We the animals

Review by New York Times Review

A GOOD three-quarters of the way through Justin Torres's first novel, "We the Animals," readers might find themselves wondering how the narrator - 7 years old at the start and unnamed throughout - keeps his sanity in check. He has seen his mother, delirious and half-deranged from working the overnight shift at the local brewery, scream at him and his two older brothers at 8 on a Sunday evening: "Why aren't you in school?" He's seen her make a meatloaf one morning and then call them to dinner as they come down to breakfast, half asleep. He's seen her carried into the house by his father, her cheeks swollen purple, and been told that "the dentist had been punching on her after she went under." He's seen her dragged and forced, by that same father, into a bedroom, behind the door of which the word "stop" has no meaning. And when his father disappears for a time, he's seen his mother take to the couch for days, miss work, stop eating, stop cooking for them, and drop her head and fall asleep at the kitchen table, surrounded by full ashtrays and empty bottles. What exactly is wrong with this boy's mother (white, from Brooklyn) and his father (Puerto Rican, also from Brooklyn), and what damage has been done to this mixed-race family, is the story Torres sets out to tell. "Tell," however, may not be a precise enough word to describe the book's incantatory narrative style. "We the Animals" - a series of 19 short, loosely connected, debatably chronological vignettes - is a strobe light of a story, its flash set on slow, producing before our eyes lurid and poetic snapshots that start with the narrator and his two brothers as needy children: "We wanted more . . . we were hungry. We wanted more volume, more riots, . . . more broken dishes, more shattered glass. We wanted more crashes." The children, Torres writes, "were six snatching hands, six stomping feet; we were brothers, boys, three little kings locked in a feud for more." Late in the book, an acceleration of time and turmoil finds the three of them in their late teens, when the full extent of the family's brutal drama explodes. Set in upstate New York in the near past - VCRs and rotary phones can be found around the house, and no mention is made of the Internet or other recent technologies - "We the Animals" follows the brothers as they navigate the rutted roads of their parents' tumultuous marriage. In addition to their unpredictable "Ma," there is the violent and passionate "Paps," a proud but defeated would-be mambo king who can't keep a job as a late-shift security guard, and in whose heritage can be found "the flavor and grit of tenement buildings, . . . as if we could hear Spanish in his movements, as if Puerto Rico was a man in a bathrobe, grabbing another beer from the fridge." Like Fitzgerald's Nick Carraway, who claimed to be both "within and without," Torres's sensitive and hyperobservant narrator, bookish and "pansy scented," claims to be "both inside and outside," relating this coming-of-age story in a spare and impressionistic style that lasts nearly to the very end, when the strobe light's pace suddenly quickens and careens us, headlong and a bit jarringly, into unexpected betrayal and rupture. Revealing secrets and changing lives at the end of a story serves an author - and reader - best when we get a little more setup than Torres has offered. But this critique actually speaks to my own hunger and want. I want more of Torres's haunting, wordtorn world - not less. Three brothers navigate the rutted roads of their parents' tumultuous marriage. Joseph Salvatore teaches writing and literature at the New School. His collection of stories, "To Assume a Pleasing Shape," will be published in November.

Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [September 11, 2011]

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Review by Booklist Review

Told in the form of linked short stories (some very short no more than three pages), Torres' first novel is an impressionistic examination of a family of mixed race and ethnicity: the mother is white; the father, Puerto Rican. Though originally from Brooklyn, the family now lives in upstate New York, though the setting is seldom site-specific. The stories focus on the family's three boys Manny, 10; Joel, 9; and the narrator, 7 and are often elegiac accounts of fighting over blankets or flying trash-bag kites, but because the parents' marriage is contentious, some are tinged with violence. The title is a reference to the narrator's view of his brothers and himself as being animals; readers may think of puppies but sometimes of something wilder. And that something wilder comes to prevail as the boys grow up and the narrator realizes he's gay. This will lead to an uncharacteristically operatic, almost melodramatic ending that seems to violate the book's tone. But be that as it may, Torres is clearly a gifted writer with a special talent for tone and characterization. His novel is a pleasure to read.--Cart, Michael Copyright 2010 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

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Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Three brothers and a dueling husband and wife are bound by poverty and love in this debut novel from Stegner Fellow Torres. Manny, Joel, and the unnamed youngest, who narrates, are rambunctious and casually violent. Their petite "white" mother, with her night-shift job and unstable marriage to the boys' impulsive Puerto Rican father, is left suspended in an abusive yet still often joyous home. Nothing seems to turn out right, whether it's Paps getting fired for bringing the boys to work or Ma loading them in the truck and fleeing into the woods. The short tales that make up this novel are intriguing and beautifully written, but take too long to reach the story's heart, the narrator's struggle to come of age and discover his sexuality in a hostile environment. When the narrator's father catches him dancing like a girl, he remarks: "Goddamn, I got me a pretty one." From this point the story picks up momentum, ending on a powerful note, as Torres ratchets up the consequences of being different. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

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Review by Library Journal Review

In punchy, energized language, the narrator of this dark and affecting little book relates life with his two brothers and their too young, just-making-it parents. The boys play and fight, with the first sometimes blending into the second, and though the parents can be loving with each other and with their sons, there's often trouble. Ma stops going to work when Paps briefly takes up with another woman, for instance, and becomes spiteful when he brings home a new truck with no seat belts or even backseats. The narrative moves in a straight line but is not straightforward, with the story and the texture of this family's life disclosed through a string of telling incidents. The narrator reports it all in a dispassionate, almost starry-eyed youngster's sort of way, frequently in the first person plural-"we were allowed to be what we were, frightened and vengeful-little animals, clawing at what we need"-but a creeping tension is in the air. When real anguish bursts forth at the end, you almost think it comes un-deserved-and then you applaud first novelist Torres's genius ability to twist around and punch you in the gut. VERDICT Highly recommended. [See Prepub Alert, 3/28/11.]-Barbara Hoffert, Library Journal (c) Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

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Review by Kirkus Book Review

An exquisitely crafted debut novelsubtle, shimmering and emotionally devastating.Those whose memories of contemporary literature extend a quarter century might be tempted to compare this with Susan Minot'sMonkeys(1986), another short, elliptical debut novel about family dynamics that received rapturous reviews upon publication.Yet this is a different novel, and a better one, about a different sort of family and a narrator's discovery of how he is both a part of them and apart from them.The dedication"For my mother, my brothers and my father and for Owen"suggests that the narrator's rites of passage reflect the author's own, that this is a novel that probes deep, even painful truths no matter how factual it may be.The narrator is the youngest of three sons of a white, Brooklyn mother and a Puerto Rican father, who became parents in their teens.Like the title suggests, the first-person narration initially might as well be plural, for the narrator and his older brothers Manny and Leon resemble "a three-torsoed beast," scrounging for sustenance and meaning amid the tumultuous relationship of their parents, one that the boys can barely understand (though sometimes they intuit more than the narrator can articulate). Their bond provides what little defense they have against their mother's emotional instability and their father's unsteady employment and fidelity.They are, like some of the most exhilarating writing, "wild and loose and free." Yet the narrative voice is a marvel of controlone that reflects the perceptions and limitations of a 7-year-old in language that suggests someone older is channeling his younger perspective.In short chapters that stand alone yet ultimately achieve momentum, the narrator comes to terms with his brothers, his family and his sexuality, separating the "I" from the "we" and suffering the consequences.Ultimately, the novel has a redemptive resonancefor the narrator, for the rest of the fictional family and for the reader as well.Upon finishing, readers might be tempted to start again, not wanting to let it go.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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WE WANTED MORE We wanted more. We knocked the butt ends of our forks against the table, tapped our spoons against our empty bowls; we were hungry. We wanted more volume, more riots. We turned up the knob on the TV until our ears ached with the shouts of angry men. We wanted more music on the radio; we wanted beats; we wanted rock. We wanted muscles on our skinny arms. We had bird bones, hollow and light, and we wanted more density, more weight. We were six snatching hands, six stomping feet; we were brothers, boys, three little kings locked in a feud for more. When it was cold, we fought over blankets until the cloth tore down the middle. When it was really cold, when our breath came out in frosty clouds, Manny crawled into bed with Joel and me. "Body heat," he said. "Body heat," we agreed. We wanted more flesh, more blood, more warmth. When we fought, we fought with boots and garage tools, snapping pliers--we grabbed at whatever was nearest and we hurled it through the air; we wanted more broken dishes, more shattered glass. We wanted more crashes. And when our Paps came home, we got spankings. Our little round butt cheeks were tore up: red, raw, leather-whipped. We knew there was something on the other side of pain, on the other side of the sting. Prickly heat radiated upward from our thighs and backsides, fire consumed our brains, but we knew that there was something more, someplace our Paps was taking us with all this. We knew, because he was meticulous, because he was precise, because he took his time. He was awakening us; he was leading us somewhere beyond burning and ripping, and you couldn't get there in a hurry. And when our father was gone, we wanted to be fathers. We hunted animals. We drudged through the muck of the crick, chasing down bullfrogs and water snakes. We plucked the baby robins from their nest. We liked to feel the beat of tiny hearts, the struggle of tiny wings. We brought their tiny animal faces close to ours. "Who's your daddy?" we said, then we laughed and tossed them into a shoebox. Always more, always hungrily scratching for more. But there were times, quiet moments, when our mother was sleeping, when she hadn't slept in two days, and any noise, any stair creak, any shut door, any stifled laugh, any voice at all, might wake her, those still, crystal mornings, when we wanted to protect her, this confused goose of a woman, this stumbler, this gusher, with her backaches and headaches and her tired, tired ways, this uprooted Brooklyn creature, this tough talker, always with tears when she told us she loved us, her mixed-up love, her needy love, her warmth, those mornings when sunlight found the cracks in our blinds and laid itself down in crisp strips on our carpet, those quiet mornings when we'd fix ourselves oatmeal and sprawl onto our stomachs with crayons and paper, with glass marbles that we were careful not to rattle, when our mother was sleeping, when the air did not smell like sweat or breath or mold, when the air was still and light, those mornings when silence was our secret game and our gift and our sole accomplishment--we wanted less: less weight, less work, less noise, less father, less muscles and skin and hair. We wanted nothing, just this, just this. NEVER-NEVER TIME We all three sat at the kitchen table in our raincoats, and Joel smashed tomatoes with a small rubber mallet. We had seen it on TV: a man with an untamed mustache and a mallet slaughtering vegetables, and people in clear plastic ponchos soaking up the mess, having the time of their lives. We aimed to smile like that. We felt the pop and smack of tomato guts exploding; the guts dripped down the walls and landed on our cheeks and foreheads and congealed in our hair. When we ran out of tomatoes, we went into the bathroom and pulled out tubes of our mother's lotions from under the sink. We took off our raincoats and positioned ourselves so that when the mallet slammed down and forced out the white cream, it would get everywhere, the creases of our shut-tight eyes and the folds of our ears. Our mother came into the kitchen, pulling her robe shut and rubbing her eyes, saying, "Man oh man, what time is it?" We told her it was eight-fifteen, and she said fuck, still keeping her eyes closed, just rubbing them harder, and then she said fuck again, louder, and picked up the teakettle and slammed it down on the stove and screamed, "Why aren't you in school?" It was eight-fifteen at night, and besides, it was a Sunday, but no one told Ma that. She worked graveyard shifts at the brewery up the hill from our house, and sometimes she got confused. She would wake randomly, mixed up, mistaking one day for another, one hour for the next, order us to brush our teeth and get into PJs and lie in bed in the middle of the day; or when we came into the kitchen in the morning, half asleep, she'd be pulling a meat loaf out of the oven, saying, "What is wrong with you boys? I been calling and calling for dinner." We had learned not to correct her or try to pull her out of the confusion; it only made things worse. Once, before we'd known better, Joel refused to go to the neighbors and ask for a stick of butter. It was nearly midnight and she was baking a cake for Manny. "Ma, you're crazy," Joel said. "Everyone's sleeping, and it's not even his birthday." She studied the clock for a good while, shook her head quickly back and forth, and then focused on Joel; she bored deep in his eyes as if she was looking past his eyeballs, into the lower part of his brain. Her mascara was all smudged and her hair was stiff and thick, curling black around her face and matted down in the back. She looked like a raccoon caught digging in the trash: surprised, dangerous. "I hate my life," she said. That made Joel cry, and Manny punched him hard on the back of the head. "Nice one, asswipe," he hissed. "It was going to be my fucking birthday." After that, we went along with whatever she came up with; we lived in dreamtime. Some nights Ma piled us into the car and drove out to the grocery store, the laundromat, the bank. We stood behind her, giggling, when she pulled at the locked doors, or when she shook the heavy security grating and cursed. She gasped now, finally noticing the tomato and lotion streaking down our faces. She opened her eyes wide and then squinted. She called us to her side and gently ran a finger across each of our cheeks, cutting through the grease and sludge. She gasped again. "That's what you looked like when you slid out of me," she whispered. "Just like that." We all groaned, but she kept on talking about it, about how slimy we were coming out, about how Manny was born with a full head of hair and it shocked her. The first thing she did with each one of us was to count our fingers and toes. "I wanted to make sure they hadn't left any in there," she said and sent us into a fit of pretend barfing noises. "Do it to me." "What?" we asked. "Make me born." "We're out of tomatoes," Manny said. "Use ketchup." We gave her my raincoat because it was the cleanest, and we warned her no matter what not to open her eyes until we said it was OK. She got down on her knees and rested her chin on the table. Joel raised the mallet above his head, and Manny squared the neck of the ketchup bottle between her eyes. "On the count of three," we said, and we each took a number--my number was last. We all took the deepest, longest breath we could, sucking the air through our teeth. Everyone had his face all clenched up, his hands squeezed into fists. We sucked in a little more air, and our chests swelled. The room felt like a balloon must, when you're blowing and blowing and blowing, right before it pops. "Three!" And the mallet swung through the air. Our mother yelped and slid to the floor and stayed there, her eyes wide open and ketchup everywhere, looking like she had been shot in the back of the head. "It's a mom!" we screamed. "Congratulations!" We ran to the cupboards and pulled out the biggest pots and heaviest ladles and clanged them as loud as we could, dancing around our mother's body, shouting, "Happy Birthday! . . . Happy New Year! . . . It's zero o'clock! . . . It's never-never time! . . . It's the time of your life!" Excerpted from We the Animals by Justin Torres All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

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