We the Animals by Justin Torres
Description via The StoryGraph:
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.
Read from 24 August 24th through 26th of 2024
“This was our last time all five in a room together. I could have risen; I believe they would have embraced me. Instead, I behaved like an animal. I tried to rip the skin from their faces, and when I couldn’t, I tried to rip the skin from my own. They held me down on the ground; I bucked and spat and screamed my throat raw. I cursed them: we were, all of us, sons of whores, mongrels, our mother fucked a beast. They held me, pinned. At first they defended themselves, cursed me, slapped my face, but the wilder I became, the more they retreated into their love for me. Each of them. I chased them down into that love and challenged it—you morons, you sick fucks, I bet you liked reading it, I bet it excited you. I let the spit fly, nostrils wide—my body spasmed in their grip. My voice spiraled up into coughing hysteria. I said and did animal, unforgivable things. What else, but to take me to the zoo?”
