And like the coyotes, the past is moving in. The scent of blood lingers on Joan, growing stronger as the story unfolds. She is often hard to trust, hard to like and at times abandoning yourself to her damaged hands can feel terrifying.
Joan is our narrator, our guide and she leads us over some pretty bleak terrain. It feels honest, brutal and ultimately real. All roads seem to lead back to her parents. Her relationships with women are complex and often filled with regret. Her sexual relationships with men, in which she seeks both comfort and revenge, and which ultimately leave her hollow. Joan’s life is marked by her relationships. It is never far from the decisions she makes. Both died when she was young and the manner of her death stalks her lived experience. From the outset we are aware that Joan’s life is unorthodox, unstable and filled with trauma. But life it seems is finally catching up with her. Here among the dust, the heat and crucially the circling coyotes, Joan starts anew. And while Joan is running away from the past, she is also running towards it. So the scene is set.īoth Joan and the story move painfully and at pace, trying to escape the horrors of the immediate and distant past. One lover shoots himself in front of Joan and her other lover. The novel opens in New York City, and the suicide of a lover. But nothing you have read before will quite prepare you for meeting Joan. The biting intelligence and sense of raw perspective is present throughout this novel, as is the unguarded examination of a women’s sexual and emotional choices. In many ways Animal has many of the same qualities. Three Women was a book filled with insight, hard truths and untapped emotion. It follows the success of her 2019 release Three Women a work of nonfiction that detailed and examined the sexual and emotional lives of three women living in the USA. This week sees the long anticipated publication of Animal by Lisa Taddeo, by Bloomsbury.
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