Large Animals: Stories [Paperback]

ABuzzfeedBest Fiction Book of 2017 AnEntropymagazine Best Book of 2017

Jess ArndtsLarge Animalsis wildly original, even as it joins in with the classics of loaded, outlaw literature. Acerbic, ecstatic, hilarious, psychedelic, and affecting in turn, this is an electric debut. Maggie Nelson, National Book Critics Circle Awardwinning author ofThe Argonauts

Jess Arndt's striking debut collection confronts what it means to have a body. Boldly straddling the line between the imagined and the real, the masculine and the feminine, the knowable and the impossible, these twelve stories are an exhilarating and profoundly original expression of voice. In Jeff, Lily Tomlin confuses Jess for Jeff, instigating a dark and hilarious identity crisis. In Together, a couple battles a mysterious STD that slowly undoes their relationship, while outside a ferocious weed colonizes their urban garden. And in Contrails, a character on the precipice of a seismic change goes on a tour of past lovers, confronting their own reluctance to move on.

Arndts subjects are canny observers even while they remain dangerously blind to their own truest impulses. Often unnamed, these narrators challenge the limits of languagecollectively, their voices create a transgressive new formal space that makes room for the queer, the nonconforming, the undefined. And yet, while they crave connection, love, and understanding, they are constantly at risk of destroying themselves.Large Animalspitches toward the heart, pushing at all our most tender partsour sex organs, our geography, our words, and the tendons and nerves of our culture.