The following version of this book was used to create the study guide: Hartnett, Annie. Unlikely Animals. Ballantine Books, 2022.

Unlikely Animals is divided into 64 unnamed chapters which are further divided into 7 parts, named after animals that play critical roles in that portion of the storyline. The text is interspersed with excerpts from the writings of Ernest Harold Baynes, a real-life naturalist who lived at the turn of twentieth century and was an integral part of local lore. The dead of the town of Everton are the novel’s first person narrators.

Emma Starling returns home to Everton, New Hampshire on her mother’s request that she visit with her father before he passes away. Everton is a small rural town that is surrounded by an enormous nature preserve called Corbin Park. The Park is home to the wealthiest people in the region, and no one in the town is allowed inside. Emma left the town immediately after graduating high school and has not returned since. Her father is suffering from an unnamed neurodegenerative disease which causes him to have disruptive hallucinations. He lives with the ghost of Harold Baynes, who people around him believe is just another consequence of his disease.

When she returns, she finds that her childhood best friend, Crystal Nash has disappeared. The people in the town are sure she is dead of an overdose, but Clive remains hopeful that she will be found. He spends most of his free time stapling missing person posters to trees around town. His hallucinations lost him his job, and his place in the beloved cover band.

Though Emma initially intends to come to Everton for a short stay, she begins to rethink her approach to the moment when she is named the official guardian for her father. She begins a love affair with Mack Durkee and secure employment at the local elementary school as a long term substitute for Claire Wish, a teacher favored by her students. Claire is absent because her husband has been accused of dealing heroin.

The story takes a turn when Emma discovers balloons of heroin in the fifth-grade craft closet, and it is revealed that Claire Wish was the drug kingpin in Everton. The discovery of this information helps strengthen the bonds of friendship already forming between Emma and the students, and they begin to see their teacher as a kind of protector.

As Clive’s condition degenerates, he orders a fox in the mail to the tune of eighteen thousand dollars. This greatly upsets Ingrid, who leaves the family to have an affair with Dr. Wheeler.

These relationships, and her relationship with her father and brother, help Emma come to terms with her own culpability in the loss of Crystal Nash. Emma recognizes that she is carrying a lot of guilt about how that relationship ended, and how she failed to show up for her father and brother when they needed her most. This realization causes Emma to go out of her way to help Auggie, Clive and her fifth grade class.

Toward the end of the story, Harold convinces Clive to enter Corbin Park where he becomes stuck in a hole in the ground. Search parties are immediately formed and Clive is saved by Auggie and Emma, but slips into a coma. While the family is mourning their father, Leanne Hatfield and her grandfather discover Crystal Nash alive and well in Corbin Park. Crystal is reunited with her surrogate family, and together, they attempt to bring Clive out of his coma.

Clive does eventually wake from the coma in time to join the school children for their performance of Titanic the Musical! During the performance, Clive hallucinates that rats are filling the auditorium and begins screaming. The theatre evacuates just in time before the lighting system falls from the ceiling. Clive is hailed as hero who save the lives of all the students.

In the book’s conclusion, Clive passes away and joins the souls who reside in the cemetery. He is remembered fondly by his family as a wonderful father and husband, and the whole town mourns his loss.