If you’re going to write a pandemic novel this late in the day, then by God you’d better make it stand out. The Memory of Animals — by Claire Fuller, who won the Desmond Elliott prize with her debut, Our Endless Numbered Days, and the Costa novel of the year in 2021 with her last book, Unsettled Ground — stands out all right, but unfortunately for the wrong reasons.
It’s true that we haven’t seen a pandemic novel quite like this before: it spans a period of 54 years, though reading it feels like only half that. And most of it is occupied with two weeks in the life of 27-year-old Neffy, a British woman of Greek heritage and former marine biologist who has
