The New Animals by Pip Adam is a secretly speculative novel that follows a multi-generational group of people through one manic night in Auckland. It’s 2016, and the group is attempting to put on a fashion photoshoot in less than twenty-four hours. Everything’s chaotic: hair needs cutting, sample clothes haven’t arrived, and budgets are questionable. For the first two-thirds of the novel, everything seems grounded in ordinary reality. Although the world is figuratively on fire, it is also literally covered in trash and dog poop. 

The novel’s opening section derives its energy from shifting points of view. Altogether these give a dynamic look at each character’s thoughts and opinions while lending the narrative a paradoxical feeling, both insular and worldly. The group consists of Carla, the hairdresser; Elodie, the makeup artist; Sharona, the seamstress; Tommy, the head of the company; Duey, Carla’s best friend; and Doug, the dog. Carla, Duey, and Sharona grew up in Auckland together. Carla has relied heavily on Duey, but their friendship is complicated because Duey believes Carla wants to leave Auckland, while Carla believes that the problems in their friendship are unfixable. Sharona, meanwhile, is dealing with a teenage daughter who hates her and with clothing samples that haven’t arrived; she doesn’t have time for more drama. Tommy needs the group to see him as their leader, the creative genius—never mind that there are two others on the leadership team. Elodie, the youngest member of the group, is superficially happy, friendly, and lively; she is also a screen for others’ projections. Carla sees her as a mystery, a puzzle to be solved. Sharona sees her as a foil to her own hateful daughter. Tommy, who has had romantic relationship with Elodie, feels entitled to know who she’s sleeping with.

But Elodie doesn’t fit any of those fantasies. Below the surface, she’s full of rage and fear about the polluted world we live in. In response to these pressures Elodie rejects her future career, her parents’ wealth, and the world as she knows it. She wants to survive, but survival is nearly impossible, as humans have not evolved enough to adapt. 

Everyone in the group know the world is ending thanks to human action and inaction. Duey, a witness to the madness, notes: “It felt like the end. They’d all be underwater, soon enough. There was nothing anyone could do about it.” But what does she do about it? She adds to the accumulating garbage—as do they all. The fashion industry, in which they all work, is a major source of pollution. Meanwhile Elodie is actually grappling with their larger problems: climate change, pollution, rising water, the cost of living. 

At this point the narrative breaks into something new and speculative. The story’s frame fills with water, and Elodie appears in full, all at once, as the eponymous new animal. The shift is, at first, a bit jarring and unreal: After she dreams of being a creature of water and not of land, Elodie becomes an aquatic being. In search of a new place for humans to live, an island where she can create a space for all as waters rise, she follows a warming current, eats raw fish, orders herself to swim, and fights an octopus. Is this believable? How much does believability matter anyway? Even if none of it is really happening, and Elodie is having a psychotic break, this part of the book, focused on Elodie, feels true and honest. 

Because the story is told from a shifting third-person perspective, it can be difficult to keep track of who’s head we are in at the moment. All of the characters sound similar, so when several characters converse, the scenes can get a little muddy. It also means that important events sometimes happen offstage. So when Sharona has an outburst, which really is her moment to shine, we are caught in Duey’s perspective—and Duey leaves the room. But the missed chance is consistent with these characters, all of whom are too preoccupied to witness, much less acknowledge, the emotional turmoil of those around them. No one sees Sharona’s hurt about her daughter, Duey’s fear that Carla will leave, Tommy’s insecurities, Carla’s anxiety about work, or Elodie’s angst about the world she lives in. Why should Sharona get her moment when no one else does?

The novel’s central concern is how much a body can change. Can we change fast enough to keep up with our rapidly disintegrating world? Even Sharona, who is captured by the fashion industry’s static physical ideal, looks at her body and realizes, “It was like she was growing into some new, strange species. Everything [was] out of normal human proportion,” although, of course, this really means “normal mannequin proportion” from her point of view. 

Perhaps it is Elodie who changes the most. At first she’s a bit forgetful and out of focus; she stays outside the group’s drama while somehow remaining central to the group. But then she lets Doug, the dog, loose from Carla’s apartment. Following Doug to the water, Elodie believes the dog knows how to get from Auckland to a better place. As she begins her journey through the ocean, she realizes: “Clothes weren’t right for her. They didn’t belong to the animal she thought she was. The animal she was becoming, the animal which was uncovering itself under her.” As Elodie strips off her clothes, she comes into focus as something new and daring, a being that can change the world and make it safe for survivors.  

Adam is not as sanguine. She concludes her novel on a nearly hopeless note: The fashion industry will keep polluting. People will not do what needs to be done to fix the world we live in. Each generation will blame the ones before and after. At best we might find Elodie waiting to welcome us on her island of plastic, drifting in the middle of the ocean.

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Pip Adam has published a collection of short stories, Everything We Hoped For (VUP, 2010) and two novels, I’m Working on a Building (VUP, 2013) and The New Animals (VUP, 2017). Her work has appeared in literary journals and anthologies in New Zealand and overseas. In 2012 she received an Arts Foundation of New Zealand New Generation Award; her first book, Everything We Hoped For, won the NZ Post Best First Book award in 2011.

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KJ Tenhouse is a human who enjoys looking at the sky, starting crochet projects, and petting dogs. Her writing explores the female body, mother-daughter relationships, and the preternatural, while experimenting in style and form. She has been published in The Alchemist Review and Spellbinder, and is currently teaching with The Writing Institute.