What We Fed to the Manticore

Talia Lakshmi Kolluri has given us a beautiful debut collection of short stories, vividly told from the perspective of different animals. There are common themes throughout each piece that touches on the fallibility of living things and the dichotomy of life creating both loneliness and belonging. The author has an exceptional ability to connect the reader to her characters deeply, without wasting a single word. She definitely has a new fan of her work and I look forward to reading her next publication.

I am always on the lookout for stories that teach something about the world and our place in it, stories that shift our perspective while also entertaining. The nine innovative, imaginative short stories in What We Fed the Manticore, each narrated by a different animal, accomplish this in spades.

The stories explore the inner and outer lives of animals and feature different levels of communication and interaction between animals and humans and with different purposes. Some were compassionate and kind, some indifferent, and others self serving. As a whole, the stories serve as cautionary tales that explore the interconnectedness of people, animals, and the environment. The world would be a better place if we acknowledge our connected reality and act in the best interests of all. Talia Lakshmi Kolluri understands this.

As with all story collections, the impact of individual selections will vary depending on the reader. I particularly enjoyed The Good Donkey, The Dog Star is the Brightest Star in the Sky. May God Forever Bless the Rhino Keepers, Let Your Body Meet the Ground, and also the Author's Notes at the end. I hope you will find your own favorites.

I received a drc from the publisher via Netgalley. Tentative publication 9/6/22.

All of the short stories in this book are written from an animal's point of view. The stories roam from the Arctic to Delhi, from the deep ocean to the Gaza Strip. All of the stories are ultimately about how animals are affected by humans and the tragedies and tenderness that can come from these interactions.

Although the language is not complicated, these are not children's stories. The animals in these stories suffer from things that they do not understand and feel pain and loss. They go deep. After reading many of them I felt melancholy.

This is the nature of the world, though. Human actions affect how whales can navigate in the deep ocean. They affect how polar bears hunt. Wolves are often misunderstood and feared by people, as are tigers.

The author has thought about how animals perceive the world and has worked to get that across in her stories. We don't know exactly how whales communicate, but she puts forward a way that allows us to imagine it. She explains how pigeons might see their navigation maps as strings of color in a way that I found beautiful.

And there is also love in these stories. A dog and its keeper work together to protect rhinos. A man sees that a pigeon has fallen into despair and acts to help the bird. These are stories that allowed me to consider how differently creatures can experience the world and showed great empathy for all the animals that share our planet with us. Although I said the book felt melancholy, it also helped my sense of connection to nature and I do highly recommend it! It's a short book but one to savor.

What We Fed to the Manticore is a heartbreaking, transcendent collection by Talia Lakshmi Kolluri, featuring nine beautiful tales told from the perspective of animals.

I knew this would be a very special collection right from the opening story, The Good Donkey, where a zookeeper in Gaza paints his donkey to look like a zebra to entertain his diminishing clientele. But don’t be fooled by this initially comical concept; this story will rip your heart out and stomp on it.

I don’t want to spoil all the animals in this collection, because I derived so much joy in trying to figure out each of the narrators. But you will encounter a variety of herbivores, mammals, birds, unlikely alliances, and destruction.

The relationships between the animals and humans, or other animals, are the beating heart of all these stories. As Kolluri mentions in her author notes, establishing an authentic level of communication is key to these stories. Sometimes this is verbal, sometimes not, but Kolluri constantly creates a real, hypnotic world.

And if that wasn’t enough, Kolluri shares all her research, so you can take a deeper dive into the beautiful world she has captured. And her aforementioned author notes just make these stories so much richer. Kolluri is truly a special writer.

Highly recommended for absolutely everyone. I would not hesitate to read these stories to my five-year-old daughter, and I know she’d be as enraptured as I am.

I really enjoyed this collection and look forward to more from this author. The premise is so captivating; I cannot recall reading a collection from the perspectives of animals before. I applaud Kolluri both for the concept and the execution, which is tender and careful.

The collection leaves the reader wondering about what animals might be thinking. The range in terms of geographic locations and types of animals is quite impressive. Very well-written and understandably melancholic, particularly in terms of climate change.