We The Animals
A Novel
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4.1 • 10 Ratings
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
A NATIONAL BESTSELLER and an award-winning novel in stories surrounding a young, half-white, half-Puerto Rican boy grappling with life, love, and identity as he comes of age.
In this groundbreaking debut, Justin Torres plunges us into the chaotic heart of one family, the intense bonds of three brothers, and the mythic effects of this fierce love on the people we must become.
"A tremendously gifted writer whose highly personal voice should excite us in much the same way that Raymond Carver’s or Jeffrey Eugenides’s voice did when we first heard it."??—??The Washington Post
"We the Animals is a dark jewel of a book. It’s heartbreaking. It’s beautiful. It resembles no other book I’ve read.”??—??Michael Cunningham
"A miracle in concentrated pages, you are going to read it again and again."??—??Dorothy Allison
"Rumbles with lyric dynamite . . . Torres is a savage new talent."??—??Benjamin Percy, Esquire
"A fiery ode to boyhood . . . A welterweight champ of a book."??—??NPR, Weekend Edition
"A novel so honest, poetic, and tough that it makes you reexamine what it means to love and to hurt."??—??O, The Oprah Magazine
"The communal howl of three young brothers sustains this sprint of a novel . . . A kind of incantation."??—??The New Yorker
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Three mixed-race brothers grow up in an impoverished, abusive household in upstate New York in this poignant and heart-wrenching novella told through a series of vignettes. The boys and an unhappy husband and wife get by, despite luck very rarely going their way. The mother works a night shift to make ends meet, while their chaotic father picks up jobs where he can, often hauling the trio along for the ride—which he then gets fired for. Through it all, the unnamed narrator is battling his teenage years in a confusing and hostile environment while also struggling with his sexuality. Each chapter is a standalone moment yet still manages to propel the story along with increased momentum. This blistering and poetic tale is a powerful examination of what it can look like when difference emerges among those who once saw you as the same as them.
