Talking Animals by Joni Murphy
Monday, August 3, 2020 at 7:49AM
TChris in General Fiction, Joni Murphy

Published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux/FSG Originals on August 4, 2020

Fables about animals who behave as humans are often intended to provide insight into human nature. In part, Talking Animals can be seen as revealing the prejudices that people of different cultures or skin colors must overcome when they try to live together. Substitute herbivores for vegetarians and fur color for skin color to get a flavor of the story. The story burdens animals with other human problems, including global warming, political corruption, inequitable wealth distribution, immigration woes, and the poisoning of the food supply. There is even a version of the animal rights movement that seeks better treatment of fish and other inhabitants of the sea. The characters are just as frustrated as powerless humans by their inability to make fundamental changes to policies that are killing them.

Joni Murphy has some amusing takes on New York City, a city taken over by invasive species that immediately began to mythologize themselves. They laid out Manhattan in a grid because grids create the illusion that everything is under control, but the story of every city is one of brutality that has been “retold as one of heroism.” Wealthy animals get their wool “shorn by skillful barbers who specialize in fades” while less fortunate animals haul away the trash.

The protagonist, Alfonso, is an alpaca from Queens whose parents are Peruvian immigrants. Alfonso regards himself as a “waste of wool” after his 1,500-page dissertation is rejected as unfocused. Alfonso dreamed of transcending the “dumb cartoon version of who we are as a species” but Mitchell, a llama who is Alfonso's beset friend, reminds him that alpacas and llamas have a proud heritage as consensus builders. Mitchell believes camelids, meek by reputation, have the power to rise up against politicians who are trying to turn the city into a “mall prison.”

Alfonso works in a meaningless clerical job in City Hall. He regrets his failed relationship with a vicuna named Vivi and wonders whether his life can have any meaning as a failed academic. Mitchell is caught in the bureaucracy of the city’s Office of Affordable Housing. The mayor is a horse who, like many human politicians, is dedicated to the principle that resources should be channeled to the wealthy and that less fortunate animals should feed off the waste products that trickle down from the top. Global warming will soon leave mammals living underwater with sea dwellers, but the rich will be the last to get wet.

Another of Alfonso’s friends, a lemur named Pamella, is a supporter of the sea dwellers’ rights movement. Pamella laments that voting for the mayor’s opponent will install “pig problems as a solution to horse problems.” Change won’t come by continuing to run in the hamster wheel, even for hamsters. She looks to the sea “not for politics, but for its hard-stinging spray. What we do isn’t good enough, but the alternative is ceasing to exist.”

If people are true to their natures, so are the mammals in Talking Animals. When Alfonso tags along as Mitchell investigates a complaint about housing conditions, Alfonso ponders the nature of cats: “they liked mixing signals without acknowledging the tension between warmth and aggression. A cat might spend ten minutes glaring from across the bar, then buy you a drink.” Alfonso recognizes the “need to accept others as they are, in all their weirdness” and believes he should not judge animals for acting in conformity with their nature, but when a seemingly friendly cat suddenly bites his ear and scampers away, Alfonso has difficulty avoiding judgment. Mitchell is more sanguine: “Everybody bites sometimes,” he reminds Alfonso. So it is with humans.

Notwithstanding their natures, the mammals in Talking Animals seem to coexist more peacefully than humans. Rambunctious raccoons tell jokes to complacent goats; cows and llamas bond over their multiple stomachs and endless chewing. Except for a large heist of maple syrup by a gang of bears, there doesn’t seem to be much street crime. The ravages of unregulated capitalism, on the other hand, are just as harmful in the fable as they are in the human world.

The first half of the novel, setting up Alfonso’s failures as a doctoral candidate and as a file clerk are engaging. While I agree with its message of hope and empowerment, the second half becomes a bit preachy as Alfonso, Mitchell, and Pamella embark on an ambiguous quest to fight the good fight for social, environmental, and economic justice. Despite the plot’s unfortunate loss of focus, Talking Animals succeeds both as an illustration of human foibles and as an entertaining romp through the animal kingdom.

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