Name: Shivam's review of We the Animals by Justin Torres
Item: We the Animals
Rating: 3
Author: Shivam

Justin Torres

The Brooklyn childhoods of three brothers are marked by their parents' volatile passions and their own destructive antics, in the story of a chaotic family that explores the ways in which a youth's coming-of-age profoundly shapes his world view. 30,000 first printing.

We the Animals

Eli Alvah Huckabee

"You see how excited she is to come home and see them toes again?" he asked. "She's toe proud. Toe crazy.”

Yochanan Vered 

Shivam

7

Feels so autobiographical, the way it's written couldn't possibly have come from someone who hasn't lived inside it. The prose comes across as it's trying to cover the bleak reality in pretty phrases and elaborate metaphors but the ugliness slips through the cracks anyway.

I remember one surprisingly clever passage where the characters are described in a rather odd way that I found hard to construct the image of a human being through. The image I could form resembled a dog or a wolf more than it did a man, and that's when it struck me.

Everyone's experience with queerness is unique but there's some common threads that weave the fabric sheltering us from the rest. It's a weak defense but it's all some of us have. I could trace some of these threads back to my early adolescence, particularly the need to blend in, often reached through imitation. The act of reflecting the manners and ideas of those around you without looking like a copy is something I did to become invisible. 

It's a depressing journey, made worse still by the inability of your family to accept you. When he finally expresses the resentment all he gets is another wall separating him off. A wall of parental concern, but concern doesn't cut it. It's another deflection, not an answer. It's easier for them to show concern and remorse (but not regret) and let him go.

While most of the book is told in snapshots, the narrative reaches a peak and only becomes streamlined in the final couple of chapters towards an ending that again tries to conceal the ugliness behind metaphors. Or maybe the metaphor is the only way possible to put it into words.

Everybody else uses this word and I can’t think of anything better; this was raw! Loved it, loved the pacing, loved the use of like six characters, loved how we never learn the narrator’s name. Excellent, fast read. Did it in a morning and only skipped breakfast and lunch to do it. Worth it.

Patricia Nelson

I'm not sure I can adequately write a review of this book today. It's the kind of book that sits with you for a while and you find deeper meaning over time. It's not an easy book to read. Raw is the word that comes to mind first. It is very well written and I can see why it received the critical acclaim it has. For now, I'll say this. One of the things that I kept thinking about while reading it was that there are so many people out there who we just don't SEE. We don't see the lives behind the closed doors of their homes; we don't see who they are inside, or take the time to look for it; we don't see the struggles they face to 'get out' or deal with their inner demons.

Chiyeung lau

renee badenoch

I loved the themes explored in this book! I love how Torres explores how even in abusive parent/child relationships there can still be tenderness. I also loved the way he wrote about poverty, toxic masculinity, emergent queer identity, and the relationship we have to people who share childhood trauma with us. This book is slim, but a brutal, powerful, important read

Hellboy TCR

3.5 stars for this occasionally mesmerising book. Most books of this kind fall apart by the end, this one scrapes through. It has astonishing moments and passages like this one at the beginning - “WE WANTED MORE. We knocked the butt ends of our forks against the table, tapped our spoons against our empty bowls; we were hungry. We wanted more volume, more riots. We turned up the knob on the TV until our ears ached with the shouts of angry men. We wanted more music on the radio; we wanted beats; we wanted rock. We wanted muscles on our skinny arms. We had bird bones, hollow and light, and we wanted more density, more weight. We were six snatching hands, six stomping feet; we were brothers, boys, three little kings locked in a feud for more.”

DJ Raymond

This book is the equivalent of the bruises you get playing outside as a kid, the ones that hit purple and bloom into gray green flowers as the days pass, terrible and lovely all at once.

Jeff Brown 

The description of this book was quite accurate, but I still wasn’t prepared for the range and intensity that this short book provides.

There is a .... raw elegance to the book that really drew me in. What I mean is that I wasn’t surprised to find out that this was the author’s first novel, but, especially knowing that, it was surprising that he was able to take a situation, broken up into 19 loosely-connected short stories, and present them in such a sometimes beautiful, or funny, or violent way that flows so well.

Three young boys, usually guided by anger or fear, are able to make the best out of what life has given them, with a powerful, sometimes violent, sometimes absent father, and a mother that works the graveyard shift, so exhausted that she not only doesn’t know what hour it is, but not even what day or week it is. While there are times you can really see how much this family really loves each other (sometimes a little too openly by the parents), you also see how damaging the situation is for the development of these brothers not only as a trio, but as individuals as they grow up.

There was one thing that may rub some the wrong way — I don’t know why it didn’t me. I think it was that, in time, I could see that the approach was actually rather brilliant. In the title, we have the word “We”, while the story is told through one person, the youngest brother (“I”). But a large part of the story is rather strictly focused on the three brothers, so the “We” makes perfect sense. In time, you see the brothers start to become their own persons — especially the youngest brother, which makes the first-person account actually quite compelling.

I could go on, but this is long enough as it is. Rating this book was quite difficult. It was much better than a 4, but was really a 5? I could give a tick off for the rawness, but that was an important part of the beauty of the book.

I’ve given a stronger 5 on another book or two, but since this was so unexpectedly wonderful, it’s my book of the year so far.

Jennifer Diz

** read for gender /sex literature class **

Taylor Nuzzolo

Dominic

Three brothers tear their way through childhood - smashing tomatoes all over each other, building kites from rubbish, hiding when their parents do battle, tiptoeing around the house as their mother sleeps off her graveyard shift. Paps and Ma are from Brooklyn - he's Puerto Rican, she's white. Barely out of childhood themselves, their love is a serious, dangerous thing. Life in this family is fierce and absorbing, full of chaos and heartbreak and the euphoria of belonging completely to one another. From the intense familial unity felt by a child to the profound alienation he endures as he begins to forge his own way in the world, this beautiful novel reinvents the coming-of-age story in a way that is sly and incredibly powerful.

Emory

Barış Yarsel

Madison Storm

Dennis Jacob Rosenfeld

Kathy Luo

Vladimir

Tylar M

Three brother tear their way through childhood, smashing tomatoes all over each other, building kites from rubbish, hiding from their parents' fights.

Courtney

Follows the intense family life of three brothers living in the shadow of their parents' passionate love, and their own profound sense of family unity and belonging.

Yochanan Vered &
We the Animals by Justin Torres

Reviews

Highlights

Join the club

Yochanan Vered &We the Animals by Justin Torres

Reviews

Highlights

Join the club

Yochanan Vered &
We the Animals by Justin Torres