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Loading... We the Animals (2011)by Justin Torres
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. Love the structure—short chapters that almost stand alone but also create an ongoing narrative. It’s structurally delightful, though the narrative is often bleak. It seems like there is a gap where the story takes a turn, everything changes very very fast. The end is scary and beautifully written and does no consoling at all—it’s terrific. But it feels like something is missing in the preceding chapters? Story of three brothers, their abusive father, and their loving but abused and not always there mentally mother gets better as it goes along. The episodes are better than the story as a whole as the youngest brother, the narrator, begins to reveal more about himself. The audiobook is performed well.
This brief but extraordinary novel defies easy categorization, but in it Torres demonstrates a mastery of prose seldom encountered in first books. AwardsDistinctionsNotable Lists
"An exquisite, blistering debut novel. Three brothers tear their way through childhood-- smashing tomatoes all over each other, building kites from trash, hiding out 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--and their love is a serious, dangerous thing that makes and unmakes a family many times. 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 see the world, this beautiful novel reinvents the coming-of-age story in a way that is sly and punch-in-the-stomach powerful. Written in magical language with unforgettable images, this is a stunning exploration of the viscerally charged landscape of growing up, how deeply we are formed by our earliest bonds, and how we are ultimately propelled at escape velocity toward our futures"--Provided by publisher. No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)813.6Literature English (North America) American fiction 21st CenturyLC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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Sad and painful to read. Some early sections are captivating - particularly the prose describing the mother. The book loses coherence in the middle and I became uninterested in the writer's last few chapters. These chapters seem contrived to shock and I just felt irritated.The last couple of chapters were also choppy and at the end I just wanted to physically remove the book from my presence... ( )