You're an Animal
A Novel
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- $13.99
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
A tender portrait of four misfits, on the run across Texas, that speaks to those who are left out, those who opt out—and to the wild animal in us all
“Libaire creates a delicious universe at a constant brink of collapse, a universe I never wanted to see end.”—Gerardo Sámano Córdova, author of Monstrilio
It’s springtime in Oklahoma, and Ernie, an outcast in a group of outcasts, feels uneasy. Nerves at the abandoned summer camp where he and his fellow oddballs are crashing have been on edge since the arrival of a teenager named Coral, unceremoniously dropped off from her family’s minivan one afternoon. Adding to her aura of mystery, Coral doesn’t say a word. Ever.
When a drug lab explosion burns the compound to the ground, Ernie, Coral, and the hard-living couple Staci and Ray escape on a pair of motorcycles. Feeling shaky with fear and alive with a new surge of freedom, the four outcasts find a rundown house in rural Texas: It's a place to stay, they tell themselves, for now. Yet to their surprise, over card games and wild strawberries and target-shooting and late-night dancing to ZZ Top on the local radio, a quirky little family forms. At the heart of their new home is Coral, whose silence only amplifies her strange, undefinable power and the sense that she found them for a reason.
But soon, tensions rise, and a mysterious threat begins to materialize—whether it’s coming from inside or outside the house still isn’t clear. All this crew knows is, now there’s something at stake: their chosen family, forged by both loneliness and joy, and bonded by an awkward kind of love.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A group of misfits hide out from the law in this entertaining if cursory effort from Libaire (The Sober Lush). In a remote Oklahoma commune, three miscreants eke out a living by cooking meth: Ernie, 34 (a "hustler-Jesus from outer space"); Staci, 25; and her boyfriend, Ray. They welcome newcomer Coral, a Deaf and mute 17-year-old, who's left with them one day by her half-sister, who looks red-faced and guilty in the act, like someone "leaving a grand piano on the side of a highway in the rain." When one of the compound's labs erupts in flames, the foursome flee on motorcycles for rural Texas, where Staci's alcoholism resurfaces and Ernie frets about being found by the authorities. Bizarre antics ensue in the novel's second half, including a harebrained attempt to comfort Coral with Slash, an adult cheetah adopted from an criminal associate. Libaire is great at setting a scene and bringing to life the gritty cast, but the narrative sputters and runs out of steam in the final lap, and the conclusion feels tacked on. This diverting tale is less than the sum of its parts.