The New Animals

by Pip Adam

Carla, Sharon and Duey have worked in fashion for longer than they care to remember, for them, there’s nothing new under the sun. They’re Generation X: tired, cynical and sick of being used.

Tommy, Cal and Kurt are Millenials, they’ve come from nowhere, but with their monied families behind them they’re ready to remake fashion. They represent the new sincere, the anti-irony. Both generations are searching for a way out, an alternative to their messed-up reality.

Pip Adam’s new novel walks the streets of Auckland city now, examining the fashion scene, intergenerational tension and modern life with an unflinching eye. From the the wreckage and waste of the 21st century, new animals must emerge.

Cover by Kerry Ann Lee.

Genres: Fiction, Literary Fiction, Literature, Novels, Queer, 21st Century, Adult Fiction

224 pages, Paperback

First published June 8, 2017

About the author

PIP ADAM gained an MA in Creative Writing with Distinction from Victoria University in 2007. Her work has appeared in Sport, Glottis, Turbine, Lumiere Reader, Hue & Cry, Landfall and Blackmail Press. Her work has also appeared in publications produced in conjunction with two exhibitions at the Wellington City Art Gallery and her reviews have appeared in Metro. She is currently working toward her PhD Creative Writing at Victoria University. Her PhD project explores how engineers describe the built environment. She is using this research to write stories about our relationships with built forms and the structures that hold them up.

Everything We Hoped For won the NZ Post Best First Book Award in 2011 and is an unusually strong first book, distinguished by an exquisitely crafted surface and barely contained emotional force.

Her writing has been described as:
‘a kind of post-post modern fiction - nothing meta, no irony, no narrative arc, no insights or character transformations - the stories are flatline and searing and real’

- Helen Lehndorf PALMERSTON NORTH LIBRARY.


‘Adam knows how to brew a story to its essence and to infuse an emotional undercurrent that is deeply affecting’

- Paula Green CANVAS, NZ HERALD

Reviews

[Trudie · Rating 2 out of 5]

While I am waiting to hear which book wins the 2019 Ockham NZ Book awards I thought I should read last years winner The New Animals by Pip Adams.
I had been warned the last third of the book was a little different from the first part of the novel. However, I wasn't prepared for a perfectly ok story about Auckland hairdressers to just end with no resolution and a weird Waterworld inspired short story to appear in it's place. Did the author get bored with the story she had set up ? did she lose the entire last section of her novel in some unfortunate mishap ?
As a reader I was utterly at sea ( haha !).

Aside : I don't know Ockham people, you leave off the outrageously good The Ice Shelf from this years shortlist and yet this book won the entire thing last year ??

[royaevereads · Rating 5 out of 5]

Possibly the weirdest book I’ve ever read but in a good way. I loved it in its entirety, but the last third of the book blew my mind and had me hooked.

This book explores intergenerational tensions, and each character had emotional baggage. I like how it didn’t necessarily explore what the baggage was, but rather how they thought or acted because of it.

For anyone who has worked in any realm of the fashion industry (I worked in salons for a number of years) parts of this story are so #RELATABLE haha

It was also incredibly eye opening in terms of environmental issues, which is something I’ve been interested in lately.

I loved this book but it’s probably not for everyone. Some may find the narrative style confusing as it switches between 5 different points of view, often without warning. It’s also very stream-of-consciousness-y which can also be confusing as you sometimes aren’t given the entirety of a character’s thought. Personally I love that though as you really feel like you’re in their head, in an uncomfortable kind of way. Some also may think the first two thirds are too slow as it really is just a slice of life, and that the final third is too weird. Depends on your taste - for me, it’s one of the best books I’ve ever read.

[Nick Ascroft · Rating 5 out of 5]

What I like most is the examination of generational culture. Jesus, that sounds boring. But it's fascinating. How much of your personality is determined by the period you emerged out of? Pip Adam's Gen Xers and Millennials are no easy-bake cutouts or straw folk to be torn down. They are nuanced and recognisable. The story is fun, that should be said. It's a horror novel in a way. Especially its truth-ray vision of the workplace as capricious clusterfungus and if you worry that your sense of irony and nihilism are simply a fin de siecle hangover you can't shake. The dog and the octopus are the best characters. Elodie, the youngest, seemed the most mysterious, even to the author. Until the third act, which is not so much a twist as a logical extension of the inexhaustible workday.

[ns510reads · Rating 4 out of 5]

Somewhere between 3.5 and 4 stars, I haven't decided. It will probably be one I like more and more as I ruminate on it.

I liked this story set in contemporary Auckland, about a group of people working for a fashion design company. The intergenerational tensions and differences, and why people were they were, and why each generation thinks the other is the way they are, were fascinating to read. There is no overt plot, and the story seems to plod along, and not necessarily in an interesting manner, as each character grapples with their own worries and pressures...until it doesn't. The last bit was surprising and savage, and probably my favourite part, though I don't think it would be for everybody. It seemed to come out of left field, which probably says a lot about our society today. A lot of rage and despair and desperation comes through at the end, in terms of what millennials of contemporary Auckland (and probably wider NZ to a less claustrophobic extent) have to worry about, and contend with in the future if things are left as they are.

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

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/t...

[Sam · Rating 1 out of 5]

Unreadable drivel. Which is fine, but how on earth this won -WON - the NZ book awards is beyond me. Tellingly, there were no positive remarks on the blurb - because frankly the thing is unreadable. I could not bring myself to finish it. I don't want to be mean to the author - my problem is with the NZ Book Awards. I only read it because it won. I would love to know the justification. If you want to fine prize-winning books worth reading, follow the IMPAC prize - librarians select and vote on the books.

[Kirsten McKenzie · Rating 2 out of 5]

You can't kill the dog. Ever. Doug the dog was the only character I connected with. The relationships between the other characters were confusing, unhinged. I will be honest and admit that I skim read all the pages after the dog died. I don't think that if I'd read it more carefully that my rating would change. This book was not for me. Someone else may enjoy the deep internal reflection of Elodie in the last third of the book. Sorry.

[Francis Cooke · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bloody hell. The book started out feeling tight and claustrophobic, cycling through the perspectives of a group of people involved in an Auckland fashion label preparing for a photo shoot over the course of the evening. It feels in part like a sharply observed work of part satire, part social realism, but you can feel something bigger, and darker, and angrier, waiting beneath the surface. Then.........the last third of the book happens. It’s something that should be a surprise, but it’s simultaneously wonderous and furious, Pip Adam’s genius dazzling you at the same time as it bares its teeth to snarl.

[Arie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Throughly deserving of the most excellent review- will do this soon!

In the meantime, please just read anyway.

[Josephine Draper · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an extremely unusual book which completely defies genre. It is not a difficult read, but it is challenging in its themes - millenials vs Gen Xrs. Work competence. Confidence. Sexuality. The environment. It is therefore a very modern novel and one which I suspect may well date.

Even the basic premise is quite hard to describe. Essentially we have a group of people working in the fashion industry in Auckland. That's it. It follows a short period in time in the life of this group. Some of them we are supposed to be sympathetic to, and some obviously we are expected to dislike or despise. Carla, the hairdresser, is a character many of us can relate to - struggling to cope with changes in modern life, finding herself stumbling along. You want to root for her but wonder why she isn't helping herself.

This book has some fascinating ideas. For example, I found the relationship between Carla and her dog perplexing and engaging. Imagine having to live in a place you hate, with a dog who hates you? There would be no respite from life in your home. And yet, so many people live in places like this. The dog could be seen as a metaphor for anyone's oppressive home environment.

Similarly, the relationship between Gen Xrs and millenials is really well explored and up to date. Millenials, so self confident, and everyone else, being left behind. How will this modern conflict end?

Well, the book does offer an answer to how it will end - which I will not get into so as not to spoil it. However, while the end third of the book was fascinating too, it is such a sea change from the earlier themes that it is almost unlinked. I would have liked to have seen some resolution to the earlier story arcs that you are waiting to hear more about. It is for this reason that I've given it 3 stars, not 4. I did enjoy it - it was a challenging but not difficult read, with some great ideas, but I felt vaguely unsatisfied by it. Not one of the storylines reached a natural end and although of course this was deliberate, it does not feel like a complete book to me.

[Simon Sweetman · Rating 5 out of 5]

A claustrophobic masterpiece - a fearless assault on novel-writing, a brilliant result from a clever mind. I loved the worlds - distinct - in this book, I thought of many things as I read it, the movie "Magnolia", the song "Once in a Lifetime" by Talking Heads. And then, when I finished it, I played Def Leppard's "Hysteria" album right through. Twice. It seemed the perfect thing to do. This book has no correct answer. As such it will linger in the mind for a long time. Quite possibly a work of staggering genius.

[Laurence · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm not the demographic (Auckland millenials), and I found it heavy going; tedious and repetitive with characters that did not engage me - to the point that I really did not care and was not interested in any of them. It won the NZ best book award so I re-considered whether I was a bit harsh - on balance, I think not.

[Lisa · Rating 1 out of 5]

The author writes well and she waas attempting to address some important issues about consumerisim, superficiality and the impact on the environment but the story did not work for me at all. I only read it because it is the current book for my book club and got no joy from the experience. It is the worst book I have ever read.

[Anthony O’Brien · Rating 2 out of 5]

Pretentious nonsense about haircuts and a white t shirt

[Claire · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was an intriguing read, in the beginning I enjoyed it because I recognised so many familiar places around K-Road and that was a novelty, rare to find in any book.

The story revolves around a group of people trying to meet a deadline for a fashion photo shoot, who communicate badly, who do not appear to understand each other and often do not say what they are thinking. The conversations and dialogue were so tedious and minimalist, I found myself wondering if they were realistic or an exaggeration of just how dysfunctional the relationships were.

The young and rich youth that are leading the project make erratic decisions that cause everyone to jump because they are dependent on the work, the tired Gen-Xer's have little enthusiasm and are thinking about other dramas going on in their lives.

Tommy, Cal and Kurt ran the company. They designed together - it was theirs. They hadn't been able to find clothes they liked, so they started their own label. That's how the story went. They were agitators. Untrained outsiders...They were rich. People unrelated to untrained outsiders tended not to invest in them.

And then it gets surreal...

[Debbie · Rating 1 out of 5]

I chose to read this book as part of the 2019 Book Riot Read Harder Challenge in the category of a book by a woman and/or Author of Colour that won a literary award in 2018. Pip Adam is a New Zealander and this book won the Acorn Foundation Fiction Prize at the 2018 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards. God alone knows why.

This book is totally unworthy of any literary prize. The writing is mundane dross, the storyline is tediously boring and the ending is torturously atrocious.

This is a book about an awful self-absorbed group of people involved in the fashion industry in Auckland. The characters are as shallow as the industry and so is the level of writing. Perhaps this book is supposed to shine a light on the meaninglessness and wastefulness of consumerism, but if so it fails completely due to its complete lack of pith and biting commentary.

The last part of the book is written as a truly awful unending stream of consciousness as one of the characters decides to take to the sea to swim to the garbage gyre of the Pacific where she will live. Despite the fact that this character is overweight and doesn't exercise, she unfortunately does not drown or die of hypothermia as would realistically happen to anyone in her condition attempting a swim in a deep harbour. Instead she miraculously manages to swim for hours while the reader is tortured by her tedious thoughts and I found myself fervently willing her to drown. Unfortunately she never did.

This may well be the worst book I read this year.

[Jane · Rating 1 out of 5]

I enjoyed the first part of the book, trying to work out the characters and recognising Auckland but the last bit completely lost me...

[Emma · Rating 1 out of 5]

This was like two books in one. I don’t get it.

[Ethan · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 Rounded Up

What absolutely incredible, completely unpredictable journey of a book this is. What beings as a narrative pressure cooker of interpersonal and workplace relations and gentrification and assholes (all orbiting a swirling question mark of the “main” character’s past), Pip Adam takes in an extremely bold direction that you won’t possibly see coming, and I can’t help but admire it, especially because it just worked so well for me.

Very gripping experience with compelling, messy, complex characters. I was surprised at just how much I didn’t want to put this book down, but damn good writing is damn good fucking writing, okay

[Ellen · Rating 4 out of 5]

It is so hard to write much about this without it being a spoiler. I heard a review on the radio where they described the beginning of the book as claustrophobic - I knew the beginning had felt uncomfortable and I couldn't figure out why but that's a good word for it. You get so invested in the detail of all that is going on. By the time you get to the end of the book - well, being vague to avoid spoilers, you'll feel quite differently.

[Always Becominging · Rating 5 out of 5]

Pip Adam’s best book yet, clearly building on the structure and themes of her previous novel. The prose is so tight and precise and does a masterful job of presenting the characters and their relationships. The setting and subject matter of the novel is so contemporary, I feel as though I could walk past these characters in the street, overhear their conversations in a cafe. The final section is wildly ambitious but executed stunningly and I highly doubt that any reader would see it coming.

[Livvy Nonoa · Rating 2 out of 5]

I finally finished this one and boy did it take a turn. People say it is like two different books - they're right. But I still ended up clawing my way through it - felt like I was reading in staccato because of the sentence structure. To be honest I didn't like it, but I don't like DNFing novels so I did make the effort. The end part was more interesting than the first two parts combined. Very weird book.

[Barnaby Haszard · Rating 4 out of 5]

An unsettling read, stressful, tense, an existential claustrophobia pressing in on all sides. How do you break out into meaning? Break free from the time-wasting cares? If you are alive in 2017, you need not be a follower of fashion to sense all the tension these characters feel.

Too disorienting to give five stars straight off the bat, but knowing me, I'll talk about it for years.

[Alix · Rating 2 out of 5]

I didn’t love this. The themes of generation clash and consumerism were under-developed, as were the characters, who seemed more soapy than like real people. The last third changes tack completely without connecting to any of the issues that frame the book. I’m disappointed because I liked the discussions of work and work processes a lot, but overall it didn’t work for me.

[Linda · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'd probably have given this book 2 1/2 stars really. The bulk of the book is about the fashion industry, or rather the people in it. And the last part morphs into something quite different. The whole thing is strange and disturbing in many ways.

[Claudia Small · Rating 3 out of 5]

Enjoyable writing
So fun to read a book set in Auckland, is this how Americans and Brits feel all the time?
Then woah, woah, woah, left field.
Have been thinking about the book a lot since finishing.

[Melissa · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book makes me feel like it has a much deeper meaning. Maybe I am supposed to pretend I'm back in school and analyze it. Maybe I'm not smart enough to understand, but maybe trying to understand it makes me less smart too. My brain hurts and I am done.

[Briar · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant. So good. Etc.

Reviewed in full on The Pantograph Punch (www.pantograph-punch.com/post/new-ani...)

[Jenny · Rating 3 out of 5]

Greatly redeemed by the saga of Elodie.

[Stephen Barker · Rating 2 out of 5]

Sorry