AustLit

'How could Laura Jean McKay know that her novel about a pandemic would be published during an actual pandemic? Unlike Covid, however, the pandemic in her debut novel gives sufferers bright pink eyes and an ability to understand the language of animals.

'Jean Bennett is a guide at an outback wildlife park and devoted grandmother to six-year-old Kimberley. Her ex, Graham, and  son, Lee, are long gone, and she gets through each day with nips from a hipflask. She’s an entertaining, if unconventional guide at the park, possibly tolerated because Angela, the park’s manager, is Kimberley’s mum. But Jean genuinely loves the animals, and on Kimberley’s regular sleepovers, the two of them plan their own animal sanctuary: ‘no animal turned away’.

'When the novel opens, the pandemic is just ‘that superflu’ afflicting people down south. There are stories of zoos being broken into and animals being released, but to Jean and the other staff at the park, it all feels a long way away.

'In this extract, anxiety about the virus is increasing and many of the Park’s staff have left. Schools have closed, and Jean and Kimberley have been doing shifts feeding the animals.' (Summary)

'In the age of Covid-19 we are taking comfort from animals and wildlife – but we should learn from them too.'

'Hard-drinking, foul-mouthed, and allergic to bullshit, Jean is not your usual grandma. She’s never been good at getting on with other humans, apart from her beloved granddaughter, Kimberly. Instead, she surrounds herself with animals, working as a guide in an outback wildlife park. And although Jean talks to all her charges, she has a particular soft spot for a young dingo called Sue.

'Then one day, disturbing news arrives of a pandemic sweeping the country. This is no ordinary flu: its chief symptom is that its victims begin to understand the language of animals — first mammals, then birds and insects, too. But as the flu progresses, the unstoppable voices become overwhelming, and many people begin to lose their minds.

'When Jean’s infected son, Lee, takes off with Kimberly, heading south, Jean feels the pull to follow her kin. Setting off on their trail, with Sue the dingo riding shotgun, they find themselves in a stark, strange world in which the animal apocalypse has only further isolated people from other species.

'Bold, exhilarating, and wholly original, The Animals in That Country asks what it means to be human — and what would happen, for better or worse, if we finally understood what animals were saying.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'Beyond the killing fields and the temples of Angkor Wat is Cambodia: a country with a genocidal past and a wide, open smile. A frontier land where anything is possible - at least for Western expatriates. In these loosely linked stories, Laura Jean McKay takes us deep into this complex country, exploring the uneasy spaces where local and foreign lives meet.Three backpackers board a train, ignoring the danger signs - and find themselves used as bargaining chips in a terrible game.A jaded expat, tired of real girls, falls in love with an ancient statue.As they explore the sweltering streets of Phnom Penh, two Australian tourists come face to face with the cracks in their marriage.There are devastating re-imaginings of the country's troubled history, as well as tender, funny moments of tentative understanding. These are bold and haunting stories, deftly told.' (Publisher's blurb)