We the Animals: A novel - Hardcover

Some books quicken your pulse. Some slow it. Some burn you inside and send you tearing off to see who made this thing that can so burn you and quicken you and slow you all at the same time. A miracle in concentrated pages, you are going to read it again and again. Dorothy Allison

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

We the Animals snatches the reader by the scruff of the heart, tight as teeth, and shakes back and forth between the human and the animal, the housed and the feral, love and violence, mercy and wrath and leaves him in the wilderness, ravished by its beauty. Paul Harding

In language brilliant, poised, and pure, We the Animals tells about family love as it is felt when it is frustrated or betrayed or made to stand in the place of too many other needed things, about how precious it becomes, and about the joy and dread of realizing that there really is no end to it. Marilynne Robinson

Torres s concentrated prose goes down hot like strong liquor. Tayari Jones

We the Animals is a gorgeous, deeply humane book. Every page sings, and every scene startles. Daniel Alarcón

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 home is fierce and absorbing, full of chaos and heartbreak and the euphoria of belonging completely to one another. From the intense family unity that surrounds a child to the resilience and permanence of brotherhood to the profound alienation a young man endures as he begins to see himself in the world, this novel reinvents the coming-of-age story in a way that is sucker-punch powerful. It leaves us reminded that our madness is both caused by, and alleviated by, our families, and that we might not reconcile who we are with who our loved ones see, or who we want to be for them.
Written in magical language with unforgettable images, We the Animals 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.