Kia ora and welcome to the Reading Doctor! Each week, literary critic and devoted reader Dr Louise recommends books to us on a particular theme, or responds to reader questions. Send us your questions for her by emailing: communications@read-nz.org

This week, she recommends some books that feature talking animals.

If we could talk to the animals

The books of childhood are full of animals which speak, anthropomorphised as semi-human, able to stand apart and comment on their eccentricities, while simultaneously reminding us that humans are animals, too. Books for adults which feature talking animals retain the air of a fable, while offering a doubled perspective on the world we share.

· A dark and comic short story by George Saunders, Fox 8 examines the devastating impact we have on the environment, from the perspective of a fox which has taught himself to speak “Yuman”.

· Dog, the hero of Murray Ball’s much-loved comic strip, Footrot Flats, is a sheepdog navigating the daily trials of farm life, offering a commentary via speech bubbles.

· In Laura Jean Mackay's dystopian novel The Animals in That Country, a pandemic enables animals and humans to communicate, in a unique and funny exploration of other consciousnesses and how we use language.

· A group of farm animals rebel against their human farmer in George Orwell’s satirical and allegorical novel Animal Farm, seeking to establish a new regime of egalitarian freedom.

· In the bleak post-apocalyptic world of Oryx and Crake, by Margaret Atwood, genetically engineered hybrid animals are the result of corporate greed and unfettered engineering.

· In Thomas Pynchon’s novel about two North American explorers, Mason & Dixon, a learned English dog both talks and sings to his human companions, demonstrating a self-reflexive and philosophical bent.

· After the Calamity, The Council of Animals convenes to decide whether it’s best to help the last surviving human stragglers, or to eat them, in the novel by Nick McDonnell.

· A cat called Small Frank is inhabited by the spirit of Frances’s dead husband, who runs away when he learns of her plans to make a final French Exit (leaving without saying goodbye), in the satirical novel by Patrick DeWitt.

· Spirit, matter and consciousness are the themes explored in The Book of Dust trilogy by Philip Pullman, in which humans are accompanied by their daemons, talking animal familiars which are their soul made visible.

· They may not always make sense, but the uncanny, intelligent cats in Haruki Murakami’s Kafka On the Shore certainly have plenty to say.