We paused there together, sharing my heartbeat.īut now, in the age of coronavirus, we all live alone. Ginger Meggs was living alone in an enclosure. I was living alone in a caravan in the Northern Territory Wildlife Park at the time, researching my novel about communication between humans and animals, which begins, a little too presciently, with a new flu pandemic sweeping the country. But maybe in quoll time my big human heart is languid, lazy. She asked if maybe I was a calm sort of a person because he stayed there, belly warm against wrist, reading my blood. Bold, exhilarating, and wholly original, The Animals in That Country asks what would happen, for better or worse, if we finally understood what animals were saying.“He’s feeling your pulse,” the ranger told me. 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.
When he takes off with Kimberly, heading south, Jean feels the pull to follow her kin.
As the flu progresses, the unstoppable voices become overwhelming, and many people begin to lose their minds, including Jean’s infected son, Lee. As disturbing news arrives of a pandemic sweeping the country, Jean realises 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. And although Jean talks to all her charges, she has a particular soft spot for a young dingo called Sue. Instead, she surrounds herself with animals, working as a guide in an outback wildlife park. She’s never been good at getting on with other humans, apart from her beloved granddaughter, Kimberly.
Hard-drinking, foul-mouthed, and allergic to bullshit, Jean is not your usual grandma. Out on the road, no one speaks, everything talks.
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