#BookReview: It’s Hard to Be an Animal by Robert Isaacs

It's Hard to Be an Animal by Robert Isaacs
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: literary fiction, magical realism, relationship fiction
Pages: 288
Published by Grand Central Publishing on May 19, 2026
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

For readers of Shark Heart and Hollow Kingdom, a funny, magical, and tender debut novel following a lonely, conflict-averse man whose sudden ability to understand animals sends him on a wild romp around NYC, and ultimately helps him discover his own voice.

Strolling through Central Park on a blind date with the hilarious, irrepressible Molly Bent, Henry Parsons feels hopeful for the first time in years. He’s even daring to wonder if he and Molly might have a future together... when a migratory warbler, the sweetest of little birds, tells him to f*** off.

A gentle soul, troubled enough by the unkindness of fellow humans, Henry tries to brush the moment aside as a hallucination. But soon he’s hearing voices dogs mocking their owners, sparrows fat-shaming each other, police horses profiling attendees at a street fair — even a pontificating, misogynistic snake. The man who never speaks up for himself is now besieged by animals who do.

When (inevitably) he overhears three rats discussing a corpse in the New York subway, he lets it slip to Molly. She’s keen to investigate, and Henry’s desperate for a second date, so he follows her nervously into an abandoned tunnel under the West Fourth Street Station. There, sure enough, they find a body... and the murderers find them.

Cue the most terrifying week of this cautious man’s life. Inspiration and courage arrive, unexpectedly, from a pair of feuding betta fish and the neighbor’s yapping Pomeranian — whose wisdom will transform both Henry and Molly forever.

My Review:

I picked this up for the concept. I mean that sincerely. We all wish we knew what the animals around us – especially our own companion animals – are thinking and saying. Or at least we mostly do, as those of us with feline companions are fairly sure they’re judging us all the time and that we’re generally found wanting. I’m not certain that confirming that’s true would help anyone’s ego. Except for the cats, of course.

That being said, this isn’t that kind of cutesy story where the animals all talk and think and act like us. For one thing, it’s a complete shock to Henry Parsons’ whole entire system when he suddenly discovers that the voices he’s hearing all around him in Central Park aren’t humans. That he’s hearing the birds around him pretty much scream at each other – and him – and that all of them are speaking in “expletive deleted”. And that even the ones who aren’t dropping F-bombs in every other sentence are outright assholes. Some of them just dress it up in more erudite language.

No one else can hear the animals – and Henry is afraid to reveal that HE’s hearing them. Even his therapist thinks they’re just a manifestation of Henry’s “real” issues – and he already has plenty of those. Most of them self-defeating or depressing or both.

But as much as Henry might be just “hearing things” as a way of expressing his own angst, he would not be hearing the sort of things he’s actually hearing. Like the way that his roommate’s two betta fish spend their days slinging Shakespearean insults at each other.

Certainly, the voices in his head – if that’s what this is – would not manifest as a trio of rats behind a sewer grate discussing their weekly corpse feasts in the abandoned station BELOW the station currently in use. Nor would he imagine said rats talking about the humans who dump those corpses they feast on every week. Or the particularly delicacy of the human eyeball.

Which is the point where the story gets interesting – and so does Henry’s previously dull life. A life so dull that it honestly even bores Henry himself – in between self-castigation that he’s not more or better or happier or less angsty or WHATEVER.

Because Henry tells his new friend Molly, who might become a girlfriend if he doesn’t chicken out, that the voices he’s hearing are telling him stuff that needs to be investigated at the first opportunity – and maybe reported to the police.

From that point, Henry’s life is off and running, to explore under the subway, to listen to the animals telling him things he needs to hear, and to Henry realizing that it’s hard to be an animal – including a human one – and that there are lots of lessons to learn if he wants to do better.

So he does.

Escape Rating B: I had mixed feelings about this one. There were parts I really liked, and parts that didn’t work for me. I think that part of that was that the story is sold by its description as magical realism – Henry understands the animals – but Henry himself read as kind of a stock character from literary fiction.

By that I mean that a lot of the story – at least at the beginning – is wrapped around Henry’s internal angst of which there is rather a lot. He’s entirely REactive and I prefer my protagonists to be a bit more PROactive. (And your reading mileage may vary. Some people love literary fiction for exactly the same things that I don’t. C’est la reading vie.)

Two things wake Henry up and shift his narrative. The first, of course, is the animals. Not just those birds, or even the insult-flinging betta fish. The star of THAT show is Gracie. I think because the opinion of Henry and all of the tenants in Henry’s NYC apartment building is that Gracie is a yappy little bitch of a Pomeranian who never seems to stop barking. But one Gracie is in Henry’s care, everything changes.

Through a series of unfortunate coincidences, Henry ends up dogsitting for Gracie when her person is struck by a taxi and is whisked away in an ambulance. In Henry’s apartment, Gracie turns out to be a quiet philosopher who speaks in beautifully apropos aphorisms, is always gentle and is entirely on point whenever she deigns to speak.

The second thing that changes Henry’s life is Molly Bent, the friend who might be a girlfriend if Henry can just get out of his own way in his own life. Because Molly is a bit over-the-top. She’s a ‘leap and assume the net will appear’ kind of person, while Henry has always been a ‘measure four times and think about cutting once but turn back because it will probably be wrong anyway’. It’s Molly who encourages Henry to investigate the derelict subway station under the station and the results of that shake Henry out of his defeated complacency even as everything seems to go horribly wrong.

When it all comes round right, Henry’s life is forever changed – and for the better – because he was forced into his discomfort zone and discovered himself there. That he gets to keep both Molly and Gracie in his life gives the story a delightful ending – even if we never do learn why Henry started understanding the animals – and why he stopped.

In the end, I stuck with this so that I could make sure that Gracie came out of the story alright. Which she does – and beautifully and dare I say it – gracefully so. That Henry and Molly also get their happy ever after was kind of the puppucino on the dog biscuit for this reader. Even though Gracie would probably turn her nose up at either or both.

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