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Title details for Filthy Animals by Brandon Taylor - Available

Filthy Animals

by Brandon Taylor
ebook
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1 of 1 copy available
INSTANT NATIONAL BESTSELLER 
WINNER OF THE STORY PRIZE
SHORTLISTED FOR THE DYLAN THOMAS PRIZE
NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY USA TODAY, NPR, VULTURE, MARIE CLAIRE, THE TIMES OF LONDON, GOOD HOUSEKEEPING, AND PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A group portrait of young adults enmeshed in desire and violence, a hotly charged, deeply satisfying new work of fiction from the author of Booker Prize finalist Real Life
In the series of linked stories at the heart of Filthy Animals, set among young creatives in the American Midwest, a young man treads delicate emotional waters as he navigates a series of sexually fraught encounters with two dancers in an open relationship, forcing him to weigh his vulnerabilities against his loneliness. In other stories, a young woman battles with the cancers draining her body and her family; menacing undercurrents among a group of teenagers explode in violence on a winter night; a little girl tears through a house like a tornado, driving her babysitter to the brink; and couples feel out the jagged edges of connection, comfort, and cruelty.
One of the breakout literary stars of 2020, Brandon Taylor has been hailed by Roxane Gay as “a writer who wields his craft in absolutely unforgettable ways.” With Filthy Animals he renews and expands on the promise made in Real Life, training his precise and unsentimental gaze on the tensions among friends and family, lovers and others. Psychologically taut and quietly devastating, Filthy Animals is a tender portrait of the fierce longing for intimacy, the lingering presence of pain, and the desire for love in a world that seems, more often than not, to withhold it.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    June 22, 2021

  • Formats

    • Kindle Book

      • ISBN: 9780525538936

    • OverDrive Read

      • ISBN: 9780525538936

    • EPUB ebook

      • ISBN: 9780525538936
      • File size: 1336 KB

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Library Journal

      January 1, 2021

      Teenagers become violent of a winter's night, a young woman battles cancer while mourning its impact on her family, and a young man stumbles through several sexually tense encounters with two dancers in an open relationship. Featuring creative young people at odds with life, these linked stories follow Taylor's Booker Prize short-listed debut novel, Real Life.

      Copyright 2021 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

    • Publisher's Weekly

      Starred review from March 22, 2021
      Taylor follows his Booker shortlisted Real Life with a sharp, surprising collection. Many of the stories cover a 24-hour period in Madison, Wis., beginning with the excellent “Pot Luck.” Lionel, an exam proctor and mathematician who is recently out of psychiatric care following a suicide attempt, goes to a dinner party and meets Charles, a dancer. A mutual attraction emerges, despite some awkwardness and the presence of Charles’s partner, Sophie. “Flesh” shifts perspective to Charles in his dance class the next morning, and delineates his complex dynamic with Sophie. “Proctoring,” a standout featuring Lionel at work, further complicates the triangle. As the sequence continues, supporting characters are linked by various circumstances. (The client of a young woman who works as a home cook and a babysitter in “Little Beast” turns out to be the doctor of one of Charles’s dance classmates.) In the marvelous “Meat,” Lionel concludes, “All of life was shifting equations.” Throughout, Taylor spins intimate narratives of fraught relationship dynamics and demonstrates a keen sensitivity to his characters’ fragile mental health. Taylor’s language sparks with the tension of beauty and cruelty, conveying a sense of desire and the pleasures of food and sex complicated by capricious behavior. The author has an impressive range, and his depictions of complex characters trapped in untenable situations are hard to forget. Agent: Meredith Kaffel Simonoff, DeFiore and Co.

    • Booklist

      May 15, 2021
      In the first story in this collection, Taylor introduces a trio of characters who will appear several more times. Lionel, on hiatus from his graduate program following a suicidal depression, meets dancers Charles and Sophie, whose dynamic as a couple Lionel can't quite figure out. He connects with Sophie and gives her his number, but it's Charles who shows up at his apartment that snowy night. Later, readers see Charles dancing in his ""class for stragglers,"" despite his bum knee, and learn that his night with Lionel was more than allowed in the confines of his and Sophie's relationship, though she wants to know more than he's interested in saying about it. Readers will see all three again, and meet one of Charles' fellow straggler-dancers, along with a woman navigating her first relationship with another woman, a teenager unable to express his true affection for his best friend, and others. Contemplating the intersection of love and violence, emotional and bodily, these stunning stories showcase the sensibility displayed in Taylor's much-loved and -lauded debut, Real Life (2020).

      COPYRIGHT(2021) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

    • Kirkus

      Starred review from April 15, 2021
      A story collection full of vital insight into murky human interactions. Lionel, who animates several of the linked stories in this high-wire act of a collection, is a Black, queer graduate student at an unnamed Midwestern university--much like Wallace, the protagonist of Taylor's Booker Prize-shortlisted debut novel, Real Life (2020). He studies pure math and is recovering from a suicide attempt. At a party, he mimics other grad students' laughter because he doesn't innately feel the social cues most people would. But Lionel isn't devoid of emotion. In fact, the "feeling of falseness vibrating in his sinuses" from pretending to enjoy social events utterly wears him out. So when Lionel becomes involved with bisexual Charles and his girlfriend, Sophie, both of whom are studying dance, the frisson may be too much for him: "Some lives, Lionel thought, had to be ordinary or ugly or painful. Ending your life had to be on the table." Other stories share this rueful, sepulchral cast of mind. In "Little Beast," babysitter and private chef Sylvia knows that "the world can't abide a raw woman." In the title story, one character's "favorite act of violence is to burn holes into people's clothes when they aren't looking." The settings here are bleak--alienated suburbs; petty college campuses--and the mood unsparing. But the daring in these stories is bracing. Despite its accolades, Taylor's debut novel could feel listless; this collection is a deeper achievement. Taylor tackles a variety of taboos and articulates the comfortless sides of the soul, and it's thrilling to watch.

      COPYRIGHT(2021) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Formats

  • Kindle Book
  • OverDrive Read
  • EPUB ebook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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