Winner of the 2018 Acorn Prize, New Zealand's highest fiction award,
Pip Adam's The New Animals is a work of artistic ambition and
political urgency.
Set in the Auckland fashion scene in 2016, The New Animals moves over
the course of one night through the hopes, misapprehensions,
resentments, and regrets of a small group of fashion-industry workers,
divided by generation and class. The young and rich act like nothing can
touch them; the tired Gen-Xers feel forever adrift. On this particularly
stressful night, hairdressers, patternmakers, stylists, and a makeup
artist are tasked with preparing for a last-minute photoshoot without
clothes or clear directions. Caught up in the small dramas of their
lives, while around them the world is fast becoming uninhabitable, the
group toils against the impossible pressure until one of them decides to
break away.
Like a twisted contemporary heir to Virginia Woolf's To the
Lighthouse, The New Animals is a brilliant and unforgettable dive
beneath the surface of life, uncovering the common ground of humanity,
as well as the common plight.
