Animals in Motion

A giant elk is trapped inside the yard of a family of teenaged boys while their tyrannical father gradually shrinks to the size of a doll. A World War II veteran living at a Laurel Canyon ranch in the late ‘60s faces the threat of changing times and a disturbing, soon to be famous, cult at the next ranch over. A former Olympic contender, after an injury leaves him with a glass eye, takes work as a security guard at the mansion of a ruthless CEO. A child who discovers the scene of a bizarre and unexplained crash in Roswell, New Mexico, fashions the rest of his life through the lens of what he found there....


With language at turns diamond sharp and stone blunt, the thirteen stories of David Ryan’s dark and edgy debut, Animals in Motion, map the existence of their characters through the uncharted world of the psyche. The animals that mysteriously appear suggest a leveling, a weave of human experience with that of the natural world. A landscape alive in the space between thought and impulse, where present circumstances are ruled by memories of the past, and where conscious reality is trumped by greater truths of the imagination. Animals in Motion presents an often surreal yet consistently beautiful tapestry of American despair and hope.


Kirkus (Starred): "A debut collection of stories—one of the best in recent memory—that finds psychological acuity within characters who are unreflective or even impenetrable. Ryan has plainly been honing his craft, because the 13 tales here are the work of a writer who knows exactly what he’s doing—and challenges the reader to figure out how he’s doing it...."


Publisher's Weekly: "Ryan’s collection triumphs as a spiritual and cerebral journey through oft-ignored parts of the human—and animal—psyche."


Booklist Online: The title of Ryan’s short story collection might lead a reader to expect stories about the natural world. However, the truly primal creatures moving through his stories are humans, revealed through their imaginations, desires, and actions as nothing more or less than pieces in the often chaotic game of life. The deer, elk, serpents, and other animals that surface briefly in the 13 stories serve as guideposts against which to measure the human protagonists, who sometimes meet the challenges they face and sometimes don’t. Ryan’s prose is precise, often blunt, and always evocative. The conceits for his stories are very original and never predictable. Some of the stories border on being dreamlike, while others are purely realistic, but always any definitive conclusions hover just out of reach, close enough to savor through multiple reads. This book is a great choice for any lover of well-written stories.


"There is not a word wasted in this powerful debut collection. I think that David Ryan has set a course that will influence many other writers, anyone who values language that is taut and precise, characters whose response to their ruin is, in effect, 'Bring it on,' and important concerns that claim a reader's attention in the most persuasive ways possible."
—Amy Hempel


You can read more about David Ryan at www.davidwryan.com.