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We the Animals

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About this listen

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.

©2011 Justin Torres (P)2011 Blackstone Audio, Inc. Fiction Genre Fiction Literary Fiction World Literature Emotionally Gripping Heartfelt

What the critics say

" 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, Pulitzer Prize–winning author)
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Well written series of events in the life of this lower working class New York family. Starts relatively happy and fun, reveals darker issues of abuse and depression, dysfunction. Well presented from a chlld’s viewpoint. However, the dark ending, with the revelation of the narrator’s homosexuality and his family’s perverse rejection needs a far more detailed, lengthier and more in-depth treatment. One is left reeling with shock and puzzlement. Perhaps that was the intention but it left me disturbed and with questions unanswered.

Good

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a story about how siblings co-create their own worlds. nostalgic and childlike, you will remember what it felt like to be young, wild, and free.

beautiful and nostalgic

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