The Art of Taxidermy

By: Sharon Kernot
Location: FIC KER
Genre: Verse Novel- Fiction

‘This book is beautifully written…while the novel is about grief, it is also about the importance of remembering and keeping the memory of loved ones alive.’
Magpies Magazine

The Art of Taxidermy is a heartbreaking verse novel exploring love and death, grief and beauty, and the ways we try to make sense of it all.

Lottie collects dead creatures and lovingly cares for them, hoping to preserve them, to save them from disintegration. Her father understands—Lottie has a scientific mind, he thinks. Her aunt wants it to stop, and she goes to cruel lengths to make sure it does.

And her mother? Lottie’s mother died long ago. And Lottie is searching for a way to be close to her.
 
Eleven-year-old Charlotte has just developed a fascination with dead creatures. She can see their beauty, and wants to keep her collection in her room. Her father, Wolfgang is understanding, but Aunt Hilda is disgusted: she thinks Lottie should be interested in things girlish, not ghoulish.

Annie is her constant companion, helps her find specimens, and always has sound advice for her. While her new school friend, Jeffrey doesn’t share her absorption in these creatures, he and Lottie are both different enough from the others to stick together.

Kernot chooses an unusual medium to tell Lottie’s tale: verse- it’s free verse, and it’s beautiful:
“Today the trees are full of flowers
and parrots.
Rainbow, musk and little lorikeets
hang from branches
like gaudy clowns,
squawking and chattering
as they strip the flowering gums,
leaving yellow pools
and blood-red shadows beneath.”

As Lottie collects and tries to preserve her finds, the tragedies that have befallen her family are gradually revealed. It’s a story that touches on death and grieving and funerals and the internment of Germans during World War Two and the stolen generation, and she wraps it all in evocative descriptive verse. But it’s not all doom and gloom; there’s much beauty and even a bit of humour when a misunderstanding that sees Aunt Hilda furnishing a certain sensitive product, which Lottie immediately puts to an excellent alternative use. And despite Aunt Hilda or, more accurately, because of Wolfgang, Lottie gets to try taxidermy for real. Hers are the last words in this marvellous novel:
“The revival and
re-creation of something
that has expired
is an honour
and a gift.”
Marianne