Synopsis
'Sharp' - The Guardian
'Excellent' - Glamour
'Darkly funny' - Harper's BAZAAR
'Chaotic' - The Skinny
Amelia is no stranger to sex and death.
Her job as a cosmetic mortician at her family's funeral parlour might be unusual but she's good at it. When it comes to meeting people who are still breathing she uses dating apps. Combining with someone else's body at night Amelia...
Details
02 March 2023
240 pages
9781529074840
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