Not really my thing it turns out. I didn't find it entertaining and I didn't connect with any characters,

While I found the descriptions of taxidermy procedures horribly fascinating, the grubby B&B and its feckless owners were not at all likeable. Mirka, the central character, was mildly interesting but overall I found it difficult to get to the end of this, and wish I hadn't persevered.

Being an immigrant gives someone a unique perspective on a country and its culture. I moved to England seventeen years ago and although I’ve lived here my entire adult life I don’t think I’ll ever feel wholly English. I’ve certainly been welcomed into the society, but I’m always conscious a national division exists. It was much easier for me to integrate into English culture because I’m American whereas someone coming from Eastern Europe like the narrator of Laura Kaye’s debut novel “English Animals” will inevitably face more challenges. I have conservative colleagues at my office who complain generally about immigrants destroying the country – despite one of them being married to an Eastern European and me being an immigrant but oddly I’m considered outside of this label. Sadly many people in London have these views as do many people in rural England where this novel takes place. This novel dynamically portrays the insular attitudes of some English people from the perspective of an outside. It’s also a uniquely tragic love story.

Mirka moved to London from her native Slovakia, but she found the city somewhat oppressive so answered an ad to work within an English country estate. The novel begins with her arrive an indoctrination into this particular kind of English life. Like many grand old houses passed through generations of the aristocracy, this estate has run into financial trouble. The proprietor Sophie and her husband Richard have been working on a number of schemes to pay for the substantial costs of running the property. Mirka finds that she’s unknowingly being recruited to join Richard’s latest venture of running a taxidermy business called Nose to Tail. As Mirka grows accustomed to the peculiarly English life on this rural estate and the work, she finds she has a special talent for convincingly stuffing animals and develops a particular attachment to Sophie. Sophie and Richard are in many ways a friendly, modern-thinking couple, but they are also the products of a culture with particular customs and traditions. Straightforward Mirka finds it difficult to find where she really fits into this seductive country life. Her soul-searching dilemma prompts her to perpetually wonder “how would I know when a life was really mine? How did you know when you had found a home?”

Troubled love triangles have been written about in many ways before, but I admire the honest and compassionate way Kaye depicts this particular situation. Since her first romantic affair Mirka has always been certain about her desire for other women, but it’s this very clear-sightedness and unwillingness to pretend to be anything different that led to her exile from her family and native country. Now she finds herself embroiled in a romantic conflict with someone who is already in a long-term committed relationship but also “wanted everything.” Sophie and Richard’s permissive attitudes make Mirka feel at times like she’s wholly a part of their family, but in some crucial ways to do with class, nationality and sexuality she remains a perpetual outsider. These feelings are certainly reinforced by some of the small-minded locals who either look down or show open contempt for Mirka as an immigrant. However, Kaye also shows more liberal English individuals who welcome and respect people based solely on their character.

In some ways this novel reminded me of both the novels “The Paying Guests” by Sarah Waters and “Skin Lane” by Neil Bartlett, but Kaye's book is less sinister than either of these. Her writing is much more straightforward and at times scenes can become bogged down in a minute amount of trivial detail. But the plainness of her writing style is also part of this novel’s charm and accurately reflects Mirka’s character: English isn’t her first language and she is doggedly transparent in her feelings. The imagery which Kaye builds in her depiction of the taxidermy work and the way people in the countryside relate to the natural world does build a subtly moving picture of a particular kind of national character. The English people that Mirka meets are so steeped in their national identity with its attendant manners and attitudes that she is like a perpetual observer who must always remain on the other side of the glass. As long as she’s kept on the outside she must continue to search for a home of her own.

Although compared to the writing of Marina Lewicka, I found this book lacking. The premise of the outsider from Europe looking in at the lifestyle of an eccentric English couple is amusing enough but I found the humour stretched and possibly not black enough. I think the book is trying to be deep and literary rather than amusing but it fall between both camps.

“Maybe we can see that the animals are like us, or we are like animals.”

Laura Kaye’s impressive debut novel, English Animals, is a fresh take on themes of art, sex, violence and belonging. It has particular resonance in the wake of Brexit, showing the apparent lack of a cohesive English identity in spite of sometimes knee-jerk nationalism.

The novel takes place within roughly a year and is narrated by Mirka Komárova, a 19-year-old Slovakian who left home suddenly after an argument with her parents and arrives in the English countryside to work for thirty-somethings Richard and Sophie Parker. She doesn’t know what to expect from her new employers: “Richard and Sophie sounded like good names for good people. But they could be anything, they could be completely crazy.”

It’s a live-in governess-type arrangement, and yet there are no children – Mirka later learns that Sophie is having trouble getting pregnant. Instead Mirka drives the volatile Parkers to the pub so they can get drunk whenever they want, and also helps with their various money-making ventures: cooking and cleaning for B&B guests and the summer’s wedding parties, serving as a beater for pheasant shoots, and assisting with Richard’s taxidermy business. Her relationship with them remains uncertain: she’s not a servant but not quite an equal either; it’s a careful friendship powered by jokes with Richard and cryptic crossword clues with Sophie.

At first Mirka seems disgusted by Sophie’s shabby family home and the many animals around the place, both living and dead. Initially squeamish about skinning animal corpses, she gets used to it as taxidermy becomes her artistic expression. Taking inspiration from whimsical Victorian portraits of dead animals in costume, she makes intricate modern tableaux with names like Mice Raving, Freelance Squirrels and Rats at the Office Party. When her art catches the eye of a London agent, she starts preparing her pieces for an exhibit and is the subject of a magazine profile. The interviewer writes this about her:

Mirka is someone who understands the philosophical nature of her art. How, in our strange condition of being simultaneously within and outside the animal kingdom, we invest taxidermy with our longing for permanence.
I loved the level of detail about Mirka’s work – it’s rare to encounter such a precise account of handiwork in fiction, as opposed to in nonfiction like Edmund de Waal’s The Hare with Amber Eyes and David Esterly’s The Lost Carving; Kaye herself is a potter, which might explain it – and I appreciated the many meanings that dead animals take on in the novel. They’re by turns food, art objects and sacrificial victims. Taxidermy is a perfect juxtaposition of physicality and the higher echelons of art, a canny way of blending death and beauty.

But of course the human residents of this community also fall into the title’s category: Many of them are what you might call ‘beastly’, and the threat of violence is never far away given Richard and Sophie’s argumentativeness. A promiscuous blonde, Sophie reminded me of Daisy in The Great Gatsby, so often described as careless: “You are a dangerous person, Sophie,” Mirka says. “Don’t say that. I didn’t mean to hurt anything.” Mirka replies, “You don’t care about other things. Everything is a game. Everyone is a toy for you to play with.”

The two different blurbs I’ve seen for the book both give too much away, so I will simply say that there’s an air of sexual tension and latent hostility surrounding this semi-isolated home, and it’s intriguing to watch the dynamic shift between Richard, Sophie and Mirka. I felt that I never quite knew what would happen or how far Kaye would take things.

I did have a few minor misgivings, though: sometimes Mirka’s narration reads like a stilted translation into English, rather than a fluent outpouring; there’s a bit too much domestic detail and heavy-handed symbolism; and the themes of xenophobia and homophobia might have been introduced more subtly, rather than using certain characters as overt mouthpieces.

All the same, I read this with great interest and curiosity throughout. It’s a powerful look at assumptions versus reality, how we approach the Other, and the great effort it takes to change; it’s easier to remain trapped in the roles we’ve acquired. I’d recommend this to readers of Polly Samson, Francesca Segal and even Rachel Johnson (the satire Shire Hell). In particular, I was reminded of Shelter by Jung Yun and Little Children by Tom Perrotta: though suburban in setting, they share Kaye’s preoccupations with sex and violence and the ways we try to hide our true selves beneath a façade of conformity.

This is one of the most striking debut novels I’ve encountered in recent years; it’s left me eager to see what Laura Kaye will do next.

Anthropomorphic taxidermy may not be something you’ve thought much about, but put it into a Google image search and it becomes strangely compelling: rats playing dominos, mice on a ferris wheel, frogs in a Victorian classroom and Walter Potter’s Kitten’s Wedding. And it’s on a picture of this strange wedding that the fortunes of English Animals’ protagonist, Mirka, pivot.

Mirka is a lost soul - a Slovak immigrant who left her own country due to her sexuality and a scandal. She finds London impossible, and so joins an agency and applies for a poorly defined job as a general assistant in a grand country house. There she meets Sophie and Richard; a couple fighting to support the house with a variety of enterprises from running shoots, hosting weddings and providing b&b to selling taxidermy - it’s the taxidermy they want the most help with.

Mirka starts out reluctantly aiding Richard, but soon surpasses him in skill and, inspired by Walter Potter, starts creating popular ‘scenes’ of her own. Her taxidermy tableaux showcase her gentle and perceptive insight into British culture, and, to me, serve as a reflection of the book itself: English Animals is also a series of portraits of modern Britain, and they’re as original, perceptive and subversive as Mirka’s own.

Sketch by sketch author Laura Kaye builds a picture of a certain slice of rural British society, that is at once unforgiving and affectionate, and generally quite funny. There is Awkward Pub Dinner, Gay Wedding, Bad Taste Party, Picnic With Intolerant Patriarch and East London Magazine Party for starters. The beauty of the book is that for all the familiarity of these settings there is always a fresh and unexpected perspective. The magazine party, for example - for all it’s hipster pretentiousness it is actually a charming source of hope for someone searching for their ‘own tribe.’

As Mirka drags one stuffy(!) British relic into modern times for re-examination, so too does Kaye, undermining expectations and introducing characters that will upend your stereotypes alongside those that will confirm them.

Like my taxidermy image search, English Animals is strangely compelling. It sneaks up on you slowly, not least because it’s written from Mirka’s point of view: as English is not her first language, the prose is necessarily spare and clear, deceptively simple. It’s a fresh and bracing read, with a sweet, sexy love story and complex characters that stay with you long after the book is over. Rather like those taxidermy animals again….