When We Were Animals, Joshua Gaylord
When We Were Animals, Joshua Gaylord
List: $27.99 | Sale: $19.59
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When We Were Animals

Author: Joshua Gaylord

Narrator: Suehyla El-Attar

Unabridged: 9 hr 50 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 04/21/2015


Synopsis

In this chilling Shirley Jackson Award-nominated novel, a small, quiet Midwestern town is unremarkable save for one fact: when the teenagers reach a certain age, they run wild.

When Lumen Fowler looks back on her childhood, she wouldn't have guessed she would become a kind suburban wife, a devoted mother. In fact, she never thought she would escape her small and peculiar hometown.

When We Were Animals is Lumen's confessional: as a well-behaved and over-achieving teenager, she fell beneath the sway of her community's darkest, strangest secret. For one year, beginning at puberty, every resident "breaches" during the full moon. On these nights, adolescents run wild, destroying everything in their path.

Lumen resists. Promising her father she will never breach, she investigates the mystery of her community's traditions and the stories erased from the town record. But the more we learn about the town's past, the more we realize that Lumen's memories are harboring secrets of their own. A gothic coming-of-age tale for modern times, When We Were Animals is a dark, provocative journey into the American heartland.

Nominated for the 2015 Shirley Jackson Award for Best Novel

About Joshua Gaylord

Joshua Gaylord lives in New York with his wife, the Edgar Award–winning novelist Megan Abbott. For almost a decade, he has taught high school English at an Upper East Side prep school. Since 2002, he has also taught literature and cultural studies courses as an adjunct professor at the New School. He graduated from Berkeley with a degree in English and a minor in creative writing. In 2000, he received his M.A. and Ph.D. in English from New York University, specializing in twentieth-century American and British literature.


Reviews

Goodreads review by karen on July 03, 2018

something terrible happened. i had a copy of this book in which i had folded over so many pages - scenes i wanted to revisit and passages i wanted to share when it came time to write this review. and then it was taken from me, never to be seen again. i got my hands on another copy, but it is all pri......more

Goodreads review by Leanne on July 20, 2015

The problem with audiobooks is that you can't highlight the beautiful passages, and when you're finished, you can't easily go back and read and re-read your favourite parts. So it's a bit of a shame I listened to When We Were Animals rather than read a physical copy (as I do with 98% of my books), b......more

Goodreads review by Paul on May 27, 2015

I'm reduced to one word descriptors. Lyrical, haunting, sexy, disturbing, dark, and oddly beautiful and dangerous. A smart and challenging anti-coming of age story that doesn't gloss over the damage we cause to ourselves and to who we love in the process of finding out who we are. I like to imagine......more

Goodreads review by Heather ~*dread mushrooms*~ on May 14, 2015

I love coming of age stories. I will gladly read the minutiae of a character's adolescence and their reflections on life and all that. I love relating to the characters, which happens a lot, since they are often awkward loners. I also hate coming of age stories. They're painful in the way real life i......more