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Available
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Description
La vida de la familia Torres es un caos. El padre, puertorriqueño «Paps», y la madre, nacida en Brooklyn «Ma», deciden tener tres hijos pese a su precaria situación laboral. Les darán una educación peculiar que se desarrollará entre trabajos basura, problemas en el barrio y anécdotas familiares íntimas y divertidas.
En ese marco, solo el cariño y el amor entre ellos harán posible que sobrevivan en esa jungla que es la ciudad. Pero la principal jungla de la historia es la de la infancia, porque los tres niños, los verdaderos protagonistas de la novela, se comportarán como pequeños animales en continuo aprendizaje:travesuras, extrañas conversaciones con los adultos, juegos, inocencia y destellos de esa inteligencia tan lúcida y en ocasiones impropia de los niños pequeños.
El componente autobiográfico hace aún más interesante este relato, pues retrata a la perfección la vida en las afueras de Nueva York a finales de los ochenta y las oportunidades que esta ciudad ofrecía a los habitantes del colectivo latino.
Este libro presenta un universo en el que el lector se siente cómodo, ya que es cercano y está cargado de imágenes de gran belleza ylirismo, y consigue hablar del amor y del cariño en la familia sin utilizar el discurso cursi o manido al que estamos acostumbrados.
En ese marco, solo el cariño y el amor entre ellos harán posible que sobrevivan en esa jungla que es la ciudad. Pero la principal jungla de la historia es la de la infancia, porque los tres niños, los verdaderos protagonistas de la novela, se comportarán como pequeños animales en continuo aprendizaje:travesuras, extrañas conversaciones con los adultos, juegos, inocencia y destellos de esa inteligencia tan lúcida y en ocasiones impropia de los niños pequeños.
El componente autobiográfico hace aún más interesante este relato, pues retrata a la perfección la vida en las afueras de Nueva York a finales de los ochenta y las oportunidades que esta ciudad ofrecía a los habitantes del colectivo latino.
Este libro presenta un universo en el que el lector se siente cómodo, ya que es cercano y está cargado de imágenes de gran belleza ylirismo, y consigue hablar del amor y del cariño en la familia sin utilizar el discurso cursi o manido al que estamos acostumbrados.
Description
"An exquisite, blistering debut novel. Three brothers tear their way through childhood-- smashing tomatoes all over each other, building kites from trash, hiding out 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--and their love is a serious, dangerous thing that makes and unmakes a family many times. 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 see the world, this beautiful novel reinvents the coming-of-age story in a way that is sly and punch-in-the-stomach powerful. Written in magical language with unforgettable images, this is a stunning exploration of the viscerally charged landscape of growing up, how deeply we are formed by our earliest bonds, and how we are ultimately propelled at escape velocity toward our futures"--Provided by publisher.… (more)
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Collection
Publication
Random House Mondadori (2012), Edition: Translation, 136 pages
Media reviews
— 1 more
This brief but extraordinary novel defies easy categorization, but in it Torres demonstrates a mastery of prose seldom encountered in first books.
Physical description
136 p.; 9.25 inches
User reviews
LibraryThing member suetu
“Quiet was as close to happiness as we would ever get”
When I was younger, I had the very naive idea that most families were pretty much like mine. I’m older now, and I no longer thing that. Told from the perspective of the youngest son of three sons, We the Animals is the story of a
Debut novelist Justin Torres writes beautifully and with affection for his characters. The tale is told episodically, almost as a collection of linked stories. At the beginning, the unnamed narrator is just turning seven, and at the very powerful and moving conclusion he is in his mid-teens. Except, it isn’t really a conclusion; it’s just where the story happens to end. (It would certainly be interesting to revisit these characters later in life.) The book comes in a brief 144 pages, but they’re an intense 144 pages and the book didn’t need to be any longer.
Were I to summarize the book in a single sentence, it would be the following quote. “Ma stood up from her chair, lifted the receiver, and placed it back down again in one quick movement—and for a moment nothing, maybe even a full minute, long enough for our ears and clenched muscles to relax, long enough to remember and realize fully something we had long suspected: that silence was absolution, that quiet was as close to happiness as we would ever get.” This is a family drama worth reading.
When I was younger, I had the very naive idea that most families were pretty much like mine. I’m older now, and I no longer thing that. Told from the perspective of the youngest son of three sons, We the Animals is the story of a
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profoundly dysfunctional family. It’s not without joy and not without love, but these people are very messed up. The interracial parents exhibit the kind of passion that is frequently explosive. The sons are rowdy, affectionate, neglected, and perhaps caught in the same cycle of poverty as their parents.Debut novelist Justin Torres writes beautifully and with affection for his characters. The tale is told episodically, almost as a collection of linked stories. At the beginning, the unnamed narrator is just turning seven, and at the very powerful and moving conclusion he is in his mid-teens. Except, it isn’t really a conclusion; it’s just where the story happens to end. (It would certainly be interesting to revisit these characters later in life.) The book comes in a brief 144 pages, but they’re an intense 144 pages and the book didn’t need to be any longer.
Were I to summarize the book in a single sentence, it would be the following quote. “Ma stood up from her chair, lifted the receiver, and placed it back down again in one quick movement—and for a moment nothing, maybe even a full minute, long enough for our ears and clenched muscles to relax, long enough to remember and realize fully something we had long suspected: that silence was absolution, that quiet was as close to happiness as we would ever get.” This is a family drama worth reading.
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LibraryThing member msf59
“Now a boy of all wild beasts the most difficult to manage.”
-Plato
Small books can pack quite a punch and this debut novel is a prime example. It follows three young brothers, of mixed heritage, as they blast through childhood, in upstate New York, with a volatile father and a hard-working,
“We made kites: trash bags on strings. We ran, slipped, the knees of our dungarees all grass stained, we got up, ran, choked ourselves half to death with laughter, but we found speed, and our trash kites soared.”
-Plato
Small books can pack quite a punch and this debut novel is a prime example. It follows three young brothers, of mixed heritage, as they blast through childhood, in upstate New York, with a volatile father and a hard-working,
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mostly absent mother. At turns, funny, sad, violent and touching, the edgy prose blossoms like a dark flower.“We made kites: trash bags on strings. We ran, slipped, the knees of our dungarees all grass stained, we got up, ran, choked ourselves half to death with laughter, but we found speed, and our trash kites soared.”
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LibraryThing member wilsonknut
We the Animals by Justin Torres is at once beautiful and disappointing. Torres’s prose is poetic, and reminds me of an old favorite of mine, Sandra Cisneros. Torres’s writing has a darker undercurrent though. He begins the book:
"We wanted more. We knocked the butt ends of our forks against the
The story is told by the youngest of these three brothers. The narrator turns 7 in the fourth chapter of this slim novel. Age 7 is symbolically the age boys leave their mothers and follow their fathers. It is ultimately his coming-of-age story, but the majority of the narrative is told in the first person plural. The three brothers grow up in poverty in a dysfunctional family, and the bond between them gives the story its weight. Yet, Torres shows us very early during that seventh birthday that our narrator is to be singled out.
"Then Ma leaned in and whispered more in my ear, told me more, about why she needed me six. She whispered it all to me, her need so big, no softness anywhere, only Paps and boys turning into Paps. It wasn’t just the cooing words, but the damp of her voice, the tinge of pain—it was the warm closeness of her bruises—that sparked me."
Torres masterfully builds the bond between the brothers. They are outsiders caught in the middle of the turbulent relationship between their mother and father. They are outsiders in their neighborhood, as poor sons of an interracial marriage. In one scene, the boys are pretending to be trolls in front of the drugstore. A pregnant woman stops and speaks to them. Torres summons Gwendolyn Brooks’s “We Real Cool” in a roundabout way.
“Don’t you all know how to be proper?”
We looked at our sneakers. Manny swept up the change from the ground and pressed it into her hand.
“Here,” he said, “give this to your baby. Tell him it’s from us.”
“Us who?”
“Us three.”
“Us brothers.”
“Us Musketeers.”
“Us tricks.”
If you have ever studied “We Real Cool,” you may remember that it doesn’t end well for the “We.” In fact, they may not have as tight a bond as they think. It is obvious from the beginning of this novel that the only way the story could work is if the narrator somehow becomes his own person. Torres drops hints and symbols all along the way. Yet, Torres’s choices in the key plot and character development are what I find disappointing.
There is a scene that comes out of nowhere three quarters of the way through the book that immediately signals that this is a coming-of-age novel about sexual awakening, and that sexual awakening defines the narrator’s identity and separation from the “Us.” From that point in the novel the “we” slowly dissolves into “I” and “them.” The narrator states, “They smelled my difference—my sharp, sad, pansy scent.”
The last few chapters of the book don’t seem as carefully written. The narrator is smarter than his brothers. They are drunk and violent copies of his father. He resents them and is embarrassed by them. The reader is simply told that the mother and father privately speak to him about his potential. He is college bound. Inevitably, the narrator is more self-destructive than his brothers.
It is a beautifully written book. I was just disappointed in the choice of that key plot element, which ruined the last quarter of the book for me. It just seems trite. In a book that spends so much time building this complex relationship between the brothers, mother, and father; I think it’s a cop out to resolve the narrator’s individuality this way. Perhaps that is my flaw as a reader, and I’m willing to accept that.
"We wanted more. We knocked the butt ends of our forks against the
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table, tapped out spoons against our empty bowls, we were hungry. We wanted more volume, more riots… We were six snatching hands, six stomping feet; we were brothers, boys, three little kings locked in a feud for more."The story is told by the youngest of these three brothers. The narrator turns 7 in the fourth chapter of this slim novel. Age 7 is symbolically the age boys leave their mothers and follow their fathers. It is ultimately his coming-of-age story, but the majority of the narrative is told in the first person plural. The three brothers grow up in poverty in a dysfunctional family, and the bond between them gives the story its weight. Yet, Torres shows us very early during that seventh birthday that our narrator is to be singled out.
"Then Ma leaned in and whispered more in my ear, told me more, about why she needed me six. She whispered it all to me, her need so big, no softness anywhere, only Paps and boys turning into Paps. It wasn’t just the cooing words, but the damp of her voice, the tinge of pain—it was the warm closeness of her bruises—that sparked me."
Torres masterfully builds the bond between the brothers. They are outsiders caught in the middle of the turbulent relationship between their mother and father. They are outsiders in their neighborhood, as poor sons of an interracial marriage. In one scene, the boys are pretending to be trolls in front of the drugstore. A pregnant woman stops and speaks to them. Torres summons Gwendolyn Brooks’s “We Real Cool” in a roundabout way.
“Don’t you all know how to be proper?”
We looked at our sneakers. Manny swept up the change from the ground and pressed it into her hand.
“Here,” he said, “give this to your baby. Tell him it’s from us.”
“Us who?”
“Us three.”
“Us brothers.”
“Us Musketeers.”
“Us tricks.”
If you have ever studied “We Real Cool,” you may remember that it doesn’t end well for the “We.” In fact, they may not have as tight a bond as they think. It is obvious from the beginning of this novel that the only way the story could work is if the narrator somehow becomes his own person. Torres drops hints and symbols all along the way. Yet, Torres’s choices in the key plot and character development are what I find disappointing.
There is a scene that comes out of nowhere three quarters of the way through the book that immediately signals that this is a coming-of-age novel about sexual awakening, and that sexual awakening defines the narrator’s identity and separation from the “Us.” From that point in the novel the “we” slowly dissolves into “I” and “them.” The narrator states, “They smelled my difference—my sharp, sad, pansy scent.”
The last few chapters of the book don’t seem as carefully written. The narrator is smarter than his brothers. They are drunk and violent copies of his father. He resents them and is embarrassed by them. The reader is simply told that the mother and father privately speak to him about his potential. He is college bound. Inevitably, the narrator is more self-destructive than his brothers.
It is a beautifully written book. I was just disappointed in the choice of that key plot element, which ruined the last quarter of the book for me. It just seems trite. In a book that spends so much time building this complex relationship between the brothers, mother, and father; I think it’s a cop out to resolve the narrator’s individuality this way. Perhaps that is my flaw as a reader, and I’m willing to accept that.
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LibraryThing member MichaelDC
I finished this over the weekend too. (Long bus commute short book = getting through lots of books.) I was also lucky to hear him read at the National Book Festival yesterday as well. I know it seems like I five-star everything, but I think I just hit a good streak of books. This is an excellent
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short novel about a Puerto-Rican/American (weird to split that up, as PR is part of the US) family in upstate New York. Most of the novel consists of vignettes about the violent and yet somehow still loving relationship between all the members of the family. At times it is more like poetry, with long, rambling paragraphs, with the actual action kind of implied, which makes it more disturbing all the same. An excellent debut novel. Show Less
LibraryThing member porch_reader
In this deceptively thin volume, Torres uses each word precisely to help us see through the eyes of three brothers being raised in a poor and unstable family. They are comrades who stick together and face the manic love and frequent abuse from their Puerto Rican father and white mother. It is as if
"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 agnry 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."
The pace builds, until with a gasp, the chapter ends like this:
"But there were times, quiet moments, when our mother was sleeping, when she hadn't slept in two days, and any noise, any stair creak, any shut door, any stifled laugh, any voice at all, might wake her, those still, crystal mornings, when we wanted to protect her, this confused goose of a woman, this stumbler, this gusher, with her backaches and headaches and her tired, tired ways, this uprooted Brooklyn creature, this tough talker, always with tears when she told us she loved us, her mixed-up love, her needy love, her warmth, those mornings when sunlight found the cracks in our blinds and laid itself down in crisp strips on our carpet, those quiet mornings when we'd fix ourselves oatmeal and sprawl onto our stomachs with crayons and paper, with glass marbles that we were careful not to rattle, when our mother was sleeping, when the air did not smell like sweat or breath or mold, when the air was still and light, those mornings when silence was our secret game and our gift and our sole accomplishment - we wanted less: less weight, less work, less noise, less father, less muscles and skin and hair. We wanted nothing, just this, just this."
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Torres knows that a detailed narrative would be too much for most readers and that we will only peek inside these lives if we are certain that we will be allowed to turn quickly away. But, because of the power of the words, we keep coming back for more. This book was unsettling, but powerfully written. Torres is a gifted writer. You need only read the first chapter, a mere three pages, to see what I mean. "We Wanted More" begins like this:"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 agnry 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."
The pace builds, until with a gasp, the chapter ends like this:
"But there were times, quiet moments, when our mother was sleeping, when she hadn't slept in two days, and any noise, any stair creak, any shut door, any stifled laugh, any voice at all, might wake her, those still, crystal mornings, when we wanted to protect her, this confused goose of a woman, this stumbler, this gusher, with her backaches and headaches and her tired, tired ways, this uprooted Brooklyn creature, this tough talker, always with tears when she told us she loved us, her mixed-up love, her needy love, her warmth, those mornings when sunlight found the cracks in our blinds and laid itself down in crisp strips on our carpet, those quiet mornings when we'd fix ourselves oatmeal and sprawl onto our stomachs with crayons and paper, with glass marbles that we were careful not to rattle, when our mother was sleeping, when the air did not smell like sweat or breath or mold, when the air was still and light, those mornings when silence was our secret game and our gift and our sole accomplishment - we wanted less: less weight, less work, less noise, less father, less muscles and skin and hair. We wanted nothing, just this, just this."
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LibraryThing member Whisper1
I'm going out on limb in stating that once again, in a short period of time, I've read a book that others liked and I didn't. I know many of the reviews both on Library thing and Amazon are wonderfully glowing. Thus, I'm in the minority regarding my perceptions.
The positives: The writing is
The negatives: The writing is intense and the images of poverty and violence were simply not what I wanted to read right now. I'm not sure why dysfunction, poverty, abuse and sex sells, but it does, and many writers receive awards and have a large following when they focus on these subjects.
I'll end by saying maybe I need something happier, lighter, kinder, gentler to read. I agree to disagree with those who found redemption in this small, powerful book.
Suggestions anyone?
The positives: The writing is
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powerful, the images are strong, the descriptions are vivid.The negatives: The writing is intense and the images of poverty and violence were simply not what I wanted to read right now. I'm not sure why dysfunction, poverty, abuse and sex sells, but it does, and many writers receive awards and have a large following when they focus on these subjects.
I'll end by saying maybe I need something happier, lighter, kinder, gentler to read. I agree to disagree with those who found redemption in this small, powerful book.
Suggestions anyone?
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LibraryThing member SamSattler
I first became aware of We the Animals, Justin Torres’s debut novel, late last October when I attended a session presented at the 2011 Texas Book Festival by Torres and two other first-time novelists, Chad Harbach (The Art of Fielding) and Amy Waldman (The Submission). I was impressed enough with
If I remember correctly, Torres stated in Austin that We the Animals began as a group of individual short pieces, and that it was only later that he realized that he had the makings of a novel on his hands. By stringing the stories together in chronological order, he has produced that novel (although its brevity makes it as much akin to a novella as to a novel, I think).
We the Animals is the story of three brothers who grow up in upstate New York alongside their white mother and Puerto Rican father, two people who have plenty of growing up of their own to do. The boys’ Brooklyn-born mother became pregnant for the first time at age 14 and her baby’s father was not much older. As the novel unfolds, it can be difficult to remember that Ma and Paps are still in their twenties as they try to cope with poverty and the challenge of raising three young boys together. The couple’s passionate relationship creates a family dynamic that will severely test the strength and character of their children. Fortunately for the boys, they bond in a way that forges a unit stronger than the sum of its individual parts.
The stories told in We the Animals vary from laugh-out-loud funny ones to tear-jerking sad ones, but taken as a whole, they paint the picture of three boys who somehow thrive despite the hands-off approach by which they are mostly being raised. They have each other. They adore their mother and, despite often fearing him, they love their father. One feels good about their chances - and then comes the book’s jarring last chapter, a piece of the story that changes everything before it.
Rated at: 4.0
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each of them to walk away from the session wanting to read all three of the books presented that day. We the Animals completes that reading cycle for me. Different as they are, all three novels turned out to be interesting, worthwhile reads that I would probably have otherwise missed, so I am grateful for having had the opportunity to hear their authors speak about them that day.If I remember correctly, Torres stated in Austin that We the Animals began as a group of individual short pieces, and that it was only later that he realized that he had the makings of a novel on his hands. By stringing the stories together in chronological order, he has produced that novel (although its brevity makes it as much akin to a novella as to a novel, I think).
We the Animals is the story of three brothers who grow up in upstate New York alongside their white mother and Puerto Rican father, two people who have plenty of growing up of their own to do. The boys’ Brooklyn-born mother became pregnant for the first time at age 14 and her baby’s father was not much older. As the novel unfolds, it can be difficult to remember that Ma and Paps are still in their twenties as they try to cope with poverty and the challenge of raising three young boys together. The couple’s passionate relationship creates a family dynamic that will severely test the strength and character of their children. Fortunately for the boys, they bond in a way that forges a unit stronger than the sum of its individual parts.
The stories told in We the Animals vary from laugh-out-loud funny ones to tear-jerking sad ones, but taken as a whole, they paint the picture of three boys who somehow thrive despite the hands-off approach by which they are mostly being raised. They have each other. They adore their mother and, despite often fearing him, they love their father. One feels good about their chances - and then comes the book’s jarring last chapter, a piece of the story that changes everything before it.
Rated at: 4.0
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LibraryThing member AlexDraven
Bleak, but beautiful - one to read for the poetry and the portraits more than the plot.
LibraryThing member MicheleKingery
To quote the opening lines of Justin Torres' book:
"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..." (p. 1)
The writing is beautiful. The novel's short length allows the reader to slip in and out of
But you still want more.
The prose poem chapters are tiny, deliciously cadent jewels that detail the grotesque and glorious life of a dysfunctional family. There is love within the walls of that house, but never enough and too often it devolves into brutality or push-brooms after it sweeping up the shrapnel of imploded dreams and souls.
Ma and Paps start having babies in their teens. They grind through the half-lit days in varying stages of grief, rage and despair. Ma slogs through the graveyard shift at the brewery and at home afterward, sleep-deprived and addled. Paps gets jobs but mostly loses them. He takes out his frustration with his fists or a shovel, digging a trench in the back yard, a symbolic grave for dead dreams and hope that will never come to fruition.
The unnamed narrator and his brothers carom off each other and smash into the world around them. They destroy property and abuse one another in fruitless pursuit of lasting love, shelter and stability. They exist in a state of unassuaged hungers.
The next to last chapter departs from the seventeen vignettes preceding it into a short story titled "I Am Made", "made" being urban slang for what? I was never sure. Half-way through that story, the POV changes from first to third person, amping up the pathos but distancing the reader. The introduction of a "journal" comes as a complete shoe from the blue considering its vital role in the novel's denouement.
We need to know more.
The final two paragraph chapter is abstract and truncated. I'd come to care about the narrator and found the sense of incompleteness unsatisfying.
We The Animals shouts, screams, and whimpers across its hundred and twenty-five pages. It pummels the reader to attention, bruises the sensibilities, scrapes at the soul and doesn't give a damn.
I just wish there'd been more of it.
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"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..." (p. 1)
The writing is beautiful. The novel's short length allows the reader to slip in and out of
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Torres' world in one sitting. You may feel as if your skin's been peeled off in strips afterward.But you still want more.
The prose poem chapters are tiny, deliciously cadent jewels that detail the grotesque and glorious life of a dysfunctional family. There is love within the walls of that house, but never enough and too often it devolves into brutality or push-brooms after it sweeping up the shrapnel of imploded dreams and souls.
Ma and Paps start having babies in their teens. They grind through the half-lit days in varying stages of grief, rage and despair. Ma slogs through the graveyard shift at the brewery and at home afterward, sleep-deprived and addled. Paps gets jobs but mostly loses them. He takes out his frustration with his fists or a shovel, digging a trench in the back yard, a symbolic grave for dead dreams and hope that will never come to fruition.
The unnamed narrator and his brothers carom off each other and smash into the world around them. They destroy property and abuse one another in fruitless pursuit of lasting love, shelter and stability. They exist in a state of unassuaged hungers.
The next to last chapter departs from the seventeen vignettes preceding it into a short story titled "I Am Made", "made" being urban slang for what? I was never sure. Half-way through that story, the POV changes from first to third person, amping up the pathos but distancing the reader. The introduction of a "journal" comes as a complete shoe from the blue considering its vital role in the novel's denouement.
We need to know more.
The final two paragraph chapter is abstract and truncated. I'd come to care about the narrator and found the sense of incompleteness unsatisfying.
We The Animals shouts, screams, and whimpers across its hundred and twenty-five pages. It pummels the reader to attention, bruises the sensibilities, scrapes at the soul and doesn't give a damn.
I just wish there'd been more of it.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes No
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LibraryThing member jmx
The first half of the book is pure magic, dreamlike, you just can not cease to wonder how the lives of three "wild" youth and their parents could be so elegantly and adequately described. If the second half, where the main issue is the homosexuality of the younger, could have been only half as
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good, this book would be one of my (few) "desert island" books. Nevertheless, I still strongly recommend it! Show Less
LibraryThing member SalemAthenaeum
Justin Torres debut novel of three brothers bonding under their family's intense life. With parents from Brooklyn the father is Puerto Rican and the mother white with so much in love but a love that can easily turn to rage tearing apart their family and rebuilding it again and again. This coming of
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age tale tells of these brothers going through their childhood running, wrestling, and hiding from theirs parents when they do battle together. Show Less
LibraryThing member bookappeal
A visceral vision of three boys, told from the perspective of the youngest, growing up in near poverty with their white mother and proudly Puerto Rican father. The household is charged with hormones - the boys are constantly fighting, scrapping, running, eating; their parents frequently display
Torres uses spare, vibrant language to place the reader right beside the narrator as he discovers his true nature in this intense family.
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their obvious sexual attraction. But the family is also charged with the desperateness of their situation and they blame and hate each other just as fiercely as they love.Torres uses spare, vibrant language to place the reader right beside the narrator as he discovers his true nature in this intense family.
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LibraryThing member amhamilt
It was a quick read, but a little too disjointed for me. I would call it 'just okay,' not better, not worse.
LibraryThing member Milehighlibrarian
Powerful and poetic first novel of 3 boys growing up in poverty in New York. Violent, passionate, loving, angry, tragic coming of age story beautifully told.
LibraryThing member molugum
"We the Animals" is a coming of age story about the youngest of 3 brothers of Puerto Rican ancestry, born into a volatile working class family transplanted from Brooklyn to Upstate NY. With it's spare and gorgeous prose this book is reminiscent of Piri Thomas's "Down these Mean Streets" and Junot
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Diaz's "Drown" but also uniquely it's own, I loved this book. Show Less
LibraryThing member KristiB41
I didn't realize this was such a short book but I read it quickly and I did enjoy it. I would have liked to find out more about the main character and what became of him and his family.
LibraryThing member writestuff
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
Three young boys – brothers – grow up in a house of violence and passion. Their stomachs often ache with hunger. They throw their anger out into the world, then cling to each other while their parents fight and separate and come back together again. Their father, Paps, is a man of Puerto Rican heritage who wants his boys to understand where they come from; while the brothers try to see themselves as part of their father, but different from him, too.
“This is your heritage,” he said, as if from this dance we could know about his own childhood, about the flavor and grit of tenement buildings in Spanish Harlem, and projects in Red Hook, and dance halls, and city parks, and about his own Paps, how he beat him, how he taught him to dance, as if we could hear Spanish in his movements, as if Puerto Rico was a man in a bathrobe, grabbing another beer from the fridge and raising it to drink, his head back, still dancing, still stepping and snapping perfectly in time. – from We The Animals, page 10 -
Ma fights depression and takes to her bed, forgetting to care for her children or pay attention to them. Locked in a cycle of abuse, she seems powerless to change the course of her life, much less the lives of her kids.
She stopped sleeping in her bed and took to the couch instead, or the floor, or sometimes she slept at the kitchen table, with her head in one arm and the other arm dangling down toward the linoleum, where little heaps of cigarette butts and empty packs and ash piled up around her. – from We The Animals, page 30 -
Narrated in the sensitive and observant voice of the youngest brother, We The Animals is a powerful and disquieting novella about family, love, poverty, domestic violence and the quest to find one’s way within the world. Justin Torres writes with compassion and uses poetic language to capture the day to day challenges that face his characters. Often dark and sad, the novella draws the reader into the bleak world of this family with its captivating prose.
During one poignant scene, the boys are being bathed by their father. As they splash and pretend to navigate “boats” through the shallow waters of their bath, the dark threat of violence is never far away.
After dinner he led us all to the bathtub, no bubbles, just six inches of gray water and our bare butts, our knees and elbows, and our three little dicks. Paps scrubbed us rough with a soapy washcloth. He dug his fingernails into our scalp as he washed our hair and warned us that if the shampoo got into our eyes, it was our own fault for squirming. We made moterboat voices, navigating bits of Styrofoam around toothpicks and plastic milk-cap islands, and we tried to be brave when he grabbed us; we tried not to flinch. – from We the Animals, page 44 -
It was moments like these where my heart felt like breaking for these children – for all children who find themselves in homes like this, desperate for the love of their parents, frightened by the violence they do not understand, growing up in a world where fear and poverty and addiction are a daily occurrence.
As the story unfurls, it becomes apparent that this is a novella about individual identity. How are we formed? Do our families define who we become? Can we tear away from our heritage and our upbringing and find our own unique place in the world?
I was completely engrossed in this book. I read it in less than a day, then set it aside and lived with the words for nearly a week before being able to sort out my feelings for it. This is not the kind of story that is enjoyable. It is difficult, sad, and heartbreaking. It is the kind of book which is hard to forget. I found myself waking up in the morning and thinking about the characters, my heart compressing with empathy for them. Any author who is able to touch a reader this deeply is gifted.
Readers who wish to be transported by original and lyrical prose and those who love literary fiction, will want to experience Justin Torres’ writing for themselves. Sharp, emotional, and darkly compelling, We the Animals is a brilliant first novel.
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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. – from We The Animals, page 1 -Three young boys – brothers – grow up in a house of violence and passion. Their stomachs often ache with hunger. They throw their anger out into the world, then cling to each other while their parents fight and separate and come back together again. Their father, Paps, is a man of Puerto Rican heritage who wants his boys to understand where they come from; while the brothers try to see themselves as part of their father, but different from him, too.
“This is your heritage,” he said, as if from this dance we could know about his own childhood, about the flavor and grit of tenement buildings in Spanish Harlem, and projects in Red Hook, and dance halls, and city parks, and about his own Paps, how he beat him, how he taught him to dance, as if we could hear Spanish in his movements, as if Puerto Rico was a man in a bathrobe, grabbing another beer from the fridge and raising it to drink, his head back, still dancing, still stepping and snapping perfectly in time. – from We The Animals, page 10 -
Ma fights depression and takes to her bed, forgetting to care for her children or pay attention to them. Locked in a cycle of abuse, she seems powerless to change the course of her life, much less the lives of her kids.
She stopped sleeping in her bed and took to the couch instead, or the floor, or sometimes she slept at the kitchen table, with her head in one arm and the other arm dangling down toward the linoleum, where little heaps of cigarette butts and empty packs and ash piled up around her. – from We The Animals, page 30 -
Narrated in the sensitive and observant voice of the youngest brother, We The Animals is a powerful and disquieting novella about family, love, poverty, domestic violence and the quest to find one’s way within the world. Justin Torres writes with compassion and uses poetic language to capture the day to day challenges that face his characters. Often dark and sad, the novella draws the reader into the bleak world of this family with its captivating prose.
During one poignant scene, the boys are being bathed by their father. As they splash and pretend to navigate “boats” through the shallow waters of their bath, the dark threat of violence is never far away.
After dinner he led us all to the bathtub, no bubbles, just six inches of gray water and our bare butts, our knees and elbows, and our three little dicks. Paps scrubbed us rough with a soapy washcloth. He dug his fingernails into our scalp as he washed our hair and warned us that if the shampoo got into our eyes, it was our own fault for squirming. We made moterboat voices, navigating bits of Styrofoam around toothpicks and plastic milk-cap islands, and we tried to be brave when he grabbed us; we tried not to flinch. – from We the Animals, page 44 -
It was moments like these where my heart felt like breaking for these children – for all children who find themselves in homes like this, desperate for the love of their parents, frightened by the violence they do not understand, growing up in a world where fear and poverty and addiction are a daily occurrence.
As the story unfurls, it becomes apparent that this is a novella about individual identity. How are we formed? Do our families define who we become? Can we tear away from our heritage and our upbringing and find our own unique place in the world?
I was completely engrossed in this book. I read it in less than a day, then set it aside and lived with the words for nearly a week before being able to sort out my feelings for it. This is not the kind of story that is enjoyable. It is difficult, sad, and heartbreaking. It is the kind of book which is hard to forget. I found myself waking up in the morning and thinking about the characters, my heart compressing with empathy for them. Any author who is able to touch a reader this deeply is gifted.
Readers who wish to be transported by original and lyrical prose and those who love literary fiction, will want to experience Justin Torres’ writing for themselves. Sharp, emotional, and darkly compelling, We the Animals is a brilliant first novel.
Show Less
LibraryThing member TheAmpersand
A brief, intense book about three brothers in a poor mixed-race family surviving childhood. In a sense, I want to thank the author for setting this story down. Almost all of the characters in "We the Animals" are socially marginal, uneducated, and barely able to articulate their own experiences;
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you get the feeling that Torres is rescuing something from the void here and telling stories that could easily have disappeared entirely. It certainly doesn't hurt that his prose is marvelously sensual and direct: the author often forsakes the visual for a sort of all-over full-body writing. This is a sort of nighttime book: from the prospective of his young, stressed-out protagonists, every event seems both mysterious, troubling and dreamlike. It's only toward the very end of "We the Animals" that I found some cause for complaint. The book is, as other have mentioned, probably too short, and this family's story is left unfinished, even if the author suggests that most of its members are likely to meet unhappy fates. Its last scene, though touching and exquisitely written, could also be criticized for being sort of hokey and too overtly metaphorical. Still, most of the other cheapo e-books I've taken a flyer on aren't anywhere near this accomplished. "We the Animals" was a lovely surprise. Show Less
LibraryThing member frisbeesage
We the Animals is a fierce, gut-wrenching ride through growing up. The three boys alternately cry, battle, and love their way through a childhood dominated by the loud, abusive, and yet close and loving relationship of their parents. Wildly exuberant, the three boys fight their way into adulthood
Wow! A gorgeous, intense, coming of age book that you won't be able to ignore. Not a comfortable read, this is more of a train wreck you can't look away from. So searingly honest and bare, yet funny in parts and even heartwarming, We the Animals, captures the experience of growing up and finding your way perfectly.
The audio version is narrated by Frankie J. Alvarez. He portrays the animal energy and brutality of the boys well. You can hear in his voice the cockiness of youth in one minute and the utter lack of confidence in the next. Its a great match that makes the book even better.
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with many missteps and triumphs along the way. In the end the narrator, the youngest boy, will have to step out of the shadow of his family and find his own path.Wow! A gorgeous, intense, coming of age book that you won't be able to ignore. Not a comfortable read, this is more of a train wreck you can't look away from. So searingly honest and bare, yet funny in parts and even heartwarming, We the Animals, captures the experience of growing up and finding your way perfectly.
The audio version is narrated by Frankie J. Alvarez. He portrays the animal energy and brutality of the boys well. You can hear in his voice the cockiness of youth in one minute and the utter lack of confidence in the next. Its a great match that makes the book even better.
Show Less
LibraryThing member JackieBlem
This is about a family, 3 boys very close in age and wild by any measure, their very tired mother who adores them all, and their alternately loving and abusing father. From what I've read about Torres, this novel is heavily autobiographical. It is in turns painful, joyous, heartbreaking and
stature, but is beautifully fierce and will grab at your heart.
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enlightening. It isn't an easy read despite it's slimstature, but is beautifully fierce and will grab at your heart.
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LibraryThing member Cailin
I finished this book a few days ago and I'm still not sure how I feel about it. The writing is very good, and some of the scenes have stayed with me but I think I may have to read it again. We The Animals is a short book, I think it's shocking in it's sadness and violence.
LibraryThing member St.CroixSue
The haunting autobiographical coming of age story within a mixed race (white and Puerto Rican) family in upstate New York with three young and wild boys. Powerful story of love, loss, and trauma.
LibraryThing member karieh
I sucked this book in - reading it in about an hour. "We the Animals" is fiercely, bitingly real. This does not feel like a novel...in fact, I kept looking at the cover of my copy to make sure I wasn't reading a memoir. The characters created by Justin Torres HAVE to be real. They feel too honest,
"The clouds seemed to move faster than I had ever known them to, and if I concentrated, if I let go enough, an understanding would blur inside of me and I could trick my body into feeling that it was moving and the clouds were still - and then I was certain that I was moving, and the hole was magic. I closed my eyes and stayed quiet and motionless but felt movement, sometimes sinking, sometimes floating away, or stretching or shrinking. I allowed myself to lose all bearing, and a long, long time passed before I wished my wish."
These are short bursts of a family's life. They defy a reader's need to classify the family members as good or bad, as loving or hurtful. They are each all of these things and so much more. The stories are mostly about three brothers, boys fighting to find a place in the world and safe places within their lives.
"Look at me. See me there with them, in the snow - both inside and outside their understanding. See how I made them uneasy. They smelled my difference - my sharp, sad, pansy scent. They believed I would know a world larger than their own. They hated me for my good grades, for my white ways. All at once they were disgusted, and jealous, and deeply protective, and deeply proud. Look at us, our last night together, when we were brothers still."
The stories darken at the book goes on and as the boys grow older. As the world starts to shape them even more than their parents had. As they fight to stay together even as they are being torn apart.
"They held me, pinned. At first they defended themselves, cursed me, slapped my face, but the wilder I became, the more they retreated into their love for me. Each of them. I chased them down into that love and challenged it..."
This is a beautiful book about some terrible and wonderful things. The raw emotion fills every page, just daring the reader to keep going, to keep absorbing the intensity.
This is a book that is hard to shake and impossible to forget.
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too brutally flesh and blood to be creations of his imagination."The clouds seemed to move faster than I had ever known them to, and if I concentrated, if I let go enough, an understanding would blur inside of me and I could trick my body into feeling that it was moving and the clouds were still - and then I was certain that I was moving, and the hole was magic. I closed my eyes and stayed quiet and motionless but felt movement, sometimes sinking, sometimes floating away, or stretching or shrinking. I allowed myself to lose all bearing, and a long, long time passed before I wished my wish."
These are short bursts of a family's life. They defy a reader's need to classify the family members as good or bad, as loving or hurtful. They are each all of these things and so much more. The stories are mostly about three brothers, boys fighting to find a place in the world and safe places within their lives.
"Look at me. See me there with them, in the snow - both inside and outside their understanding. See how I made them uneasy. They smelled my difference - my sharp, sad, pansy scent. They believed I would know a world larger than their own. They hated me for my good grades, for my white ways. All at once they were disgusted, and jealous, and deeply protective, and deeply proud. Look at us, our last night together, when we were brothers still."
The stories darken at the book goes on and as the boys grow older. As the world starts to shape them even more than their parents had. As they fight to stay together even as they are being torn apart.
"They held me, pinned. At first they defended themselves, cursed me, slapped my face, but the wilder I became, the more they retreated into their love for me. Each of them. I chased them down into that love and challenged it..."
This is a beautiful book about some terrible and wonderful things. The raw emotion fills every page, just daring the reader to keep going, to keep absorbing the intensity.
This is a book that is hard to shake and impossible to forget.
Show Less
LibraryThing member brianinbuffalo
I will be stunned if Torres' haunting new novel doesn't sprint to the top of the bestseller lists. "We the Animals" is one of the more riveting and unique books I've read in the past year. The author's Spartan style is piercing. He manages to skilfully weave together a series of incredibly short
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tales that paint a revealing portrait of a dysfunctional family. It's truly a literary roller-coaster ride right up until the final passages. My only critique is that a few of the central characters could have been developed a bit further. Still, this is a coming-of-age yarn that you won't soon forget. Show Less
LibraryThing member ccayne
Beautifully written but tough coming of age tale. Families come in all forms but desire for connection is a powerful force.
Call number
113
Language
Original language
Spanish
Awards
Publishing Triangle Awards (Finalist — Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction — 2012)
Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence in Fiction and Nonfiction (Longlist — Fiction — 2012)
VCU Cabell First Novelist Award (Winner — 2012)
ALA Rainbow Book List (Selection — Young Adult Fiction — 2012)
5 Under 35 Award (2012)
NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work (Nominee — Debut Author — 2012)
Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the Year (Debut Fiction — 2011)
San Francisco Chronicle Best Book of the Year (Fiction — 2011)
Notable Books List (Fiction — 2012)
Original publication date
2011
ISBN
8439725744 / 9788439725749