By Sinclair Adams
The instant I heard the synopsis of What We Fed to the Manticore, I knew this was a book I needed to read. Stories told from animal perspectives are a small niche and often associated with children’s literature, so not many authors are bold or innovative enough to tell serious stories outside of a human perspective. Talia Lakshmi Kolluri’s Manticore became my most anticipated read of the year, as I hoped this book would prove that animal fiction is worth telling for all ages.
As a writer myself (and I’m sure all my workshop partners can attest to this), I believe animal fiction has a place in serious literature, which is an uphill battle, because it is a genre full of controversies. Scientists and literary purists might say that it’s juvenile to project human feelings into animals – a rhetorical device called “anthropomorphism.” The way I see it, animal fiction can instill empathy in its readers by making them feel the humanity in a nonhuman creature. Not only that, but it can generate new and innovative ways to tell stories. As people, we have our own expressions and our own ways of exploring the world, so nothing can be more exciting than reading a story through the perspective of a creature that experiences our planet differently.
With my hopes set so high, I must answer the question: Did the book deliver what it promised?
Nine stories make up Manticore, each told by a different animal across the globe. Kolluri takes us into the minds of animals that live in dry African plains, the frozen Arctic tundra, once-healthy forests beginning to wither. They mingle among us humans in urban streets. Some creatures have furry paws, some have broken wings, and some are deep ocean dwellers that communicate through song.
Kolluri’s biggest strength as a writer is her ability to build the world that each animal sees. The easiest way to write an animal story is to have the animals see things the way humans do, using human words and names for things. Instead of this dull approach, Kolluri thinks critically about how animals live in their environment and considers how that might change the way they perceive the world. For example, in the story “The Open Ocean is an Endless Desert,” a blue whale measures distance and time by his own heartbeats, as opposed to human constructs of time like seconds and minutes. In the story “Let Your Body Meet the Ground,” a pigeon describes seeing literal lines in the sky that guide her migration. These fantastical experiences that Kolluri describes are inspired by scientific studies on the animal’s behavior. The back of the book cites different news and scholarly articles that link the events of the story to scientific data that inspired Kolluri’s writing. With this, Kolluri straddles science and anthropomorphism to create a new and rich type of storytelling: animal lore. And when we look at What We Fed to the Manticore as a whole, it reads like a rich mythology of animals and their spirits.
Beyond the subject matter, Kolluri’s writing style is elegant and concise. Within the first few pages of each story, it is easy to understand what animal we’re viewing, where we are in the world, and what the struggle is.
Unlike the previous short story collection I reviewed, Sequoia Nagamatsu’s How High We Go in the Dark, Kolluri’s stories stand alone and are not connected in an overall narrative. As a result, there is no narrative arc that finds meaning in all stories. Manticore works fine without a connecting point, but not every story is equally compelling. Many of them are tied to real-world environmental problems, like the poaching experienced by the watchdog in “May God Forever Bless the Rhino Keepers,” and zoo animals killed in human crossfires as described in “The Good Donkey.” These stories that deal with tragedy at the hands of humans feel especially powerful, because it is giving a voice to voiceless animal victims.
Meanwhile, there are some stories that seem a little too steeped into an animal world, and as a result, feel a little incomplete. “The Hunted, the Hungry, the Haunted, and the Tame” is a story about a sled dog who dreams of a whale swimming through the earth. The dog makes a deal with the whale as it promises him leadership over his pack in exchange for allowing himself to be eaten. I appreciated the dialogue between the dogs that reflects their social hierarchy and the retelling of a Mephistopheles-esque story. The end of this story became very abstract and confusing, so I didn’t quite grasp the vision of the whole piece. In the end, a few stories in Manticore do not feel as well thought-out as the others, but it did not take away from the incredible enjoyment I experienced with this book. Even though not all stories are easy to identify with and understand, I still appreciate Kolluri’s imagination as she gave life and beauty to beings I might have never even considered.
What We Fed to the Manticore is a treasure chest of creativity and fantasy backed with real scientific findings. It pays tribute to our planet’s natural beauty while simultaneously mourning what we are losing. By reading this book, you will find yourself turned into wolves, whales, pigeons, and donkeys. You will have a chance to see our world from their eyes, and perhaps see your own humanity in a new way as well.
I strongly recommend What We Fed to the Manticore to people who have a love for animals, as well as fans of classic speculative animal fiction like Watership Down or Raptor Red. If you are interested in nonfiction stories about climate justice and environmentalism like American Wolf, you might also appreciate the fictional retelling of the real hardships animals experience at the hands of human beings and nature itself. Even if you are an average animal-loving person, read this book and you will find so much to love about these stories.
What We Fed to the Manticore is available from Barnes & Noble, Book Cellar, Bookshop, Kinokuniya, and Powell’s City of Books.
Sinclair Adams is a writer interested in speculative and science fiction narratives. She earned a B.A. in English from the University of Las Vegas and is currently pursuing an M.F.A. in creative writing at Chapman University. She is an editor for Ouroboros Magazine, Chapman’s journal of science fiction, fantasy, horror, and other speculative fiction. Follow her on Instagram @sinclairwrites.