Animalia
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3.0 • 1 Rating
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- $19.99
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- $19.99
Publisher Description
Animalia tells the confronting and compelling story of a peasant family in south-west France as they develop their plot of land into an intensive pig farm. In an environment dominated by animals, five generations endure the cataclysm of two world wars, economic disasters, and the emergence of a brutal industrialism. Only the enchanted realm of childhood – that of Éléonore, the matriarch, and Jérome, her grandson – and the innate freedom of the animals offer any respite from the barbarity of humanity.
Animalia is a powerful novel about man's desire to conquer nature and the transmission of violence from one generation to the next.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Del Amo's pungent, nightmarish English-language debut describes, in a mythic, arresting style, the bleak fates of a cursed family and the pigs they rear. In the first two sections, set in early 20th-century France in the village of Puy-Larroque, a family ekes out a living farming on the "hostile, implacable land." A stony mother (referred to solely as "the genetrix") oversees the operations as her ailing husband wastes away and her daughter, El onore, chafes against her domineering ways. In the next sections, set in the 1980s, four generations of the family are living on the farm, now a full-blown piggery, described in Del Amo's unsparing rendering as "the cradle of barbarism and that of the whole world." The clan is beset with insanity, abuse, terminal illness, alcoholism, depression, incest, and financial ruin. When a giant breeding boar breaks free from its enclosure, El onore's son, Henri, pursues "the Beast" which comes to symbolize the family's barely suppressed monstrosity with Ahab-like vigor. The florid prose has an incantatory power well suited to the festering enmity, inhumanity, and majestic squalor on display. This uncompromising vision will leave readers breathless, thrilled, and exhausted.
Customer Reviews
Big pig
Author
French. Late thirties. Winner of Le prix Goncourt du premier roman. According to Wikipedia, Le prix Goncourt du premier roman est un prix littéraire décerné chaque année depuis 2009 en marge du prix Goncourt par l'Académie Goncourt. So there.
Plot
Story of five generations of pig farmers from a fictional village in south-west France from c1900 to 1981, except that we really only hear about the first 20 years of the century then about 1981. There’s becoup de violence against both pigs and humans.
Characters
Decidedly French and not very appealing in the main. The pigs on the other hand…
Prose
Good translation, some artful stuff, but deeply unsettling.
Bottom line
This author has a beef with commercial pig farming.