Preemptive Retaliation

It’s been three nights since finishing it, and I’m still thinking about this book.

There are a lot of books I read that I get angry at for some reason or another, and there are a few books I read where I get angry at myself. Page after page I slap myself on the knee and think “Goddamnit Joe why didn’t you write this first?” or “How come I don’t write like this?” or “Man I’ll never be this good.” Fragile Animals was not one of these books, because it’s so wholly different from anything I could write – stylistically, thematically, contextually – yet it’s something I can wholly relate to and understand. So I read this book without envy or self loathing, just enjoyment, and shame (where appropriate) and, frankly, awe.

It’s a stunning book. The three stories of Noelle’s life (a child, an adolescent, a young adult) were so inextricably woven that there was no other way the story could be told. And even when I thought I had guessed the novel’s secrets (which, my biggest critique of the book here, are mostly given away by the blurb) it came out with new ones, new internal horrors that Noelle is contending with.

The story slows down a bit too much towards the middle, but that was more than bearable when the pages were filled with such evocative, poetic prose. Earlier this year I read Boy Friends by Michael Pederson which luxuriates in poeticisms and florid writing, and I found myself struggling at times. Fragile Animals had me the whole time. This is going to sound odd, but the words were thick. I felt that I could chew on them, pick them out of my teeth – which is all well and good given one of the novel’s characters.

“I’m sick of looking in mirrors made of men.”

“And he was ginger. So ginger. A shocking shade of ginger, so intensely orange as to be almost blonde. It was a shade found only in unfortunate schoolboys and prey animals. And the poor sod’s dad was a priest.”

“He takes the orange tube and places it care over my left ring finger, my writer’s hand, creating for me a sun-toughened second skin. It is much cooler than the flesh below, waxier and thicker. If I were to touch a flame, it would not burn me.”

I loved this book. Love love loved it. It was funny and cold and heartbreaking and hopeless, and a testament to good writing and an unflinching look at religion without religion. Would thoroughly recommend.