The Animals in That Country

Laura Jean McKay

May 2023 · Tantor Media Inc · Narrated by Helen Langford

About this audiobook

Out on the road, no one speaks, everything talks. Hard-drinking, foul-mouthed, and allergic to bullshit, Jean is not your usual grandma. She's never been good at getting on with other humans, apart from her beloved granddaughter, Kimberly. Instead, she surrounds herself with animals, working as a guide in an outback wildlife park. And although Jean talks to all her charges, she has a particular soft spot for a young dingo called Sue. As disturbing news arrives of a pandemic sweeping the country, Jean realizes this is no ordinary flu: its chief symptom is that its victims begin to understand the language of animals-first mammals, then birds and insects, too. As the flu progresses, the unstoppable voices become overwhelming, and many people begin to lose their minds, including Jean's infected son, Lee. When he takes off with Kimberly, Jean feels the pull to follow her kin. Setting off on their trail, with Sue the dingo riding shotgun, they find themselves in a stark, strange world in which the animal apocalypse has only further isolated people from other species. The Animals in That Country asks what would happen, for better or worse, if we finally understood what animals were saying.

About the author

Laura Jean McKay is a writer and a lecturer in creative writing at Massey University in New Zealand. Her debut novel, The Animals in That Country, won the 2021 Victorian Prize for Literature and the Victorian Premier's Literary Award for Fiction. She is also the author of Holiday in Cambodia.

Helen Langford is a native of Cornwall, UK. She worked as an actor in London and Dublin, before sliding into voice-overs in her thirties and discovering a passion for the spoken word. She recently turned her voice talents to audiobook narration, and is enjoying exploring a range of genres, from sci-fi to memoir.