It's a sticky state of affairs, and one easily primed for tragedy, but New Animal is, if anything, more morbid screwball comedy than grief-stricken drama, fascinated as it is by the absurdity of intimacy and power across both life and death. Baxter’s prose is a heady mix of the bodily and the philosophically deadpan ... This is writing that is sharp and fearlessly chaotic, grappling with the depths humans go to for mere illusion of control. Luridly funny and always surprising, New Animal takes on the promise of catharsis—and upends it entirely.
... by turns a comedy of errors and a profound meditation on how to find mooring in the world when you have lost your anchor ... Writing about kink could be gimmicky or cringey, but Baxter imbues the BDSM scenes with just the right proportion of levity and self-awareness ... What unites death and sex is the way they force us to confront our bodies; in bringing them together here, Baxter has really written a novel about the limits of the visceral and the need for the mind to sit with the hardest truths, the worst emotional pains, rather than trying to escape them ... Passages like these are some of the frankest and most resonant I have read about what death does to the bereaved. The author has clearly dedicated herself to grappling with death in a way that feels more akin to mourning in the Victorian era than the antiseptic conventions of Aurelia’s Funeral Parlor ... In considering her preoccupations in the form of a novel, Baxter has encapsulated the agony of loss and the necessity of contending with it to find the new person you will become.
... a raw and irreverent portrait of one young woman's experience of the ways in which sexuality and sorrow overlap ... Baxter's crisp, clean prose offers a surprisingly tender look at mourning from an unusual angle. Baxter accomplishes the surprising feat of discussing often taboo topics like BDSM with sensitivity, respect and complexity. While Baxter never shies away from the darker and uncomfortable elements of both sex and grief, the novel's side characters soften the edges of her story's sharper elements. Both of Amelia's fathers, in particular, give the story its true heart, despite or because of their oddities and imperfections. And while Amelia's burgeoning self-awareness is far from complete by novel's end, readers will have a sense of witnessing quiet revelation. Darkly comedic in its first half and unexpectedly vulnerable in its second, New Animal, like its protagonist, presents a coolly casual exterior only to reveal the fragile truths at its core.
A piercing novel about death, grief, and the lengths people will go to escape them, Ella Baxter’s New Animal is not for the faint of heart ... Baxter’s prose is a living thing, wild and snarling, its jagged claws and honed teeth unforgiving and relentless. Amelia stokes empathy as a woman seeking absolution down dead ends. Her codependency and repression are addressed in frank terms...and every beat of dark comedy is paired with an empathetic wince as Amelia forces herself past her limits. New Animal is at turns graphic, disturbing, and tender—in other words: human.
Baxter’s novel isn’t just another self-destructive coping story. It’s an eloquent and philosophical novel that brings readers intimately close to death ... As this book rebelliously tackles death and grief, it may not be right for queasy readers ... Via Amelia’s insightful, death-positive thoughts, Baxter’s writing possesses a poetic, reflective tone that assures readers death isn’t what we should fear ... The novel possesses many gentle reminders regarding mortality. However, what Baxter so cleverly does is weave biology and science into the conversation ... Amelia’s experiences inspire readers to explore our desires and bodies regardless of tradition and society’s expectations. A wonderful novel, New Animal, is a groundbreaking, holistic call for reform, mostly of the self.
... what the book is about: a young woman’s attempts to abuse the body in order to numb the mind. New Animal is an interesting take on this subject, though sadly the book’s most engaging writing occurs before the sadomasochism mission gets under way ... Early chapters introducing us to Amelia’s life in Melbourne are vibrant and forthright ... Baxter gets us close to her character’s experience with clever, visceral descriptions of the work [at a funeral home] ... This part of the narrative has a natural momentum, occasional cliff-hangers, nothing feels forced. Things change when Amelia flees to Tasmania to stay with her biological father Jack. Certain plausibility issues abound ... The book’s bigger issue is with time management. There is too much going on in the space of a few days, not enough room for cause and effect, the compression of time that is necessary in fiction. Transitions are clumsy, revelations somewhat artless ... While structurally problematic, New Animals holds the reader’s interest because of its startling set-ups and the intricacies of its peculiar worlds[.]
... this female protagonist is profoundly unlikable. Amelia narrates her life with a caustic tone, perhaps in response to the grim reality of her experiences ... Baxter stands apart from [other] authors for introducing the reader to BDSM and kink with a deeper understanding of agency and consent. She allows her main character to explore the world of domination and submission as a means of actively distracting herself from her mother’s funeral and her own grief. While Baxter pushes Amelia to the edge, she doesn’t fall into the trope of portraying those interested in kink as victims seeking resolution for past abuse ... Baxter takes on a refreshingly real and acerbic tone in her portrayal of Amelia, exploring the inner psyche of a young woman attempting to piece together her existence in the modern world.
Women are so often cajoled into laughing at sexually ghoulish 'jokes' lest they be labelled frigid and humourless. The comic set pieces in New Animal provoke a similar discomfort, and a gnawing question: if this is satire, what – or who – is the target? Baxter treats the BDSM community as a punchline: it is a sticky-floored realm of rabbit-suited gimps, 'sexual parkour', and human brokenness. And, true to trope, Amelia is as flippant as she is raw, quipping her way through an on-stage assault, and treating those around her as extras in her grief-wracked vaudeville ... There is something sharply conservative at play in all this obliterative fucking: not only the message that damaged women have damaged sex, and empty women have empty sex, but that whole women – healed women – aren’t sexually hungry or playful.
Baxter finds bleak comedy in these settings, and uses Amelia’s adventures to explore the strange landscape of 21st-century sexuality ... If [Amelia's] naivety seems excessive, so does her exposure to mortality. The death of her friend is strangely superfluous, seemingly introduced only to forewarn us that Amelia applies promiscuity to her traumas ... It’s as though Baxter doesn’t quite have confidence in her own creation, and so loads up the backstory. It’s an unnecessary worry. Amelia makes sense on her own terms, as a young woman negotiating the sexual settlement. Baxter is a sharp observer, and seems to have the Didion knack of getting close to a subject without surrendering her scepticism. New Animal is a little unformed...but there’s a winning talent here.
[A] gritty, honest and complex protagonist in the form of Amelia, an embalmer working as a make-up artist at her mother’s mortuary ... Baxter’s writing and incredible descriptive detail make the almost absurd experiences of her protagonist deeply relatable. Baxter’s illustration of Amelia’s challenged connection to her body evokes deep compassion, allowing the reader to connect strongly to the character ... Baxter has created a dark, beautiful, wild and engaging read with an incredible ending to match ... If you enjoy bold contemporary Australian fiction, read it, as long as you’re prepared to hide your blush if reading on public transport.
Each generation has their obsessions, and New Animal is a book for this generation, where young people explore extremes. Though Amelia chooses a particularly hard rock to climb to find herself ... the writing can seem emotionally flat because there is no outside input to show what is happening to this young woman. It’s not funny; it’s a road accident unfolding in front of you. There is nothing you can do except watch it happen ... New Animal is an excellent exploration of how grief can impact a young person’s life.
Grief and loss are difficult subjects at the best of times and are probably best left to people like psychologists who are supposed to be able to deal with them ... Modern feminists will not be thankful for the way they are represented, while the less said about the others the better ... The best writing in the book is the description of nature, particularly in Tasmania. On the back cover, the book is described as 'heartbreakingly funny,' but it isn't.
Readers beware, there are suicide mentions that may be triggering and various scenes that may arouse discomfort, disgust or nervous tittering, but there’s no judgement or moral censure by Baxter of the various proclivities of participants of the BDSM scene ... Sex aside, there’s also much love in New Animal. The book is an unabashed celebration of non-nuclear families ... 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 ... It’s an intense, viscerally affecting book, with the quotient of tenderness to violence in an equal scale.
In her incredible debut, Baxter combines dark humor with a complex protagonist and bold narration to both astound and devastate her readers. Amelia is a memorable heroine who is raw with grief as she struggles with and explores the paradox of finding harmony in the dichotomy of life and death.
A raw and mordant story of a woman processing her grief, sexuality, and family relationships ... Baxter delicately balances the emotional heft of the situation with dark humor...and finds clever ways to push Amelia toward coming to terms with her limits. It adds up to a convincing look at a young woman’s path toward self-acceptance.
At turns a rollicking sexual romp almost slapstick in its intensity and an existential meditation filled with the languid profundity of bodies at their final rest, this unusual novel navigates the most treacherous of emotional territories—the fault lines between love and grief, sex and death—with a deliberate lack of grace and real charm ... A tragicomic debut by an impressive new voice.
