Book review: ‘This Animal Body’

This Animal Body: A Novel by Meredith Walters. SparkPress, 2024. Softcover, 360 pages.

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I’ll let you in on a secret: When I’m not reviewing books, I’m reading books. Lots of them. From the time I bought a copy of the animal classic Beautiful Joe with three weeks’ worth of my childhood allowance to getting caught up in a book club selection with coffee this morning, I have been an avid reader.

While the plots of much of my pleasure reading are ephemeral, some books stay with me long after I have finished them. This Animal Body by Meredith Walters is one such book.

Just a few pages into this debut novel, I became immersed in the story of Frankie, a doctoral neuroscience student with a history of depression and a magical bond with animals. Trying to balance her academic work under the tutelage of an irritable professor with a search for her birth mother, she finds herself drawn deeper into a mystical connection with animals, most notably a gray wolf named Mama. How these various plot lines become intertwined is hauntingly beautiful.

This Animal Body is not a book that lends itself to quick reading; some passages are so exquisitely conceived and written that readers will find themselves stopping momentarily to dwell upon them. Nor is it a work that fits neatly into a genre.

What This Animal Body is, however, is a novel of beauty and wisdom that will appeal to anyone who loves animals as much as Frankie does.

Our goal at Best Friends is to support all animal shelters in the U.S. in reaching no-kill in 2025. No-kill means saving every dog and cat in a shelter who can be saved, accounting for community safety and good quality of life for pets. 

Shelter staff can’t do it alone. Saving animals in shelters is everyone’s responsibility, and it takes support and participation from the community. No-kill is possible when we work together thoughtfully, honestly, and collaboratively.