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onceuponanisabel 's review for:
The Art of Taxidermy
by Sharon Kernot
The Art of Taxidermy is a prose novel set in Australia, somewhere around the 1960s (I'm guessing, but our 11-year-old protagonist's father fought in WWII). It is the story of a girl who has faced an absolute onslaught of trauma in her short life, and the ways in which she copes.
I find it hard to critique this book because it is a prose novel. I've seen criticisms that there wasn't enough plot to keep a reader interested, and while I'll admit that there isn't too terribly much that happens, this didn't bother me for two reasons. 1) This book is very short, and I read it in about an hour. Because there are just so many fewer words on a page, there don't have to be as many plot points as one might expect in a typical novel. I had no trouble remaining interested in the story. I was never bored. 2) This book really isn't a plot-y book, if that makes sense. The Art of Taxidermy is an exploration of grief and one girl's journey through it. The vast majority of the story is just examining Lottie's psyche rather than describing things that happen to her.
Despite being about a young girl, this book is extremely dark and definitely somewhat macabre. Lottie's response to the death she has been forced to deal with is to become somewhat obsessed with it. At the beginning of the book, she is just collecting carcasses she finds while wandering, but this evolves into an interest in taxidermy, as the title might suggest. While Lottie never kills anything, there are fairly graphic descriptions of dead animals and her amateur attempts at taxidermy which might bother some readers.
There are very few other characters in The Art of Taxidermy besides Lottie, but I felt that this meant that they all felt necessary and all received a decent amount of characterization and backstory, which is somewhat surprising for a book so short (it is 240 pages long, but the entire book is made up of free verse poetry, so in the end it feels much, much shorter). I felt so much for Lottie's father, and her sister and grandmother were really interesting characters. Lottie befriends an Aboriginal boy, Jeffrey, who, although he receives less time than I expected, provides a much-needed escape for Lottie and brief moments of levity in an otherwise very sad book. (Sidebar, but I really enjoyed the tidbits of the book about WWII in Australia and on the indigenous peoples just from an educational standpoint) The only character I felt could have been done a little better was Lottie's Aunt Hilda, who is ultimately a caricature of traditional values and whose value is in acting as an obstacle for Lottie's unorthodox interest in taxidermy.
In the end, though, The Art of Taxidermy was made of beautiful poetry that left me feeling distinctly melancholic, but with just the right amount of hopefulness/optimism at the end to keep the book from being too much of a downer. I recommend this book for anyone who, like me, is looking for a quick read on a rainy day.
ARC provided via NetGalley.
I find it hard to critique this book because it is a prose novel. I've seen criticisms that there wasn't enough plot to keep a reader interested, and while I'll admit that there isn't too terribly much that happens, this didn't bother me for two reasons. 1) This book is very short, and I read it in about an hour. Because there are just so many fewer words on a page, there don't have to be as many plot points as one might expect in a typical novel. I had no trouble remaining interested in the story. I was never bored. 2) This book really isn't a plot-y book, if that makes sense. The Art of Taxidermy is an exploration of grief and one girl's journey through it. The vast majority of the story is just examining Lottie's psyche rather than describing things that happen to her.
Despite being about a young girl, this book is extremely dark and definitely somewhat macabre. Lottie's response to the death she has been forced to deal with is to become somewhat obsessed with it. At the beginning of the book, she is just collecting carcasses she finds while wandering, but this evolves into an interest in taxidermy, as the title might suggest. While Lottie never kills anything, there are fairly graphic descriptions of dead animals and her amateur attempts at taxidermy which might bother some readers.
There are very few other characters in The Art of Taxidermy besides Lottie, but I felt that this meant that they all felt necessary and all received a decent amount of characterization and backstory, which is somewhat surprising for a book so short (it is 240 pages long, but the entire book is made up of free verse poetry, so in the end it feels much, much shorter). I felt so much for Lottie's father, and her sister and grandmother were really interesting characters. Lottie befriends an Aboriginal boy, Jeffrey, who, although he receives less time than I expected, provides a much-needed escape for Lottie and brief moments of levity in an otherwise very sad book. (Sidebar, but I really enjoyed the tidbits of the book about WWII in Australia and on the indigenous peoples just from an educational standpoint) The only character I felt could have been done a little better was Lottie's Aunt Hilda, who is ultimately a caricature of traditional values and whose value is in acting as an obstacle for Lottie's unorthodox interest in taxidermy.
In the end, though, The Art of Taxidermy was made of beautiful poetry that left me feeling distinctly melancholic, but with just the right amount of hopefulness/optimism at the end to keep the book from being too much of a downer. I recommend this book for anyone who, like me, is looking for a quick read on a rainy day.
ARC provided via NetGalley.