book as well as the crow’s unique voice.
I read this one as an adult a few years ago and I can’t believe people read this to kids. It made me so sad! It’s a first person (first-rabbit?) account of rabbits living in a warren that they need to escape before it’s destruction. But it also touches on so many other things: politics, religion, etc.
Another classic, I initially read this one in high school (or was it middle school) and reread it again last year when my 9thgrader selected it as his independent reading book. This satire is written using third person POV and the reader is privy to many animals’ internalizations.
What? A Woolf novel I’ve never heard of? How can this be? This is an imaginative biography of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s cocker spaniel. A cross-genre blend of fiction and nonfiction published in 1933. Yes, it’s a biography of the dog’s life, but it also covers Browning’s life and it’s a glimpse into what was most pressing in Woolf’s own life: the glory and misery of London; the Victorian mindset; class differences; and the ways in which women oppressed by "fathers and tyrants" may find freedom.
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Gowdy’s We So Seldom Look On Love was a seminal short fiction collection for me when I was working on my MFA in creative writing. The White Bone is told from the perspective of elephants struggling through drought and poachers hungry for ivory. The elephants are on the move toward the “safe place.”
Can you imagine what stories a tortoise could tell if it could speak? And the things it might see over it’s 100 + year lifespan? This is a story about the world's most famous tortoise, whose real life was observed by the eighteenth-century English curate and naturalist Gilbert White. For thirteen years, Timothy lived in White's garden.
Billed as The Haindmaid’s Tale meets The Hunger Games, Flora 717 is a sanitation worker, a member of the lowest caste in her hive. But Flora is curious, and it’s not an advantageous trait. When she challenges the queen’s fertility, she becomes a risk to the fragility of the hive.
Three generations of polar bears, all famous circus performers and writers in east Germany exist in human society and literary circles. This sounds delightful and moving.
As a chicken owner, the premise of this one really resonates. Sprout is no longer content laying eggs on command only to have them taken away and sold at market. Jealous of the animals on the farm who roam free, she devises a plan to escape into the wile and hatch an egg. With whispers of Animal Farm and Charlotte’s Web, this is a book that explores the theme of freedom.
When Kibandi, a boy living in a Congolese village, reaches the age of 11, his father takes him out into the night and forces him to drink a vile liquid from a jar that has been hidden for years in the earth. This is his initiation. From now on, he and his double, a porcupine, become accomplices in murder. This book is a winner of the Prix Renaudot, France's equal to the National Book Award.
Book Giveaway Alert! I am giving away one copy of Xochitl Gonzalez’s Anita de Monte Laughs Last. In 1998, Raquel, a third-year art history student working on her thesis discovers the art of Anita de Monte, a forgotten artist from the 1980’s. Their trajectories overlap to an extent – both outsiders, but then diverge as Raquel fights to bring to light what really happened to Anita. Art enthusiasts, fans of books that take place in New York and books with dual timelines and multiple points of views will love this novel!
To Enter: Simply leave a comment on this Instagram Post. Earn extra entries by tagging a friend in the comments and sharing this giveaway in your stories. This giveaway will close on Thursday, September 5th and I will contact the winner on September 6th. Open to U.S. mailing addresses only.
