Reviews with content warning for Child abuse - Animal

This is one of the best novels on the effects of generational and sexual trauma I have ever read. This is not a story of redemption or hopeful new beginnings. Joan is an utterly real person, and we see the contradiction and pain living inside her without the fluff of a character built to be a turned-hero. The first half of the book is a stream of consciousness and can drag at times. However, a piece like this is not to entertain. Its goal is not to inform or enlighten. This is an expression of pain taken at face value. Those who have not experienced what Joan describes cannot fully grasp what this text does. Although feminism is a huge motif, the modern interpretation of the "girl boss" is nowhere seen. Joan's rage mimics the violence that builds through oppression and abuse, steering her to act out. She is not a hero, but she is also not an anti-hero. She is a person, she is a woman, she is an expression of those who know.

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pourquoipas's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional reflective sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

I don’t even know where to go from there. This book was a gut punch followed by a sucker punch and then a big hug.
The beginning was a bit too slow. It’s difficult making a connection with the protagonist, but towards the end Taddeo is able to make the reader some sympathy towards her.
At times I found myself wondering if I had missed a page. The transitions are fast, the details are painful and tormenting, and the emotions are deep and disturbing.

Lots of triggers not for everyone.

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haleydoeshairs's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional reflective sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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alex_likesbooks's review against another edition

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dark emotional tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

i loved and hated this book. It was SO slow and heavy in the beginning but when everything started unraveling i couldn’t put it down. It was super depraved (duh) and dark and disturbing. I do wish i read TWs before just to know what i was getting into, I went in blind. I did like the portrait of female rage portrayed and a lot of the points brought up about how women are viewed by society and by men.

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yesbethhh92's review against another edition

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dark emotional reflective tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

“All my life, all the men taking what they wanted and leaving when it was over.”

Wow wow wow. This was incredible.

In Animal, Joan flees New York after witnessing a horrible act of violence. From there we follow her to Los Angeles, where she seeks out a woman named Alice for reasons that are slowly uncovered.

Joan reflects back on her life since childhood, recalling her relationship with her parents and a traumatic experience that affected the rest of her life and dictated all her future relationships with women and men.

This book is about the entitlement, cruelty and entitlement of men, and how this manifests in women as pain, rage and madness.

I could feel the primal rage growing in me as I read this book, and the tension kept building to an emotional and devastating end.

Lisa Taddeo is a master with words, and I love the way she created parallels between the stories of the different characters.

I loved this so so so much. I wasn’t sure about it early on, and took some breaks from it because it’s quite slow in the earlier chapters. But once it gets going, it really gets going, and by the end I was crying.

I highly recommend this but check trigger warnings first as there as some graphic parts.

“It was my father who had driven my mother mad. But once again, mad is not right. The world had set me up to believe that it was women who went mad. It was simply women's pain that manifested as madness.”

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clairebartholomew549's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

I don't know how to feel about this book. I resonated with a lot of its themes and assertions about the ceaseless violence men commit against women and the ways our entire inner lives are shaped by the men we're exposed to, and I appreciated Joan's unabashed commitment to voicing the darkest parts of herself. But I found the plot kind of tiring, definitely disturbing, and vaguely performative; it felt a little redundant of other books I've read like it before, like The Girls and Bright Young Women, and it was not an enjoyable read.

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matlock's review against another edition

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challenging dark tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.5

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justine014's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

Really not sure how I feel about this. Enjoyed the prose a lot, though it veered into overly long descriptions at times. Appreciated many of the observations about sex and gender dynamics, though some of Joan’s perspectives on both felt a bit dated, as if her character missed the last 15 years of feminist discourse, and I can’t tell if that was intentional due to her circumstances and also because she’s a bit older?? It also bothered me that characters would often not speak like normal people but instead went on long, incredibly polished monologues which did not feel realistic. Then again, I love Mike Flanagan’s TV shows and those do the same thing so idk why it bothered me here.

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