Enter the Aardvark

Refreshing different, highly inventive, witty and moving, ENTER THE AARDVARK is an absolute original. A budding politician’s career is put in jeopardy when he receives a large stuffed aardvark in the post. Brilliant and funny, a biting satire about politics, love, and taxidermy for fans of Jennifer Egan, Jonathan Franzen and Joshua Ferris.

If you are anything like me, you will end up loving the actual aardvark...and relish the world of taxidermy that Anthony brings to life. Enter the Aardvark sizzles with uproarious fun, from its snout to the sting in its tale.

[An] ingenious political satire…The perfect tonic for testing times…deliciously astute, fresh and terminally funny.

Spry, slim, clever...the inventiveness is impressive and the story has heart.

What begins as a topical takedown of the American political system deepens into a hugely enjoyable romp through history...Madcap and satirical without ever being flippant, Anthony’s novel is totally unrealistic yet completely truthful.

Fresh, astute and mouthwateringly sharp, this is a rare thing; a political satire that tugs on the heartstrings in unconventional ways.

It’s a long time since I have enjoyed a novel so much. Fresh, witty and smart it also has a heart. What more could you want? And who would have thought that you could become emotionally attached to a stuffed aardvark?

‘Part 21st-century political satire, part unexpectedly affecting 19th-century love story…It’s every bit as strange as it sounds, and yet somehow it works: there’s a pleasing symmetry to the parallel plots, and Anthony’s writing is evocative enough to snare the imagination.'

‘Sometimes, a paragraph near the start of a novel is so perfect and funny that you read it over and over, laugh every time, and know you’re in for a treat…I'm loving it. Completely insane but utterly hilarious’

Enter Jessica Anthony. With her highly inventive, ever attentive, and morally serious (as all great comedy must be) Enter the Aardvark, she estranges all over again our deplorable political moment, and thereby helps make it bearable.

‘Jessica Anthony’s Enter the Aardvark was exactly the smart, funny and poignant pick-me-up that I needed…Anthony entwines her two narrative threads with seamless precision...Riotously entertaining’

Sharp, inventive and very funny, it’s an entertainingly bizarre political satire.

‘A joyfully weird, compulsive political satire'

Inventive and darkly funny...as Anthony connects characters from today with those from 19th-century England, she offers an original and unsettling lens through which to view male power as it has evolved over time.

Anthony is expert…The novel asks (and answers) simple questions with boundless energy and innovation…Enter the Aardvark earns pride of place, and not just alphabetically.

‘Weird, wonderful, and very much of the moment, Enter the Aardvark is a landmark political novel of the Trump era.’

'Old, dead creature brings down flash, vain senator... Out in front as the most fizzing and amusing novel of the year.'

‘A curious, surprising and moving story about two men who— to put it one way — become involved with an aardvark and thereby condemn themselves to death.’

Like A.S. Byatt like with a demented sense of humor… [Jessica Anthony] holds up a funhouse mirror to our own political media in the age of spin…with sentences reminiscent of Joyce’s Dubliners and the later works of T. S. Eliot.

Jessica Anthony's Enter the Aardvark is a truly fresh piece of art. It is rare that a novel addresses the current political moment. With humor, intelligence and a keen eye for detail Anthony paints a frightening picture of this America. And above all else, this novel never lowers itself to preaching to the choir. This is a great satire.

A blisteringly innovative and outrageous novel...If you're searching for a sharp, looking-glass view into the far end of contemporary politics, look no further. Jessica Anthony's novel has the pacing of a thriller with satirical verve of Nathanael West.

A wild ride and might just be the perfect antidote to the wild ride we’re in in real life].

The structure doesn’t so much intrigue as ensnare you, weaving its cat’s cradle of a plot as you lie there, strapped to a table... “Enter the Aardvark” is brutally suited to our moment of absurd political theater.

Enter the Aardvark is one wild ride: a condemnation, a haunting, a song of love, a madcap political thriller—and it is absolutely unputdownable.

LAURA VAN DER BERG, author of THE THIRD HOTEL

'Hilarious, moving, ingenious... Enter the Aardvark is an absolute original.'

BROCK CLARKE, author of WHO ARE YOU, CALVIN BLEDSOE?

The scope of Anthony’s imagination can sometimes beggar belief. What a mind she has. As the narrative twists between the past and the present, it seems like anything could happen at any time….a hilariously poisonous evisceration of the cowardly, disingenuous politicians running rampant through Trump’s Washington.

POLITICS IS ABSURD... Discover the bitingly funny satire that 'sizzles with uproarious fun, from its snout to the sting in its tale' (Independent) 
 
[An] ingenious satire…The perfect tonic for testing times' GUARDIAN 
 
'What begins as a topical takedown of the American political system deepens into a hugely enjoyable romp through history' OBSERVER 
 
'It's a long time since I have enjoyed a novel so much. Fresh, witty and smart it also has heart' Kate Atkinson 
 
______ 
 
Republican congressman Alexander Paine Wilson is determined that nothing will stop him in his campaign for re-election. 
 
Not the fact that he is a bachelor, not the fact that his main adversary Nancy Beavers - married, with children - is rising in the polls. Nothing. 
 
That is, until one hot day in August, he receives a large parcel via FedEx. Inside is a gigantic taxidermy aardvark. 
 
This aardvark has a surprising history - from the Victorian naturalist who discovered it to the taxidermist who deemed it his finest creation. 
 
But for Wilson, the entrance of the aardvark could be the very thing that brings him to his knees.... 
 
Constantly surprising, brilliantly comic and piquantly provocative, Enter the Aardvark is a tale for our times, a biting satire with a tender underbelly. 
____________________________________________ 
 
 
'So perfect and funny that you read it over and over, laugh every time...Completely insane but utterly hilarious' John Boyne 
 
'Inventive and darkly funny' Time 
 
'Fresh, astute and mouthwateringly sharp, this is a rare thing; a political satire that tugs on the heartstrings in unconventional ways' Irish Times 
 
'Spry, slim, clever...the inventiveness is impressive and the story has heart' The Sunday Times 
 
'The most fizzing and amusing novel of the year' Strong Words magazine 
 
'Sharp, inventive and very funny, it's an entertainingly bizarre political satire' TATLER 
 
'Weird, wonderful, and very much of the moment, Enter the Aardvark is a landmark political novel of the Trump era...With heart and humor, Anthony expertly skewers our current political climate' Esquire

Jessica Anthony

Clever, moving and unexpected. A brilliantly deft and subtle story.

Emma Healey, author of Elizabeth is Missing

Delivers on page-turning interior secrets

I inhaled this story while sitting on a Corsican beach…this is a taut, perfect book - a smart takedown of 1950s social mores and a portrait of a very imperfect but very human marriage.

I inhaled this story while sitting on a Corsican beach . . . this is a taut, perfect book - a smart takedown of 1950s social mores and a portrait of a very imperfect but very human marriage.

In just 144 pages Anthony manages to convey the stifling atmosphere for women in the 1950s through the simple story of a housewife who chooses not to go to church that day and instead spends all her time in an unloved swimming pool, which she refuses to leave.

Sensational ... Readers won't want to put this down.

A fascinating, elegant read where not a single word is wasted

With this seemingly small act of female rebellion, novelist Jessica Anthony leads us into the secret upheaval of marriage, good-girl American society, and a silenced female fury and ambition. Get ready, readers. The Most is an exquisitely written, heady rush of story.

Jessica Anthony&rsquo;s The Most is a brilliant and startling domestic fable of longing&hellip; The Most is a novel of ruthless beauty. I read it in one perfect sitting.

One of the most inventive writers working today

Jessica Anthony's spare, elegant novella... is darkly funny in its own way, and in the end is less a comedy than a smoldering, Cheeveresque mediation on mid-century, middle-class disappointment.

An exquisite, taut literary mousetrap

A 21st century literary classic waiting to happen

Kate Christensen, author of The Great Man

The Most charges the air like a thunderclap

A riveting, single-sitting read set over the course of eight hours

An utter joy, as crisp and unexpected as the surprisingly sunny November 1957 day over which it takes place. It is almost a distilled novel, and reads like a late, undiscovered masterpiece by John Cheever

The Most blindsided me with its power….This superb short novel, about a marriage at its breakpoint, deserves to become a classic….Anthony has served an ace.

Witty, provocative, rich with insight and deep with melancholy ... The prose sizzles with intelligence and humour and there is great pathos too

From 'one of our most thrilling and singular innovators on the page' (Laura Van Den Berg), a tightly wound, consuming tale about a 1950s American housewife, for fans of Jennifer Egan, Jonathan Franzen and Taffy Brodesser-Akner 
 
LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD 2024 
A Barnes & Noble BEST BOOK of 2024 
 
'Clever, moving and unexpected. A brilliantly deft and subtle story.' - Emma Healey, author of Elizabeth is Missing 
 
--- 
 
A warm Sunday in November 1957. As Sputnik 2 orbits the earth, carrying Laika, the doomed Soviet dog, a couple begin their day. 
 
Virgil Beckett, an insurance salesman, isn’t particularly happy in his job but he fulfils the role, playing golf with the partners, drinking in the bar, chasing the women. Kathleen Beckett, once a promising tennis champion, with a key shot up her sleeve called ‘The Most’, is now a mother and homemaker. 
 
Somehow these two, who have been together since college, have fallen into the roles expected of them – the prescribed suburban dream they have been sold as something to covet, something that will fulfil their lives. But on this unseasonably warm, early November Sunday, Kathleen wakes up and decides that she will not be accompanying her family to church. 
 
No, she feels like a swim. 
 
She unearths her old, red bathing suit and descends into the apartment complex pool no other resident uses. And she doesn’t want to come out… 
 
___ 
 
Praise for Jessica Anthony's ENTER THE AARDVARK 
 
'A truly fresh piece of art' Percival Everett 
 
'Fresh, witty, smart' Kate Atkinson 
 
'Highly inventive' Joshua Ferris 
 
'A writer possessed of mind-bending talents' Heidi Julavits

Jessica Anthony

Praise for The Most

Clever, moving and unexpected. A brilliantly deft and subtle story.

Delivers on page-turning interior secrets

I inhaled this story while sitting on a Corsican beach…this is a taut, perfect book - a smart takedown of 1950s social mores and a portrait of a very imperfect but very human marriage.

Clever, moving and unexpected. A brilliantly deft and subtle story.

Delivers on page-turning interior secrets

I inhaled this story while sitting on a Corsican beach…this is a taut, perfect book - a smart takedown of 1950s social mores and a portrait of a very imperfect but very human marriage.

Clever, moving and unexpected. A brilliantly deft and subtle story.

Delivers on page-turning interior secrets

I inhaled this story while sitting on a Corsican beach…this is a taut, perfect book - a smart takedown of 1950s social mores and a portrait of a very imperfect but very human marriage.

Books by Jessica Anthony

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