When We Were Animals
Books | Fiction / Coming of Age
3.5
Joshua Gaylord
In this chilling Shirley Jackson Award-nominated novel, a small, quiet Midwestern town is unremarkable save for one fact: when the teenagers reach a certain age, they run wild. When Lumen Fowler looks back on her childhood, she wouldn't have guessed she would become a kind suburban wife, a devoted mother. In fact, she never thought she would escape her small and peculiar hometown. When We Were Animals is Lumen's confessional: as a well-behaved and over-achieving teenager, she fell beneath the sway of her community's darkest, strangest secret. For one year, beginning at puberty, every resident "breaches" during the full moon. On these nights, adolescents run wild, destroying everything in their path. Lumen resists. Promising her father she will never breach, she investigates the mystery of her community's traditions and the stories erased from the town record. But the more we learn about the town's past, the more we realize that Lumen's memories are harboring secrets of their own. A gothic coming-of-age tale for modern times, When We Were Animals is a dark, provocative journey into the American heartland. Nominated for the 2015 Shirley Jackson Award for Best Novel
AD
Buy now:
More Details:
Author
Joshua Gaylord
Pages
238
Publisher
Hachette+ORM
Published Date
2015-04-07
ISBN
0316297925 9780316297929
Community ReviewsSee all
"I was not a fan of this book. It made me intensely uncomfortable to read it, but perhaps I just missed the point. I'm very disappointed because it had rave reviews and one of my favorite sites, theSkimm, had recommended it, but I guess some things aren't what you think they are!<br/><br/>Case in point, I leave you with the last line of the novel, which basically sums up everything I disliked about this book...<br/><br/>“I know exactly what love is. It’s sometimes leaning over your husband while he sleeps, while he conjures in his dreams all the fears and ecstasies he would relish if he were ever able to let himself be truly and wholly alive, breathing in the fermented air exhaled from his pink, undamaged lungs—and it’s sometimes wanting to rip out his throat with your teeth.”<br/><br/>Excerpt From: Gaylord, Joshua. “When We Were Animals.” Little, Brown and Company, 2015-04-21. iBooks. <br/>This material may be protected by copyright.<br/><br/>Check out this book on the iBooks Store: https://itun.es/us/liha2.l"
A P
Allie Peduto