Animal is the brutal, fascinating and profoundly disturbing journey from one woman's designation as prey for those in her life to feast upon to the omnipotent predator who now stalks them. For far too long, unmarried thirty-six-year-old Joan endured the cruelty of men. She loves one of them, but he stays cold. And the one who loves her will one day throw himself in front of her. When he shoots himself in the head right before her eyes, she flees the city. Joan escapes from New York to Los Angeles and is looking for the only woman who can help her overcome her past and become someone else: her half-sister Alice, a woman she has never met but feels she must meet to help her come to terms with her shocking past. While Alice listens to her, Joan realises that it was not least she who humiliated herself in front of the men in her life. She wants to be more than just a victim. Even if she has to become the perpetrator for this. In the blistering mountain range above Los Angeles, Joan unravels the horrific event she witnessed as a child and that has dominated her life ever since and gathers the strength to finally strike back mercilessly.

This is a compulsive, enigmatic and chilling read about how much one can take in life before it breaks the soul and they become a conduit for evil and attuned to the notion of revenge. In a provocative and vulnerable way, Lisa Taddeo tells of female pain and anger, of revenge, solidarity and self-empowerment, with which a new life begins for Joan. It presents her with a power she has been all but lacking most of her life and she actively decides that she will no longer be mistreated and oppressed by others. But if you are no longer the prey you perhaps once were, you shift into the position of the predator, something Joan gets a taste for. As the book progresses Joan’s dark life unravels and her backstory illustrates exactly how she came to this point: the point of no turning back and committing to actions she can never undo or disassociate or detach from. Taddeo explores the lasting effects of a male-dominated society, in an enchanting style that rubs and caresses and describes the anger, pain, rage and strength of women at their rawest. It is a riveting, hard-hitting and impactful literary thriller about the deep-seated consequences of abuse and the nature of trauma. Highly recommended.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC.

This is a dark, intensely satisfying debut from Taddeo. Joan is the kind of complex woman that we need more of in fiction - if Martin Amis can write John Self in Money and be hailed a genius, why can't we have Joan? Some reviewers have said they find Joan unsympathetic, but I actually really sympathised with the character. Even if you discount all of her awful life history, I think every woman has a moment now and again where you could almost do what Joan does. This book isn't for the faint-hearted, but you'll be a better person for having read it.

I picked this book up because I enjoyed Lisa Taddeo's first published work Three Women and thought I would give this one a try. Animal has similar themes to that of Three Women however is completely different in most ways. I really struggled with this one as I really didnt like the main character Joan (I don't think you were supposed to like her) and that made her story very difficult to carry on through, I felt like because I wasn't routing for her or any of the other characters throughout this book I could have quite easily put it down multiple times. I found that for a fairly short novel it dragged on quite a bit and was missing something (although I am not quite sure what).
I also wasn't a fan of the fact that something horrific seemed to be happening on every page (although I do sometimes enjoy this I found it quite hard to read in this particular novel and not a whole lot was left to the imagination when it came the brutality being described.)
I just don't think I was in the right headspace for this book at the moment, I wish that I had been but now wasn't the right time. I am not sure I will ever pick this back up and give it a try again, I am excited to see some reviews from people who enjoyed the book more and were maybe in better places to read this.
2 out of 5 stars

I wasn’t sure about this book to begin with. I’m a fan if Lisa Taddeo from Three Women, and I was finding it hard to understand the narrator, what she wanted and why she was behaving so strangely. But then the story unspooled in the most heartbreaking, emotional way in the second half and I couldn’t put it down. An intense analysis of pain, trauma and love. There are some parts of this book I will never forget.

What a sucker punch... absolutely extraordinary... Lisa has done it again!

To me her best book so far, I am short in words to describe this masterpiece.

It's raw, it's violent, it's so deep, it's so thought provoking, disturbing, it's just brilliant.

Meet Joan... "depraved", "survivor", who doesn't like to be referred to as a "sociopath".

This inward journey through Joan's mind, in search of her past, Alice and herself, is simply witty and gripping, once you've started you won't manage to stop.

Stunning!

Thank you so much to Bloomsbury Circus and Net Galley for the opportunity to read.

Thank you to NetGalley for the opportunity to read this in exchange for an honest review.

I remember hearing Lisa Taddeo’s name everywhere when her non-fiction book, Three Women, was released. It went straight onto my wishlist and although I now own a copy, I somehow still haven’t gotten around to reading it.

After such high praise for Three Women, when I heard Taddeo was releasing her first fiction book I was desperately intrigued to read it.

Sadly, I was incredibly disappointed.

Animal follows Joan, recently moved to somewhere close to Los Angeles. The beginning of the story sees her flee New York after witnessing the suicide of her ex-lover. What follows is a horrifically dark unravelling of Joan’s entire life, from childhood to adulthood.

The blurb for this sounded fantastic and Taddeo’s writing is definitely brilliant, but I could not have cared less for Joan. I understand she’s not meant to be very likeable but I found her to be very vulgar. I also didn’t really gel with any of the side characters so I was pretty bored throughout.

It’s perfectly fine to focus on characters and not have too much of a plot but I feel like if you’re going to do that then you need to make your reader want to be interested in the main character. I really wasn’t bothered about what happened to her.

The pacing was very off for me too. Animal was a confusing constant flick between past and present and a very slow build up to a very fast and dramatic last 25% of the novel.

I’m not put off Taddeo as an author. This book won’t be for everyone but that doesn’t mean Taddeo can’t write. Her prose is really good and is probably the only thing that kept me reading to the very end

I enjoyed a lot of this book and at the same time I found many aspects infuriating - at times it felt like the author was trying to see just how much trauma you can pack into 300 pages of a novel. It runs many different plot lines, all fairly similar and reasonating with each other - I found the writing (detached at times, the narrator distancing herself from her trauma and turning from victim to hunter) engaging and dynamic. But it took me a while to see where this book was going and I found myself getting irritated by the variety of characters being introduced that... filled the space without contributing as much. I wish it had been more focused on Vic, Alice and her parents - introducing Lenny, River, etc.... felt superfluous.

TW: Suicide, miscarriage, murder, sexual assault, child abuse, domestic violence.

Synopsis: Joan has spent her life being exploited by men but when one of them commits a shocking, life-changing act of violence in front of her, she decided to head to Los Angeles to Alice, the only person who can help her unravel her past.

This was such a dark, raw, unsettlingly graphic read. This had a lot of mystery and intrigue throughout and I found the protagonist to be really unlikeable initially, but I softened to her towards the end.

Joan has experienced some vile acts perpetrated by men. But when one man does something in front of her, she flees from New York to LA searching for a woman named Alice, who she is obsessed with. The events of Joan’s traumatic past slowly get revealed.

Joan isn’t necessarily a likeable character; she is rightfully very angry. She has experienced horrible events in her past which has shaped her into the person she has become. I was interested to see an unlikeable woman who is full of rage navigating life and examining the abuse committed by men. However, I felt like this novel got a little bit gratuitous, with so many scenes of sexual assault, rape, miscarriage etc, which I felt didn’t have much purpose. Some descriptions of people in this book also made me uncomfortable, one that comes to mind is her descriptions of a disabled woman in the novel.

I also found this a bit boring and not the most engaging. The writing was detached which made you feel detached from Joan, which I think was purposeful, but I don’t think it had the intended effect on me that Taddeo was going for. I mostly just felt a little uninterested and struggled to get the desire to pick this one up to continue reading it.

This book didn’t work for me and I think people will either love or not be fussed on this one.

Thanks to Netgalley and Bloomsbury for allowing me to read and review this one

I love it when you discover stories told from a perspective you haven’t read from before. Animal is told to us by Joan, a woman in her mid-30s who, among other things, moves from New York to LA to find her half sister. That’s not the perspective I mean though. I was referring to her uninhibited, raw, sexual and honest approach to her life. Animal felt quite fresh to me.

Joan (a wildly underused name by the way – in fiction and life) is in a not-very-healthy relationship with an older married man, actually the poor sod of the opening sentence. This triggers her to relook at her life and try and find her half sister she has never met before (the product of her father’s affair).

Half sister Alice is 27 to Joan’s 37 and they become instant friends, despite Alice not knowing their true relationship.

The tension and interest then builds as the story follows Joan. She interacts with her fellow tenants on the isolated commune-type place where she lives, her developing relationship with Alice and the unexpected arrival of Eleanor. She is the daughter of Joan’s dead lover, blames Joan for her family falling apart and is hell-bent on revenge…

To me, Animal was also an exploration of the complex mother/daughter relationship. Joan’s mother didn’t give her the love and security she needed as a child or as an adult, so Joan literally spends her life trying to placate that feeling within herself. Also, the narrative of Animal takes the form of Joan’s account of her life to pass onto her daughter.

So yes, Joan might be depraved but her depravity comes from circumstances out of her control. Joan gets into extreme situations but how she has been treated – from childhood to now – how she views herself and how women are sometimes forced to navigate their way through life, as portrayed here, isn’t extreme. It’s a bold mirror held up to the way society still continually fails women.

I really enjoyed Lisa Taddeo’s turn of phrase, she delved deep into Joan – every nook and cranny – and gave us a character that felt so real:

'The interior of my brain was a snake pit. I couldn’t survive in there alone.'

The tone is raw and sexually explicit – often funny, often cutting – that makes it so refreshing to read. I didn’t think I would end up feeling for Joan, but I did. The emotional ending certainly took me by surprise and days later, I still find myself thinking about Animal. An addictive summer read – not for the faint-hearted!

I'm struggling with how to review this, I really didn't like it at all and that is a real shame as I loved Three Women. I don't want to say negative things because I think when the subject matter is as raw as this, it's going to elicit differing responses from people. But can safely say that this was not for me.

I wanted to love this but unfortunately it just didn't work for me - where Three Women felt nuanced, authentic and intimate, Animal felt just a bit too extreme, disturbing and gratuitous. However, Taddeo's writing is as clever and as brilliant as ever, so in that respect I really can't fault it. I just wish the point of the book hadn't been hammered home quite so harshly.

Joan flees New York after the violent death of her lover and comes to LA, to find Alice. Gradually she reveals her life story to Alice and we learn of the shocking past events that have shaped her.

I loved Three Women so I was excited to read this, but it is totally different and I felt very ambivalent towards it by the end. The pace is absolutely glacial. It took me weeks to read the first three quarters of the book, as so little happened, so slowly. The novel is a little too in love with itself and its own style,. It is full of clever, self-satisfied phrasing which does nothing to create any sense of emotional engagement. Perhaps this is deliberate, but its a long novel to plough through when you care nothing for any of the characters.

The novel is deliberately shocking, unflinching in its accounts of sex and violence. Yet the shock factor doesn't really engage because the dialogue is unrealistic and the characters remain vague. I actually think the strength of the novel is in depictions of place. There is a cinematic quality to the descriptions of the houses, the beaches and the restaurants. which come to life more vividly than the characters.

Overall I think this is an overambitious and ultimately unsuccessful novel from an undoubtedly talented writer.

Animal starts promisingly as Joan flees New York after witnessing her married ex lover kill himself as she is eating with another married man. The set up is clever and the writing dynamic as she finds herself in a strange house on the outskirts of LA, and it is clear than Joan has a reason for being in that town, there is someone she wants to find.

However, as Joan describes herself, she is depraved. Damaged by her family history and seemingly incapable of avoiding disastrous relationships, the book becomes endless pages of violence, rape and miscarriage. The book is gothic in its description of her relationships, past and present, and the horrific events of her childhood. I actually felt quite sick reading some of the later chapters and I found it a struggle to finish. A book like this needs a central character that you really feel for and Joan is so unsympathetic that she doesn’t carry you with her.
Like Three Women, I felt that at times Lisa Taddeo is more interested in the shock value of what she is writing than the actual story.
Thank you to #netgalley and #bloomsburybooks for allowing me to review this ARC

I love the style of writing and loved the first chapters. But then it turned into an endless series of abuse, senseless relationship and drama and It was too much for me.
It was a sort of drama overload and the descriptions are very graphic.
It was too much for me and not my cup of tea.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine

Joan flees New York to California after he lover Victor shot himself publicly in front of her. With little money left, she finds a small place to stay and she also finds the woman she was looking for. Alice, whom she had tracked online over all those years. She thinks back to what her life had to offer so far, her mother who was unable to love her, her father whom she admired childishly. Both have long been gone. Joan can run, but somehow her bad luck follows her, she seems prone to attracting all kind of evil and so it does not take too long until it comes back to her.

Lisa Taddeo made her debut with “Three women“ which I already liked a lot. In her latest novel, too, complicated relationships between men and women are central to the story’s development. The narrator herself is unable to love unconditionally, she needs to have the upper hand over her lovers, yet, this presumed precaution measure fires back and somehow she is stuck in the role of the kid who is longing for being loved. She is addressing her account of the events to somebody, yet it takes until the end for the reader to understand whom she tells about her life.

From a psychological point of view, Taddeo has created quite interesting characters. Violence and love are constantly opposed and they seem not to able to exist without each other. Joan’s grandmother has been raped, a dramatic experience of violence, yet, we do never learn about what this did to the woman. On the other hand, Joan’s mother does not seem to be a direct victim, yet, she reacts quite strongly and refuses her daughter the love she craves for. The women in her family are no good role models, yet, her father, too, does not provide a good example of how to behave, especially at critical moments in his life. As a consequence, Joan is unable to lead a relationship at eye level and feels the need to protect herself from the things that might happen.

Thus, as a grown up, Joan replicates what she has seen as a kid and ignores the effect this might have on others, only when she is confronted with a kind of mirror, her genuine feelings offer her another way.

“Animal” is all but an easy read, yet, it offers a lot of food for thought and raises important questions concerning central human emotions and behaviour. I am not an expert, however, I would classify Joan’s thinking with all those flashbacks as symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder which is highly likely from her family’s history. In this respect, the author very successfully displays the impact of traumatic events on untreated children.

This story is dark and disturbing and quite brutal in parts. There's violence, trauma, and a depraved female protagonist that brings to light the violence women endure at the hands of men every day. The writing is stunning and you feel yourself being drawn into Joan's mind, thoughts, and feelings. It takes a great writer to do this and Lisa Taddeo is certainly up among the greats. This is a book I know I will be reading more than once. Truly stunning and destined to be a big hit.

This book was an agony, I could not read more than 10 pages at a time, both for the topics and for the rawness with which they were told. Since I already have "Three Women", my hope now is that it will be a different kind of book, otherwise I won't make it to the end....

Questo libro é stato un'agonia, non riuscivo a leggere piú di 10 pagine per volta, sia per gli argomenti che per la crudezza con la quale venivano raccontati. Siccome ho giá anche "Three WOmen" ora la mia speranza é tutta volta alla speranza che sia un tipo di libro diverso, altrimenti non ce la faccio ad arrivare in fondo....

I received from the Publisher a complimentary digital advanced review copy of the book in exchange for a honest review.

This book has been super hyped, and I feel like I have known about this book for months and months. I'm not sure if this was because the book was any good or if it was because the authors previous book was such a huge hit!
Nevertheless I really couldn't wait to start reading this - I must confess I haven't read Taddeo's previous book, so i was going into her writing style completely blind.

I really did not connect with Lisa Taddeo's writing style, or her central character Joan - I really struggled to find a way into the narrative, and get hooked into the plot and characters.
The pacing felt incredibly slow - up until the last 100 pages or so - but I think that is far too late to hook you into a book. The only reason I didn't DNF this book was because I was reviewing this book.
The book is described as a fast paced thriller and I think this is so far from what I experienced as a reader.

I really didn't enjoy my time with this book - and I know I'm in the minority here looking at the other reviews. This has really made me question whether or not to read Taddeo's first book, which is currently sat on my shelf.
I just couldn't connect!! Not for me!

I didn't know what to expect when I picked up 'Animal' but, I knew that I loved Lisa Taddeo's writing, so I had high expectations and eventually... (yes, eventually), they were met. My immediate thoughts on finishing the novel was that it's so visceral, you'll find it difficult to move on and shake off immediately.

I will admit that I struggled at the beginning to figure out the plot and understand where the narrative was going. I was also intimidated by how long the novel was (600+), that being said, the way in which Taddeo moves between the past and present, it kept the pace of the story and I didn't feel weighted by the amount I had to read ahead of the end.

One of the things that I enjoyed was that Taddeo keeps everything mysterious but answers your questions satisfyingly even if you expected it. It's difficult to describe what 'Animal' is about, but I suppose, you could call it a thriller, however, there are layers to this as it also crosses over to feminism.

This isn't an easy read; it's graphic in description involving violence, grotesque sex and carries an array of triggers: suicide, sexual assault, murder, domestic violence and pregnancy. This wouldn't be for the faint-hearted as it's dark with a lot of moments where I was wincing as the story unfolded; never at one point does Taddeo make you feel it's dragging due to her concise use of language and prose.

'Animal' is haunting and impactful with an intense eye for detail; it's clear that Taddeo has included a message within the book, but it's not a 600 page lecture and something that will stay with me for a very long time. I highly recommend!

Thank you Bloomsbury Publish Pls and NetGalley for this ARC.

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