In the tradition of the best existential farces, Enter the Aardvark keeps returning to the beginning of all things to ask: So how did we get here? ... like A.S. Byatt with a demented sense of humor, Anthony breaks the present action with dispatches about the finicky taxidermist who stuffed and sewed this very aardvark in Victorian-era London. The structure doesn’t so much intrigue as ensnare you, weaving its cat’s cradle of a plot as you lie there, strapped to a table. Dovetailing coincidences and epiphanies, profound and slapsticky, hilarious and depressing at once, Enter the Aardvark is brutally suited to our moment of absurd political theater ... Even with its wild oscillations...the book is too buttoned-up to feel surrealist ... Anthony’s energetic mind achieves...a straight tone with an absurdist philosophy ... character-driven, with a mean streak and a love of symmetry ... It’s a credit to Anthony’s authorial control that she can shift among characters who might, if they took the wheel, steer this story into their own genres ... Anthony opts instead for farce with a generous helping of sight-gags ... this novel falters, perhaps because the plot mechanics are propelled by a liberal fantasy. The book flirts with the hoary joke that all homophobic politicians must be gay. More fantastical is the premise that this white, pretty congressman would be deemed suspicious by authorities ... It’s a thrilling ride, even if disbelief remains unsuspended. I’d buy another ticket.
... a bombastic, stylized, brief (perhaps too brief) examination of the inner workings of a gay thirtysomething Republican ... propulsive and blunt ... Anthony manages to show us what makes Alexander tick, as well as hold up a funhouse mirror to our own political media in the age of spin ... bluntness effortlessly moves the narrative, even when we’re offered real insight into Alexander ... Throughout, Anthony uses her razor-sharp sense of wit to organically ground Alexander’s awfulness in prose, and wring out both irony and loathing for him ... The book’s greatest achievement may very well be its exacting dissection of Republican homosexuality in connection to avarice and the Republican Party’s ideals ... the ending, unfortunately, seems abrupt and ambiguous ... Still, even in its abruptness, there is something earned about the conclusion, as if there’s hope for Alexander to mature, even if he tries to cling to the artifice that made him such a political force in the first place.
Who would have guessed that a satire about an oily Republican congressman, 19th-century taxidermy and a creature so ugly it resembles 'a pig screwed by a donkey' would be the perfect tonic for testing times? This is what Jessica Anthony’s insouciant and ingenious novel delivers in fewer than 192 achingly funny pages ... As with any farce, it’s in the distance between a character’s self-conception and their reality that the comedy lies ... Anthony delights in destroying her Reagan-obsessive narrator on the page, while only occasionally allowing the comic situations to veer into the ludicrous or implausible ... Light on its feet, utilising second-person narration to great effect, Enter the Aardvark is reminiscent of Lionel Shriver’s recent sharply cynical novel, The Mandibles, while its trenchant satire echoes Tom Rachman’s much overlooked story collection, Basket of Deplorables, in which the shallow cruelties of Trump’s presidency are eviscerated. Ultimately, though, Anthony’s voice is all her own: deliciously astute, fresh and terminally funny.
This cynical vision—characters without sympathy in a world without morality—fails as comedy. 'Humour' originally referred to the fluids that keep humans alive; Enter the Aardvark is humourless in that it is both lifeless as well as unfunny. The few good jokes are those that ring true to life ... Great novelists close the gap between themselves and their characters. By contrast, Anthony, who advertises various blue-collar jobs in her biography (security guard, masseuse, butcher) while leaving out her career as a lecturer at a private college in New England, sees Republicans much as everyone sees the aardvark: as members of another species ... Enter the Aardvark, sadly, is almost soulless.
Woven throughout Jessica Anthony’s addictively witty narrative is the conceit that we live in an age in which everyone speaks too much and reflects not enough. What better lens to examine this notion through than the rhetorical minefield that is modern politics? As any satirist worth their salt these days must, Anthony has realised that the times we live in are already a kind of cosmic joke. What marks her latest work out as original and insightful is her narrative style, and the emotional core she sustains at the heart of the US congressman’s story. Fresh, astute and mouthwateringly sharp, this is a rare thing; a political satire that tugs on the heartstrings in unconventional ways.
... a blisteringly innovative and outrageous novel ... If you’re searching for a sharp, looking-glass view into the far end of contemporary politics, look no further. Jessica Anthony’s second novel has the pacing of a thriller with satirical verve of Nathaniel West. Beyond a fabulist send-up of our current political chaos, it’s an examination of the fall out of masculinity’s rigid constraints, played out through sexual repression and relentless power dynamics.
Though Enter the Aardvark is certainly satire, Anthony’s depiction of Wilson’s repressed sexuality cuts beneath the surface. Her dissection of Wilson’s political beliefs, particularly his anti-abortion stance, isn’t just sharp commentary on polarization, identity and power in the U.S. It’s also a poignant examination of what happens when we deny ourselves the ability to love and be loved.
Anthony has woven the historic and the contemporary into this brilliant and fast-paced novel. Bursts of hilarity and heartbreak make it a delight to read. A perfect escape for this political season.
Weird, wonderful, and very much of the moment, Enter the Aardvark is a landmark political novel of the Trump era ... With heart and humor, Enter the Aardvark expertly skewers our current political climate.
Anthony keeps her complex plot moving swiftly with constant jumps between the two story lines, which begin to flop wildly over one another, and twists (Eyeball transplants! Hauntings! Backstabbing!) aplenty. A wholly original, entertaining, history-infused, and politically engaged novel of the deeds and misdeeds of lonely, repressed men.
A story of taxidermy, political intrigue, and love between men ... In addition to providing a lot of detail about the art of taxidermy, Anthony offers meditations on the interconnectedness of all things. There are also ghosts and Nazis, in case all that isn’t enough ... Weirdly compelling and compellingly weird.
Anthony...stitches together stories from repressive Victorian England and venal contemporary American politics in this marvelous, tragic farce populated by characters uncomfortable in their own skin ... While the overly broad satirical portrait of Wilson detracts from his plotline’s emotional resonance, the novel’s smooth comic machinery builds toward a satisfying climax that reveals how the aardvark’s history bears on the congressman’s present. This idiosyncratic satire is full of wonders and warnings.
