Enter the Aardvark

Product Description

'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?' KATE ATKINSON

Only one thing stands between Alexander Paine Wilson and his destiny... and it has long ears, spoon-like claws and a tubular snout...

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 taxidermied 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 sets off a chain of events that threaten to ruin his entire career.

Constantly surprising, brilliantly comic and piquantly provocative, Enter the Aardvark is a tale for our times, a biting satire with a tender underbelly.

'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.' JOSHUA FERRIS, author of THEN WE CAME TO THE END

'Mischievously zoological and darkly satirical - a brilliant novel' JOHN IRONMONGER, author of NOT FORGETTING THE WHALE

'I've been waiting a long time for a book like Jessica Anthony's Enter the Aardvark, a book that not only manages to bridge supposedly unbridgeable divides in politics, in time, in geography, in love and sex, but also manages to do so by way of a time-traveling taxidermied aardvark. If that sounds unlikely, well, yes, exactly, that's why I've been waiting for so long for it-this unlikely, hilarious, moving, ingenious book. Enter the Aardvark is an absolute original.' BROCK CLARKE, author of WHO ARE YOU, CALVIN BLEDSOE?

'A feverish, rollicking beast of a book. Totally assured, completely unpredictable, Jessica Anthony has created a true original.' SIMON WROE, author of CHOP CHOP and HERE COMES TROUBLE

'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 DEN BERG, author of THE THIRD HOTEL

'Jessica Anthony is a writer possessed of mind-bending talents.' HEIDI JULAVITS, author of THE FOLDED CLOCK'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?' KATE ATKINSON

Only one thing stands between Alexander Paine Wilson and his destiny... and it has long ears, spoon-like claws and a tubular snout...

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 taxidermied 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 sets off a chain of events that threaten to ruin his entire career.

Constantly surprising, brilliantly comic and piquantly provocative, Enter the Aardvark is a tale for our times, a biting satire with a tender underbelly.

'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.' JOSHUA FERRIS, author of THEN WE CAME TO THE END

'Mischievously zoological and darkly satirical - a brilliant novel' JOHN IRONMONGER, author of NOT FORGETTING THE WHALE

'I've been waiting a long time for a book like Jessica Anthony's Enter the Aardvark, a book that not only manages to bridge supposedly unbridgeable divides in politics, in time, in geography, in love and sex, but also manages to do so by way of a time-traveling taxidermied aardvark. If that sounds unlikely, well, yes, exactly, that's why I've been waiting for so long for it-this unlikely, hilarious, moving, ingenious book. Enter the Aardvark is an absolute original.' BROCK CLARKE, author of WHO ARE YOU, CALVIN BLEDSOE?

'A feverish, rollicking beast of a book. Totally assured, completely unpredictable, Jessica Anthony has created a true original.' SIMON WROE, author of CHOP CHOP and HERE COMES TROUBLE

'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 DEN BERG, author of THE THIRD HOTEL

'Jessica Anthony is a writer possessed of mind-bending talents.' HEIDI JULAVITS, author of THE FOLDED CLOCK
Jessica Anthony is the author of The Convalescent (McSweeney's/Grove), a Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers selection, and Chopsticks (Razorbill), a multimedia novel created in collaboration with designer Rodrigo Corral. Chopsticks, was an Amazon Book of the Month and won App of the Year. Anthony' short stories can be found in Best New American Voices, Best American Nonrequired Reading, McSweeney's, The Idaho Review and elsewhere. She is the inaugural winner of McSweeney's Amanda Davis Highwire Fiction Award, and has recently received fellowships from the Creative Capital Foundation for Innovative Literature, the Bogliasco Foundation in Bogliasco, Italy, and the Maine Arts Commission. Anthony has been a butcher in Alaska, an unlicensed masseuse in Poland, a secretary in San Francisco. In 2017, while writing Enter the Aardvark, her next novel, Anthony was working as Bridge Guard, guarding the Maria Valeria Bridge between Storovo, Slovakia and Esztergom, Hungary. Normally, she lives in Maine and teaches at Bates College.