Download We the Animals Audiobook

“A dark jewel of a book. It’s heartbreaking. It’s beautiful. It resembles no other book I’ve read.”

“While the book starts in the third person, ‘we’ turns to ‘I’ and ‘they’ as the narrator’s sexuality distances him from his brothers.”

“In language brilliant, poised, and pure, We the Animals tells about family love as it is felt when it is frustrated or betrayed or made to stand in the place of too many other needed things, about how precious it becomes in these extremes, about the terrible sense of loss when it fails under duress, and the joy and dread of realizing that there really is no end to it.”

“We the Animals snatches the reader by the scruff of the heart, tight as teeth, and shakes back and forth—between the human and the animal, the housed and the feral, love and violence, mercy and wrath—and leaves him in the wilderness, ravished by its beauty. It is an indelible and essential work of art.”

“Some books quicken your pulse. Some slow it. Some burn you inside and send you tearing off to find the author to see who made this thing that can so burn you and quicken you and slow you all at the same time. A miracle in concentrated pages, you are going to read it again and again, and know exactly what I mean.”

“We the Animals, the kind of sensitive, carefully wrought autobiographical first novel that may soon be extinct from the mainstream publishing world…Mr. Torres’ novel relates such an affecting story of love, loss and the irreversible trauma that a single event can bring to a family.”

“Justin Torres’ We the Animals [is] a novel so honest, poetic, and tough that it makes you reexamine what it means to love and to hurt. Written in the voice of the youngest of three boys, this partly autobiographical tale evokes the cacophony of a messy childhood—flying trash-bag kites, ransacking vegetable gardens, and smashing tomatoes until pulp runs down the kitchen walls. But despite the din the brothers create, the novel belongs to their mother, who alternates between gruff and matter-of-fact—‘loving big boys is different from loving little boys—you’ve got to meet tough with tough.’ In stark prose, Torres shows us how one family grapples with a dangerous and chaotic love for each other, as well as what it means to become a man.”

“First-time novelist Justin Torres unleashes We the Animals, a gorgeous, howling coming-of-age novel that will devour your heart.”

“The best book you’ll read this fall…[It] rumbles with lyric dynamite. It’s a knock to the head that will leave your mouth agape. Torres is a savage new talent.”

“Three brothers and a dueling husband and wife are bound by poverty and love in this debut novel…Intriguing and beautifully written.”

“Justin Torres’ debut novel is coruscating, both violent and poetic, told by the youngest of three sons of a young, black Puerto Rican father and a white woman who was fourteen when she gave birth to the first of them. Frankie Alvarez fits himself invisibly inside this mess of a household so that you feel the confusion, appetites, passions, and disasters of these five people as they crash together and rip apart. At first the young narrator has the point of view of a small child. He experiences himself as part of a mass of brothers, a ‘we.’ Adolescent by the end, he knows that he is separate, and learns the devastating difference this makes. Alvarez unobtrusively and artfully serves a stunning text.”

“An exquisitely crafted debut novel—subtle, shimmering, and emotionally devastating. Those whose memories of contemporary literature extend a quarter century might be tempted to compare this with Susan Minot’s Monkeys, another short, elliptical debut novel about family dynamics that received rapturous reviews upon publication. Yet this is a different novel, and a better one, about a different sort of family and a narrator’s discovery of how he is both a part of them and apart from them…Exhilarating…The narrative voice is a marvel of control…Upon finishing, readers might be tempted to start again, not wanting to let it go.”

“In punchy, energized language, the narrator of this dark and affecting little book relates life with his two brothers and their too young, just-making-it parents…You applaud first novelist Torres’ genius ability to twist around and punch you in the gut. Highly recommended.”

“We the Animals is a gorgeous, deeply humane book. Every page sings, and every scene startles. I think we’ll all be reading Justin Torres for years to come.”

“We the Animals marks the debut of an astonishing new voice in American literature. In an intense coming-of-age story that brings to mind the early work of Jeffrey Eugenides and Sandra Cisneros, Torres’ concentrated prose goes down hot like strong liquor. His beautifully flawed characters worked their way into my heart on the very first page and have been there ever since.”