bodyType

customContents

entityId

entityUuid

articlePageQuery

filter

article

articleBaseAdvertisingInfoArticle

articleListArticle

articleSeoArticle

hooksArticleAcknowledgementGateOverlayArticle

hooksTrackPageViewArticle

hooksContentInterestArticle

articleLinkingDataContent

hooksAmpRedirectArticle

articleSchemaContent

liveArticle

advertZone

sentiment

contentLock

topics

types

sections

paywallTypes

createdDate

publishedDate

urlAlias

moreOnThisArticles

sponsorType

commentCount

authorLocations

authors

corrections

displaySlideShow

multimediaEmbed

printHeadline

seriesContainer

articleSpeeches

socialHeadline

headline

images

flag

firstTopic

glossary

flattenTypeIds

image

relatedLinks

relatedNewsletters

__typename

sponsor

pdfFiles

seriesReverseOrder

series

disableOffPlatformContent

published

updatedDate

summary

subHeadline

body

keywords

readingTime

customTimezone

liveContents

John Millen

The Underneath 
By Kathi Appelt 
Published by Simon and Schuster 
ISBN 978 1 84738 310 5
Novels with animals as the central characters are notoriously difficult to pull off. Animals don't speak, or experience human emotions. Any writer who humanises animals for a novel for older readers is asking for trouble. 
The central characters in Kathi Appelt's debut novel The Underneath are an ancient worn-out hound and the family of cats which adopts him. There is the snake who lives in a jar and who has terrible personality problems. And lurking in the still river is a giant alligator. 
The central human is the evil, damaged Gar Face, a very bad example of what humans can be. Appelt has set herself quite a task weaving this lot together into a story that manages to stay afloat. 
Her first clever move is to set The Underneath in the secretive, sultry bayou region of the southern states of America. The area is teeming with mysterious creatures and even more mysterious legends.  
An abandoned pregnant cat hears the sad distant howling of a dog somewhere in the backwaters of the bayou, so she goes to investigate. 
The baying hound is chained up outside a dilapidated wooden house. He is old and in pain. The old dog befriends the lonely cat, an animal his kind is supposed to hate. He tells the cat to hide in the Underneath, the dark space under the porch, where she can have her kittens in safety. 
When twin kittens are born, the four become an unlikely family. But outside the Underneath, there is danger. This is where Gar Face, an abusive alcoholic loner, prowls the bayou, harming whatever crosses his path. The old hound tells the kittens about the gun that the human uses to shoot animals like them, so they must never leave the safety of the Underneath. 
Gar Face is obsessed with capturing the Alligator King, an ancient creature lurking in the dark waters. A cat would be the perfect bait to lure the alligator out of the water. One morning, Gar Face captures the boy kitten and his mother. Tragedy strikes, but the kitten manages to escape. 
The Underneath is a beautifully written and entrancingly original novel. Appelt powerfully captures the mystery of her settings, and her animal protagonists fit perfectly into this strange world. The novel's structure is complex, with each character's story sometimes overlapping and sometimes unexplained. 
There is sweetness, sadness and suspense packed into this unusual and moving tale of the strength of love, hatred and nature. 
John Millen can be contacted on MillenBookshelf@aol.com



In the face of danger, unlikely friendships see you through