My Animals and Other Family

Jul 16, 2025 4:37 AM

Author:Julia Blackburn

In these five stories Julia Blackburn recalls the significant animals in her life and in so doing gives us a sidelong glance at the human members of her family, her painter mother and poet father.

First comes Congo the bush baby, from the jungles of Madagascar via Harrods pet department. He slept in an old cap on the back of the door, and could leap about the room via the picture rails. Then there are tropical fish, tortoises, chickens, guinea pigs, foxes (the last three a combustible combination), pigs, and two very distinctive dogs, Julia's own dog, Jason, a cocker spaniel whose habits of servility and loyalty Julia's father, Thomas, was determined to undo ('He's worse than Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, fawning at my heels!') and Henry, a Parson Jack Russell terrier that Thomas got after his divorce, a dog of great independence, dignity and forbearance, whom his master used to take mountaineering.

This is a delightful book, wry, funny and wise, and unmistakably the work of Julia Blackburn.

Reviews

Her novels are still very much to be enjoyed ... Any writer who can both educate and thrill a reader of any age deserves to be remembered and find new fans ... One only has to look at the TV/Media to see that the appetite for this kind of writing is still very much there

—— Matt Bates, WH Smith Travel

Jean Plaidy doesn't just write the history, she makes it come alive.

—— Julia Moffat, RNI

Full-blooded, dramatic, exciting.

—— Observer

It is hard to better Jean Plaidy

—— Daily Mirror

One of the funniest, most cleverly written, superbly characterised and beautifully structured books that I have read by a living author

—— Time Out

How this book towers...it is a political novel in the ambitious, exuberant, powerfully serious mode of The Satanic Verses..It is funny, very funny

—— Fay Weldon

Brilliantly imagined...Among Stead's many achievements is a convincing social, political and physical backdrop...his creation of a coherent, rival story - clever, moving and sometimes witty, with fully human characters - is nothing short of a revelation

—— Sam Phipps , Herald

A pleasingly unpredictable mix of traditional and radical... It's clever, thought-provoking

—— Independent

Pynchon can be totally maddening, but he has a great sense of mischief

—— Douglas Kennedy , The Times

Clever and inventive in a mad professor kind of way...Intermittently warmed by paragraph-long sunbeams of iridescent prose-poetry

—— Economist

A fast elasticism running from slangy to stately, a voice full of echoes, littered with jokes and songs, and often reaching into a curious tenderness, a tone of laid back elegy.... this amazing writer continues to be amazing, and in much the same way he always was

—— London Review of Books

‘[Toni Morrison’s] irreverence was godly’

—— Guardian

A beautiful book and it's beautifully written

—— Kit de Waal , Good Housekeeping UK

My favourite book of all time

—— Sareeta Domingo , Good Housekeeping

Morrison's stunning trilogy is an evocation of black life over the past four centuries. It defies summary. Completed almost 25 years ago, these novels top anything produced by any American writer including Hemingway, Updike and DeLillo

—— Trevor Phillips , Sunday Times

[A] beautiful, haunting novel

—— Stig Abell , Sunday Times

More than one of Morrison's books could be classed as masterpieces, but this one is famous for a reason: everyone should read it

—— Bernice McFadden, author of SUGAR , Guardian

A magnificent achievement...an American masterpiece

—— A.S. Byatt , Guardian

A triumph

—— Margaret Atwood , New York Times Book Review

She melds horror and beauty in a story that will disturb the mind forever

—— Sunday Times

Toni Morrison is not just an important contemporary novelist but a major figure in our national literature

—— New York Review of Books

A work of genuine force. . .Beautifully written

—— Washington Post

There is something great in Beloved: a play of human voices, consciously exalted, perversely stressed, yet holding true. It gets you

—— The New Yorker

Superb. . .A profound and shattering story that carries the weight of history. . .Exquisitely told

—— Cosmopolitan

This is a wonderful novel about slavery, freedom, parental loss and revenants

—— The Week, Thomas Keneally

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