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About the Author
Jessica Anthony is the author of The Convalescent. She has been a butcher in Alaska, an unlicensed masseuse in Poland, a secretary in San Francisco. In 2017, while writing Enter the Aardvark, Anthony was working as a “Bridge Guard,” guarding the Mária Valéria Bridge between Štúrovo, Slovakia, and Esztergom, Hungary. Normally, she lives in Maine.
Praise for Jessica Anthony’s
Enter the Aardvark
“Inventive and darkly funny…Anthony offers an original and unsettling lens through which to view male power as it has evolved over time…Her dissection of Wilson’s political beliefs, particularly his anti-abortion stance, isn’t just sharp commentary on polarization, identity, and power in the US. It’s also a poignant examination of what happens when we deny ourselves the ability to love and be loved.”
—Annabel Gutterman, Time
“In the tradition of the best existential farces, Enter the Aardvark keeps returning to the beginning of all things to ask: So how did we get here?…Like A. S. Byatt with a demented sense of humor…Profound and slapsticky, hilarious and depressing at once, Enter the Aardvark is brutally suited to our moment of absurd political theater…Anthony’s approach to Rep. Wilson falls somewhere between Nabokov’s Pnin and Veep…With her huge taxidermy needle, Anthony stitches us into the breast of our nemesis. She wants to see what insights we gain from putting on their skin…It’s a thrilling ride…I’d buy another ticket.”
—Maggie Lange, Los Angeles Times
“Who would have guessed that a satire about an oily Republican congressman, nineteenth-century taxidermy, and a creature so ugly it resembles ‘a pig screwed by a donkey’ would be the perfect tonic for testing times? This is what Jessica Anthony’s insouciant and ingenious novel delivers in fewer than 192 achingly funny pages…Light on its feet, utilizing second-person narration to great effect, Enter the Aardvark is reminiscent of Lionel Shriver’s recent sharply cynical novel, The Mandibles, while its trenchant satire echoes Tom Rachman’s much overlooked story collection, Basket of Deplorables, in which the shallow cruelties of Trump’s presidency are eviscerated. Ultimately, though, Anthony’s voice is all her own: deliciously astute, fresh, and terminally funny.”
—Jude Cook, The Guardian
“Enter the Aardvark is one wild ride: a condemnation, a haunting, a song of love, a madcap political thriller—and it is absolutely unputdownable. I have long been a massive fan of Jessica Anthony’s writing and this novel cements her as one of our most thrilling and singular innovators on the page. Welcome, readers, to her world.”
—Laura van den Berg, author of The Third Hotel
“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.”
—Ben Greenman, New York Times Book Review
“Weird, wonderful, and very much of the moment, Enter the Aardvark is a landmark political novel of the Trump era…With heart and humor, Enter the Aardvark expertly skewers our current political climate.”