Three brothers tear their way through childhood-smashing tomatoes all over each other, building kites from rubbish, hiding when their parents do battle, tiptoeing around the house as their mother sleeps off her graveyard shift. Paps and Ma are from Brooklyn-he's Puerto Rican, she's white-barely out of childhood themselves, and their love is a serious, dangerous thing. Life in this family is fierce and absorbing, full of chaos and heartbreak and the euphoria of belonging completely to one another. From the intense familial unity felt by a child to the profound alienation he endures as he begins to forge his own way in the world, this beautiful novel reinvents the coming-of-age story in a way that is sly and incredibly powerful.
""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."
--Michael Cunningham "The best book you'll read this fall..."We the Animals," a slim novel--just 144 pages--about three brothers, half white, half Puerto Rican, scrambling their way through a dysfunctional childhood, is the kind of book that makes a career....Torres's sentences are gymnastic, leaping and twirling, but never fancy for the sake of fancy, always justified by the ferocity and heartbreak and hunger and slap-happy euphoria of these three boys. It's a coming-of-age novel set in upstate New York that rumbles with lyric dynamite. It's a knock to the head that will leave your mouth agape. Torres is a savage new talent."
--"Esquire" "First-time novelist Justin Torres unleashes "We the Animals" (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), a gorgeous, howling coming-of-age novel that will devour your heart."
--"Vanity Fair " "A novel so honest, poetic, and tough that it makes you reexamine what it means to love and to hurt. Written in the voice of the youngest of three boys, this partly autobiographical tale evokes the cacophony of a messy childhood--flying trash-bag kites, ransacking vegetable gardens, and smashing tomatoes until pulp runs down the kitchen walls. But despite the din the brothers create, the novel belongs to their mother, who alternates between gruff and matter-of-fact--'loving big boys is different from loving little boys--you've got to meet tough with tough.' In stark prose, Torres shows us how one family grapples with a dangerous and chaotic love for each other, as well as what it means to become a man."
--"O, the Oprah Magazine" "The imagistic power of Justin Torres' debut, "We the Animals" (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), exists in inverse proportion to its slim 128 pages. Just try shaking off this novel about three upstate New York brothers whose knock
Title: We the Animals
Subtitle:
Contributors:
By (author)
Justin Torres
ISBN 13: 9781847083951
ISBN 10: 1847083951
Publisher: Granta Books
Imprint: Granta Books
Publication Date: 12/04/2012
Place of Publication:
London,
United Kingdom
Edition:
BIC Subjects:
Modern fiction
Dewey Classification:
813.6
(DC23)
NBS Classification: General & Literary Fiction
Format: Hardback
Height: 216mm
Width: 135mm