Reviews with content warning for Terminal illness - Filthy Animals

writing short stories and making each one of them engaging is really fucking difficult. brandon taylor's writing is so beautiful that it has you sticking around even when you don't feel that much for characters you didn't know three pages ago. but suddenly, 5 pages into a new short story you're already invested. i loved lionel and im really glad he's the one character that got more than one story. it is true that some of these chapters felt unfinished, but i think that made sense with the plot and the intention of this book—after all, we're just getting a few glimpses into these people's lives, we're not staying. i can't give it 5 stars simply because i had to skip the two stories that dealt with cancer and terminal illnesses, i would've appreciated a warning. i loved loved loved this.

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amye's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense

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

5.0

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leekaufman's review against another edition

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dark emotional reflective medium-paced

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

4.0

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annuich's review against another edition

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dark emotional hopeful reflective tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A

3.75

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pippyv's review against another edition

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dark sad medium-paced

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

3.0

Fun main story but the other short stories detracted heavily. The descriptions of the gay women in the one story they featured in, while not entirely inaccurate, were generic and lifeless compared with the standard set by male characters of any sexuality in the rest of the book and overall it was a bit insultingly lazy.

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deedireads's review against another edition

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dark emotional sad tense slow-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? It's complicated

5.0

All my reviews live at https://deedispeaking.com/reads/.

TL;DR REVIEW:

Filthy Animals is, as we expect from Brandon Taylor, a masterful collection of stories; I especially loved the linked ones. This book more than lives up to the hype.

For you if: You like queer short stories and excellent character-driven writing.

FULL REVIEW:

First, thank you to Riverhead for granting me a review copy of this collection on NetGalley! Filthy Animals is one of the most anticipated books of the year, and it absolutely lives up to the hype.

The collection opens with a story about a man named Lionel, who has hit a particularly difficult point in his life, and who meets two dancers in an open relationship at a friend’s potluck dinner. Every alternating story in the collection returns to these three characters, which, strung together, could have even become a novella. I really liked this format, the promise that we will come back and learn more about them, return to the near-tangible tension between them, see what happens next. But all the other stories in the collection are incredible, too, as one would expect from Brandon Taylor.

I feel, now, that I could recognize Taylor’s writing anywhere, just by the level of detail he includes on every page. His writing zooms in on practically everything, which draws meaning and poignancy out of the otherwise mundane. Reading his stories, I feel like I could be an ant inside them, viewing every surface, every facial expression, every moment from close up. And then he zooms out when it comes to dialogue, letting every word ring and echo in hollow space. The result is both quiet and loud.

This is one of those books where I think the back-cover blurb is especially on the nose: “Psychologically taut and quietly devastating,” and “a tender portrait of the fierce longing for intimacy, the lingering presence of pain, and the desire for love in a world that seems, more often than not, to withhold it.” I really can’t sum it up any better than that.

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katyisreading's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional reflective tense slow-paced

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

5.0

FILTHY ANIMALS was one of my most anticipated reads of the summer and it did not disappoint.

Thank you to Riverhead for my advanced copy. This short story collection is out this Tuesday, 6/22!

TW: suicide attempt, abuse, death, illness

In FILTHY ANIMALS, every other story follows Lionel, who was recently released from the hospital after a suicide attempt, and Sophie and Charles, two dancers who are in an open relationship. The thread of their story—which explores intimacy, cruelty, frailty, longing, and the interconnection of all of those things—is both beautifully written and uncomfortably tense. The rest of the stories are one-off character studies, including my favorite from the collection, "Anne of Cleves." I think what draws me to Brandon Taylor's writing is his ability to describe the weight of the everyday; a look between a mother and child, a moment spent lounging in the sun with a lover, the tension between two teenagers on a hill getting high. The entire collection is beautiful and melancholic and I highly recommend it, with the caution that it's not for the faint of heart (there's a reason I kicked this off with trigger warnings).

A side note: one of the things that I loved about REAL LIFE and now FILTHY ANIMALS is how Brandon Taylor writes about Madison. As someone who lived there as a straight, white, middle-class undergrad, reading Brandon Taylor's books has given me the opportunity to experience the town through the lens of so many different eyes. I loved following Lionel, Sophie, and Charles around campus, through the buildings where I took dance and English classes, and then jumping into a story that takes place in the spaces beyond campus; suburban homes, out in the "country," "up north." The book felt like a snapshot of all the diverse lives that can be lived simultaneously in a single space.

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