The Memory of Animals

'A stunning piece of speculative fiction' The i
'A haunting novel about love, survival and everything in between ... one to get excited about' Stylist, Best Modern Dystopia
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But she isn't here, no one is here. And I have a terror of being alone, in this building, in London, in the world.
Neffy is a young woman running away from grief and guilt, and the one big mistake that has derailed her career. When a debilitating new virus sweeps across the globe, volunteering in a vaccine trial offers her a way to make up for her past. But then, the virus mutates, and the future she had dreamed for herself is gone.
As the London streets outside the medical unit fall silent, and food begins to run out, Neffy must decide where safety lies. Might she find solace by revisiting her own heady memories of the past? Can she trust the strangers trapped inside with her - despite her growing suspicions? Or is her best chance of a future to be found in the terrifyingly unknown world outside?
Haunting and compelling, The Memory of Animals is a novel about freedom and captivity, survival and sacrifice, and what we cling to when everything else has been taken away, from the Costa Award-winning, Women's Prize-shortlisted author of Unsettled Ground.
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'Unsettling, moving and thoughtful, with horror lurking at the edges, this is a subtle, elegant novel. Claire Fuller is a huge talent' Lucy Atkins, author of Magpie Lane
'Compulsive and thoroughly convincing. Terrific!' Clare Chambers, author of Small Pleasures

Claire Fuller was born in Oxfordshire, England, in 1967. She gained a degree in sculpture from Winchester School of Art, but went on to have a long career in marketing and didn't start writing until she was forty. She has written four previous novels: Unsettled Ground, which in 2021 won the Costa Novel Award and was shortlisted for the Woemn's Prize for Fiction, Our Endless Numbered Days, which won the Desmond Elliott Prize, Swimming Lessons, which was shortlisted for the RSL Encore Award, and Bitter Orange. She has an MA in Creative and Critical Writing from the University of Winchester and lives in Hampshire with her husband.