There’s blood at the end-and a glimmer of self-affirmation.” For readers, the result is relentless but never wearing, not preachment but real lived pain, and akin to standing in a hurricane with razor blades flying. “A brilliant if uncomfortable provocation, sometimes messily intense but willing to take risks likely to stir talk-and argument. A provocative novel of sex, love, and rage for readers drawn to psychologically rich, feminist literary fiction.”

Joan is almost impossible to look away from on every page.” “ Animal growls a feral truth, a promise of revenge, and an untold story of rage, and a reckoning.” The writing is so engaging on the sentence level that when you sink into the larger argument the Taddeo is making you can’t help but feel something akin to awe. “ Animal is a viscerally satisfying depiction of female rage and a gripping exploration of what it’s like to endure male violence that is both mundane and life-altering.” Animal flows out of its predecessor, but where Women deals with the perils of heteronormative gender politics, Animal deals in the ways the system pushes women to the brink and where Women is in conversation with #MeToo, Animal is in conversation with the anger that follows the reckoning.

That book, which follows the sexual and emotional lives of women, became the kind of cultural phenomenon that will forever follow Lisa Taddeo. It’s impossible to talk about Animal without talking about 2019’s Three Women. Jennifer Haigh, The New York Times Book Review She has a gift for aphorism, the observation that astonishes.” Joan’s voice is so sharp and magnetic that the reader will follow her anywhere. “ propulsive, fiercely confident debut novel. “Like if Joan Didion got into hard drugs and carried a switchblade everywhere.” The result is as intimate as it is explosive.” “With skill and insight, Taddeo examines how the savagery of men fuels female rage.

This book is a raging, funny and fierce thriller with a protagonist whose life force, against extraordinary odds-always in the gaze and sometimes the grasp of predatory, abusive men-is a thing of wonder.”

“ Animal will confirm Taddeo’s status as a pre-eminent channeller of women’s interior lives. “A provocative exploration of what happens when women are pushed beyond the brink, and what comes after the reckoning.”

Animal by lisa taddeo review