Unlikely Animals

Unlikely Animals is narrated by a chorus of the dead—local people from across the centuries who are interred in Maple Street Cemetery. The use of choral narrative recalls Greek tragedy, which is at odds with the comic tone of the novel and its modern, small-town American setting.

In a novel concerned with loss and grief, the vision of the afterlife presented by the ghosts is not particularly reassuring. The dead narrators appear to live in limbo. They are tied to the earth, although they can no longer feel earthly pleasures: “We all forget what cake tastes like, or what exactly it feels like to be hugged. We’d love to be hugged again, but we can’t quite recreate the sensation in our minds” (234).

They have no way of knowing whether the afterlife extends beyond their present state: “We don’t know if there’s anything after this. Maybe nothing. Maybe this patch of dirt and grass and ice and snow is all there is” (48). The first-person-plural narration also infuses the text with a haunting tone, especially as the dead hold no answer about death itself.

Still, the dead watch over the living and are connected to the earth by their concern for the residents of Everton.