Animal Behaviour by Amanda McLeod
“You end things with your lover. That night the snake slithers down your body, trailing off your right leg and disappearing down the plughole. Your body feels empty, a canvas waiting for something. You rub your shoulder, warm and weightless. Two red gems roll around in the bottom of the bathtub, rattling dice in a cup.”
Animal Behaviour (2020) is the debut flash fiction collection from Canberra-based writer, poet and artist Amanda McLeod. It’s a compelling collection that deftly explores the uncanny relationship between how humans can (and often do) behave like animals - a connection we often aren’t so keen to acknowledge.
The book is divided into three parts - In Water, On Land and In the Sky - with the titles of the flash fiction pieces in each taking their lead from creatures that would inhabit those spaces. Goldfish Go Pale if Kept in Darkness opens the collection and sets us up nicely for what’s to come.
Telling the story of a woman who begins a relationship, at first shiny and bright, before she literally becomes pale and see-through - a watery apparition of her past self - as she declines social outings with her work colleagues:
“It’s him, says Charlene from accounts. He’s kept her in the dark. Happened to my sister. She was completely white by the end.”
Despite the haunting subject matter, the story wraps with a lightness and the profound truth that social connections will inevitably save us:
“The girls, relieved to find expertise in their midst, ask about a solution. Well, we start by getting her to Friday night drinks.”
Many stories follow a similar path, delicately handling the fraught chaos of unsuccessful relationships and landing on conclusions of strength and empowerment. A Shrimp’s Heart is in its Head, and A Captive Octopus Will Eat its Own Arms if Bored or Stressed, both narrators face the suffocations of controlling relationships, ultimately finding different ways out:
“You will remember what you learned about alcohol and preservation. About how some animals die after mating. About easy ways out and hard ones. And you will sit, trapped beneath well-meaning, and eat your own arm.”
The titles of the stories become clues in their own right, and I found myself pausing to reflect and explore my own ideas of what metamorphosis they might offer in human behaviour, nearly always ending up surprised and delighted with how McLeod has interpreted and drawn a story from them. As one might expect, the central themes of this collection revolve around relationships, intimate and other, and finds comparisons between how animals and humans interact with each other.
In some stories, the animals referenced in the titles are only present in spirit through the stories, and in others, they take up real space on the page - it was some of these stories that I enjoyed the most.
In Bears Can Navigate in the Total Absence of Anything Familiar, our narrator receives news of a diagnosis in a doctor's office but becomes preoccupied with a bear in the corner of the room who begins to roam about, making its presence known. The bear, of course, represents the diagnosis and though it is large, scary and takes up too much space, there is also a relief in its presence finally becoming clearer, gaining a name:
“The doctor stops talking, and, voiceless, you nod in reply. The bear’s steady gaze and breaths are strangely soothing. Without warning, it drops its shaggy head on your shoulder, and even though seated you stagger beneath it. The warm body presses against you, and the weight is oppressive but comforting. You lean in, embracing it.”
McLeod stays on fine form throughout the entire collection, and there isn’t one dud story amongst the twenty-four included. While some are straightforward, delivering the perfect snapshot of a moment with bright clarity, others tap into that finest of qualities of flash fiction, leaving hidden stories in what lies off the page.
I’ve made no secret of what a fan of flash fiction I am, and I’ve previously written about how much I admire flash fiction that doesn’t just serve us the obvious story but demands more from the reader and where they’re willing to allow their imagination to go. The best flash fictions ask us to get actively engaged in the storytelling process, drawing on our own memories, experiences and knowledge to land on conclusions the writer has only lightly sketched out for us.
McLeod achieves just this, using the notion of animal traits to ask us to reflect on how much animal behaviour we can find not just in her stories but in our own lives.
“We sit together and match the ebb and flow of our existence. In that moment, there is beauty there, and I’m part of it. The grass and the trees make their own visual song with the wind. For one fleeting second, the patterns click together, and I can see it all.”
Whether you’re a die-hard fan of flash fiction or just beginning to explore this unique literary form, McLeod’s collection is a superb example of flash fiction at its best.
Elaine Mead is a freelance writer and book reviewer, currently residing in nipaluna (Hobart), Tasmania. She is passionate about the ways we can use literature to learn from our experiences to become more authentic versions of ourselves and obsessed with showing you photos of her Dachshund puppy. You can find her online under www.wordswithelaine.com.
