Filthy Animals: Stories

BRANDON TAYLOR IS: A powerhouse. -- Newsweek An extraordinary cartographer. -- Esquire A striking new voice with a vital perspective. -- Harper's Bazaar A brilliant writer. --Garth Greenwell A group portrait of young adults enmeshed in desire and violence, a hotly charged, deeply satisfying new work of fiction from the author of Booker Prize finalist REAL LIFE In the series of linked stories at the heart of Filthy Animals , set among young creatives in the American Midwest, a young man treads delicate emotional waters as he navigates a series of sexually fraught encounters with two dancers in an open relationship, forcing him to weigh his vulnerabilities against his loneliness. In other stories, a young woman battles with the cancers draining her body and her family; menacing undercurrents among a group of teenagers explode in violence on a winter night; a little girl tears through a house like a tornado, driving her babysitter to the brink; and couples feel out the jagged edges of connection, comfort, and cruelty. One of the breakout literary stars of 2020, Brandon Taylor has been hailed by Roxane Gay as a writer who wields his craft in absolutely unforgettable ways. With Filthy Animals he renews and expands on the promise made in Real Life , training his precise and unsentimental gaze on the tensions among friends and family, lovers and others. Psychologically taut and quietly devastating, Filthy Animals is a tender portrait of the fierce longing for intimacy, the lingering presence of pain, and the desire for love in a world that seems, more often than not, to withhold it.