Reviews with content warning for Cancer - Filthy Animals

I enjoyed this a lot more than 'Real Life', though I'm skeptical if the 'interconnected short story' format worked for me, at least in audiobook form. It makes the story at the core, and thereby the story I was most invested in, feel disjointed and a little less developed in comparison. Despite this, the emotional heart in each of the stories is deeply felt, always centering a craving for intimacy or something past or future that seems too far to grasp.

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daffodildyke's review

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emotional hopeful lighthearted reflective medium-paced

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

2.75

“the origin of his desire to forgo meat wasn’t environmental or even about the animals really. it was selfish. because the thought of consuming dead things, when he had been so close to dying, when he had wanted to die… was too much”

I think it is very clear that the author can lovingly and realistically create characters, especially queer characters. I think the intimacy created in some of the sex scenes was very palpable and authentic, even if I didn’t personally enjoy some of them or understand what we were getting at with others.

I particularly liked parts of the exploration of polyamory with Lionel, Charles and Sophie - I liked that it was natural and normalised, and I feel like it had so much potential

but I feel like the moment Sophie asks Lionel to thank her for letting him sleep with Charles, that ruins a lot of the positives of their story. I think it lazily plays into stereotypical understandings of polyamory, and was entirely unnecessary. The way Sophie asks Charles to tell her about his other sexual partners is one thing - as this is done as part of what Sophie enjoys, this is something that excites her - but this weirdly out of character assertion of ownership goes against everything healthy polyamory should be!

I found the shortness of some stories jarring when others continued across multiple segments or chapters, and it left me wanting to know more about some of the stories, whilst also somewhat wishing it had just focused on one. I feel like Lionel was very much the character I got to know most, and I am not complaining about that, but it definitely felt unbalanced… which maybe was intentional. I think Lionel, Charles and Sophie could have been the focus of a whole novel and their domination of the collection takes away from some of the other incredibly poignant tales Taylor tells.

As an ace-spec person, maybe reading a book that largely centres on desire and sex was asking for me not to wholeheartedly enjoy it, but alas, the actual sex scenes were probably the most interesting parts of it for me.

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samarakroeger's review

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dark emotional reflective sad medium-paced

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

4.25

I loved the Lionel/Charles/Sophie stories — and the structure of the collection meant I was invested in reading the book the whole way through. a few of the other random stories I didn’t really get into very much, but I really liked Anne of Cleves.

I will read anything Brandon Taylor writes.

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anawest's review

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dark emotional tense medium-paced

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

4.5

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marjoleinvanderspoel's review

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challenging dark emotional reflective sad fast-paced

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

5.0

Brandon Taylor continues to prove his immense skill with this collection of short stories unlike any other such collection I've read. With this collection Taylor proves his breadth as a story teller by branching into many different kinds of lives, whilst maintaining an atmosphere that keeps the collection coherent. The incorporation of an overarching or recurring story about Lionel, Charles and Sophie was cleverly done, and the story itself was wonderfully complex and compelling, reminiscent of Real Life in it's dealing with mental health and academia, something that I appreciated enormously in his debut. In addition I greatly enjoyed "as if that were love" and perhaps my favourite story, "anne of cleves". I only wish we would have gotten a story from Sophie's perspective as I found her to be a much more interesting character than Charles.

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writtenontheflyleaves's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional reflective sad tense slow-paced

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

5.0

Filthy Animals by Brandon Taylor ❄️
🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟

❄️ In this collection of short stories, Taylor explores the emotional charge that runs just under the surface of our encounters with other people. The linked short stories at the centre of the collection focus on three people: Lionel, a PhD student recently discharged from hospital after a suicide attempt; Charles, the injured dancer who becomes attracted to Lionel at a potluck, and Sophie, Charles's dancer girlfriend. As Lionel becomes drawn into the murky waters of Charles and Sophie's relationship, he must weigh his deep loneliness against his continued vulnerability.

There's really no excuse for me putting off reading this for so long, except that I loved Real Life so much that I was afraid of having such Big Feelings again. But you know what? I was right to be, because Brandon Taylor wields his pen like a scalpel.

Throughout this book, Taylor probes what it means to be vulnerable. He is a master of illustrating the artificiality of social settings: a dinner party, a first date, a university exam. All the opaque stuff we move through to try to reach each other - or rather, to mediate our interactions so that we don't have to reach each other, so we can broadcast ourselves from a safe distance. His stories illustrate the life and feeling seething beneath this calm surface, and the moments where characters unexpectedly connect feel raw and thrilling, charged with danger.

This sense of danger is present not just as an idea but an embodied thing. Food, sex, blood, all of these things are closely connected to the emotional heart of each story. The characters' emotional fragility (or seeming lack thereof) is always carefully pitched against their physical being, the tether they have to the world, lending real weight to acts of cruelty or tenderness. There's something raw and animal and real about these stories that I couldn't help but love.

❄️ Read it if you're in the market for a short story cycle, or a wintry book as this is all snowdrifts and low-hanging skies. And obv if you loved Real Life ❤️

🚫 Avoid if you're steering clear of narratives around suicide and physical or sexual violence.

Content Warnings

lumoon33's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional reflective sad tense medium-paced

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

4.0

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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tree_branch's review against another edition

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challenging emotional reflective sad tense slow-paced

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

4.0

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