We the Animals by Justin Torres

When was the last time a gay debut novel was launched with an excerpt in The New Yorker? Justin Torres' work previously appeared in Tin House, Glimmer Train, and Granta, and now his autobiographical novel of growing up in a fierce, fractious, mixed Puerto Rican-white family with sporadic employment and constant struggles, We the Animals [[Kindle]], is doing well very as the other big buzz first novel of the season. Though the writing can at times be self-conscious and feel forced in its poetry, intruding on the story, there's power in seeing the familiar coming of age arc retold with excess energy and openness about gay Puerto Rican youth. Typically, horribly, Houghton Harcourt degays their description of the novel, but wisely they've priced the 144-page novella at $18, deeply discounted online. The ebook is under $8. Early, high-flying praise includes three Pulitzer winners:

Paul Harding: "We the Animals snatches the reader by the scruff of the heart, tight as teeth, and shakes back and forth—between the human and the animal, the housed and the feral, love and violence, mercy and wrath—and leaves him in the wilderness, ravished by its beauty. It is an indelible and essential work of art."

Marilynne Robinson: "In language brilliant, poised and pure, We the Animals tells about family love as it is felt when it is frustrated or betrayed or made to stand in the place of too many other needed things, about how precious it becomes in these extremes, about the terrible sense of loss when it fails under duress, and the joy and dread of realizing that there really is no end to it."

Dorothy Allison: "Some books quicken your pulse. Some slow it. Some burn you inside and send you tearing off to find the author to see who made this thing that can so burn you and quicken you and slow you all at the same time. A miracle in concentrated pages, you are going to read it again and again, and know exactly what I mean."

Michael Cunningham: "We the Animals is a dark jewel of a book. It’s heartbreaking. It’s beautiful. It resembles no other book I’ve read. We should all be grateful for Justin Torres, a brilliant, ferocious new voice."

O, the Oprah Magazine: "A novel so honest, poetic, and tough that it makes you reexamine what it means to love and to hurt."

Esquire: "The best book you'll read this fall.. It’s a knock to the head that will leave your mouth agape. Torres is a savage new talent."

Comments

[Konrad]

it will be interesting to see how what is, essentially, a novella (by any definition, and length) is shoe-horned into book awards as a "novel" ..maybe that's why the publisher felt compelled to add novel to the title: just in case you thought you were buying an over-priced short story