Talking Animals

 by Joni Murphy

This book is about an animal society as the inhabitants of New York City. The Mayor is a horse, other city hall staff include a pig.  Alfonzo is a moody Alpaca  He works in the bowels of City Hall in the archives dept.  The basement is mouldy.  Alfonzo even wonders if anyone knows he is there.  In addition to sorting paperwork he also cleans the area. He is the sole employee.  

 Alfonso is working at City Hall in what he thinks is a temporary situation.  He is writing a dissertation, hoping to become a professor. He is devastated when his dissertation is rejected as disjointed by his advisor.  Alfonso has a friend at city hall, a llama.  This llama tries to get him to be less serious and not devastated by his academic results. Eventually Alfonso learns that the basement is being renovated and is invited to a meeting at which he assumes his job will be declared redundant.

Alfonso is also plagued by his father who is very critical of him.  Alfonso meets with his father occasionally and these occasions are always very traumatic for him.  He is terrified to tell his father about the rejection of his dissertation.

As part of the story there is friction between land animals and ocean life.  The land animals believe that the ocean animals plan to flood and take over the world.  This part of the book is the most satirical, possibly reflecting the racial/religious tension in the U.S.

In another plot line, Alfonso is introduced to a radical element in the city by his llama friend. They are trying to prove that the Mayor is using his position to reduce the value of some property and then buy it to make money.  He is awarding a lot of contracts to one country.  Alfonzo had printed his dissertation on used paper his friend  the llama. The used paper contains details on the corruption in City Hall.  This information gets to the media and the Mayor is exposed.

I can appreciate the attempt the author made to use animals as part of her satire but I kept getting fixated on the fact that animals would not be able to type, dress themselves, make coffee, etc.  This distracted me a bit from the story.  I am not sure that this story couldn't have been told as well without the animal characters.  It has been decades since I read Animal Farm but I think Orwell tried to incorporate animal stereotypes into his characterizations.  This wasn't done much in this book.