These Books Will Change Your Life - The Girlfriend Game by Nick Antosca and We The Animals by Justin Torres.

There are those moments when we stumble into books, and writers, and we are sort of amazed we haven't previously. Either knowing of the book, but not enough, for example The Girlfriend Game by Nick Antosca, a writer and book well-known to us, and yet not someone we had ever crossed paths with, on the internet or otherwise. And then there are books like We The Animals by Justin Torres, which we had somehow never heard of, and now seems impossible given the response to it. Regarding the Antosca there were some Tweets, a dialogue, of sorts, the idea that we should read one another's work, and here we are. With Justin Torres, there was an interview, a question of animals, and here we are as well. 

Which is where exactly? Well, on the face of it, we have consumed too greatly different collections. The Girlfriend Game, a gathering of stories about murder, revenge, crime, madness, and pychosexual proclivities, and We The Animals, a series of interconnected flash fictions about three young boys growing-up poor and wild to teenage parents in upstate New York. While The Girlfriend Game is taut and drenched in horror, We the Animals is near feral in its intense bursts of family instability. What they have in common though, and what makes this stumble so timely, is the pervasive sense of dread that both collections continually embrace, and ratchet-up from page to page as the reader powers through to the end. In both cases, to finish the collections is nearly a relief, as the damaged lives on the pages before us, slowly worm their way into our brains, take root, and linger there uncomfortably long after we're done.

Mania. Hydrate. The Lion King. Orphans. And The Writer's Handful.

All that and big thanks to the Patricia Ann McNair of course. Excerpt? Word.

If your writing were an animal, what animal would it be? Because…

I Googled the words “animal sparse quick punchy,” thinking that might help me determine said animal, and I came up with the novel We the Animals by Justin Torres, which apparently takes place in upstate New York where I grew up. So color me intrigued as far as that goes. Not that this answers your question. I am not really into animals, but thinking quick and punchy, if not sparse, how about a hyena, they seem to make quick work of things, and they’re sort of rough, yet still funny and seem to enjoy themselves. Plus, they play a key supporting role in The Lion King, which I name-drop in Orphans, so now I’m marketing, and cross-pollinating, and there we go. Thank you.