Unlikely Animals

Unlikely Animals (2022) is a tragi-comic novel by Annie Hartnett. Set in the imaginary New Hampshire town of Everton during the opioid epidemic, it deals with the themes of loss and healing, as well as the complex relationship between the human and animal worlds. Unlikely Animals is the second book by award-winning novelist Hartnett.

This guide refers to the 2022 Random House edition of the novel.

Content Warning: The text contains references to substance use disorder, mental illness, and suicide.

Plot Summary

Unlikely Animals is narrated by the dead inhabitants of Maple Street Cemetery. The narrators are invisible to the novel’s characters and unable to intervene in their lives, but they can read their thoughts and care deeply about their welfare.

Emma Starling was born with a gift for healing, and her family and community have high expectations of her. At the beginning of the novel, Emma travels back from California, where she attended college, to Everton, her hometown in New Hampshire. Everton borders the mysterious Corbin Park, an exclusive, highly secretive hunting reserve. Emma brings home a stray dog, Moses, found by the roadside. Emma dropped out of medical school after losing her magical healing gift.

Emma’s brother, Auggie, has left a rehabilitation facility for a substance use disorder. Her father, Clive, is dying from a mysterious brain disease that causes him to hallucinate animals. He often converses with the ghost of famous local naturalist Ernest Harold Baynes, whom Clive refers to as Harold. Clive is obsessively searching for Emma’s former best friend, Crystal, who went missing after developing a substance use disorder. Crystal was fascinated by Emma’s gift, and they ran a healing business as teenagers.

Emma takes a job as a substitute teacher at the local elementary school. The children suffer as a result of the opioid crisis. They have also lost a classmate, Isabella Eaklin, to a rare autoimmune disease. The children’s teacher and her husband sold drugs to the local community and are now awaiting trial. The children are involved in a community theater production of Titanic!: The Musical. On Emma’s recommendation, Auggie takes over as director of the production. Clive plays the ship’s captain.

Ingrid, Emma’s mother, moves out, as Clive’s behavior, inspired by his interactions with Harold, becomes increasingly erratic. The last straw comes when Clive spends $18,000 on a pet fox, whom he names Rasputin. Ingrid goes to live with Clive’s doctor, Gary Wheeler, leaving Emma and Auggie to care for their father.

Encouraged by the ghost of Harold, Clive goes into the park, where he becomes trapped in a hog hole and loses consciousness. A search party finds him, thanks to Moses’s barking, and Emma performs CPR. Mavis Spooner, a reclusive elderly lady who lives in the park, is upset by the influx of people from the search party. She feeds wild bears every morning, but the day after the search, she tries to shoo the animals away from her house. One of the bears kills her. One of Emma’s students goes to Mavis’s home for a singing lesson the next day and finds her dead. They go to the Eaklin cabin next door for help and find the missing Crystal with Isabella Eaklin. Percy Eaklin, Isabella’s father, kidnapped Crystal after she miraculously healed Isabella, afraid that her addiction would deprive Isabella of her life-saving presence.

Crystal performs a healing ritual around Clive’s bed with the members of the Starling family. The next day, Clive wakes up. He is reconciled with his wife and takes part in Titanic!: The Musical. After a straightforward first act, the children slip into free improvisation, singing, dancing, and refusing to let the ship sink. The performance is finally interrupted when a student’s nickname, Rat, is spoken and triggers a hallucination in Clive. Convinced that the theater is swarming with rats, Clive raises the alarm, causing the audience to evacuate just before the lighting collapses onto the stage, inadvertently saving many lives.

The novel closes with the dead Clive proudly showing off the epithet on his gravestone to the other denizens of the cemetery: “Loving father and husband, hero to young persons & friend to all creatures” (349).