Bête
Notes
One thing I was confused that Roberts didn't pursue further: (SPOILERS HERE!). As we learn the ai chips can move between animals (when they eat each other) but the 'person' travels with the chip from animal to animal - doesn't that provide all the logic anyone needed that these are not talking animals at all, but just AIs with some meat? Yes there is talk about how the chip embeds itself into the brain and uses the brain as processing and becomes something new - but we see with The Lamb that the inherent nature of The Lamb is the same whether its in a cow or rat or sheep or even in simply a loose chip. Feels like it answers the main question with itself, but by this point in the story everybody is convinced that the canny bêtes are really Talking Animals.
Noted on March 3, 2026
The book throws us right in: a man is just about to kill a cow, when it talks back to bargain for its life. This man is Graham Penhaligon, who will become our hero as he navigates the collapsing society of not just talking animals but also the polycrisis we might otherwise expect: economic collapse, depopulation, pandemic, climate problems, etc. And that's mostly just background to the talking animals part.
Noted on March 3, 2026
I've read Roberts' writing on the internet - he is an incisive reviewer and I've appreciated his takes on a lot of other books. But this is the first of his actual novels I've read, I think.
Noted on March 3, 2026
Roberts explores this idea by covering a few decades of society more-or-less collapsing under the weight of the 'canny bêtes', the animals that can talk (but also now: can clearly THINK at a much higher level, and plan, and coordinate, and use tools. It's a bit Children of Men, and a bit Animal Farm. It's pretty dark! I appreciated the writing and laughed a bit, but man: dark.
Noted on March 3, 2026
A 'dark comedy', I guess, about what happens when animals can talk. Animal rights activists invent tiny AI microchips that can worm their way into an animal brain, and teach it to talk back like an LLM. And then they go around the country injecting them into livestock. So when cows and pigs can talk: what happens? And then what about dogs and cats, who wouldn't want to talk to their pets? But is it an AI chip that's talking, or the actual animal? And how would society change when there are animals and Talking Animals?
Noted on March 3, 2026
Quotes
“Talk is what we have, what makes us distinctive. Talk to us is what webs are to a spider, or speed to a gazelle.’
‘Talk is how we bring what’s inside our minds into the outside world,’ Albie said. ‘Animals have feelings and thoughts. Animals have always had feelings and thoughts – it’s just that only now have they been able to bring them out.”Quoted on March 3, 2026