The New Animals by Pip Adam has been on my radar since it won the Ockham New Zealand award last year, but it was a provocative review by Carl Shuker at the Spinoff that triggered my impulse to read it. The review was titled 'On the blind, mulish idiocy of reviewers and the genius of Pip Adam' so you get the general idea without needing to read it, but of course I read it anyway. I found it entertaining, but not entirely convincing because I follow a couple of NZ blog reviewers and find them wholly undeserving of Shuker's spray. But his article did convince me to get Pip Adam's book out of the library to see what I think of it.

Books like The New Animals are sometimes called Marmite books, because readers either love them or they hate them. You can see that at Goodreads where The New Animals is rated either 5 stars or one, with effusive praise or derision. I'm rating it 4 stars because I reserve 5 stars for James Joyce's Ulysses, David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas, Kim Scott's That Deadman Dance and Shell by Kristina Olsson. So no, I don't think The New Animals is a work of genius. But it is very good and well worth reading.

The book is written in two parts. The second part, reminiscent of William Golding's Pincher Martin and yet written from a different angle altogether, is a chilling depiction of despair morphing into tragedy. The first part is, as the author says, a love story to the profession of hairdressing (which is the work she did to enable her to write).

As the novel explores the world these characters live in, a reader like me becomes torn between finding them bizarre, shallow and incredibly narcissistic, and recognising that they're part of an industry that looks glamorous but is actually insecure, badly paid and unfulfilling. The constant introspection of the characters worrying about what others are thinking makes them shapeless sort of people. They are afraid of conflict because their work is insecure and changeable: they are easily replaceable so their communication is fragile and inconclusive. Their anxiety about how they are perceived is palpable. They worry about short-term problems and trivial things because it is too frightening to look into the future when they can't change anything anyway.

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2019/05/03/the-new-animals-by-pip-adam/ ( )

(6.5)I approached this book with some trepidation due to its subject matter - the fashion industry in Auckland. The cast of characters are Carla and Duey, forty something hairdressers and their old school friend Sharona, who is pattern cutter for a trio of young male designers, Tommy, Kurt and Cal who are cut from a very different cloth. They are young, confident and the products of wealthy parents, whereas the former trio are disaffected, struggling to survive and emotionally unhappy dependent on the new generation. Also in the background is makeup artist Elodie in her early twenties who has slept with three of the cast.
The story takes place in a warehouse central Auckland where Tommy decides they will do a fashion shoot the next morning, despite the garments not having arrived from Indonesia. This requires late night hairdressing and makeup trials and a long night of sewing for Sharona to fit the sample garments.
The story takes a very unusual turn in the wee hours of the morning and Elodie takes a solo part for the remainder of the book where the book takes on an entirely new theme, tone and tempo.
I do not think this book is worthy of our national book award. The characters are very unlikeable. The plot is not captivating until two-thirds of the way through and then it enters the realms of magical realism. ( )