Goodreads helps you keep track of books you want to read.

Start by marking “Animals” as Want to Read:

Other editions

Enlarge cover

Rate this book

Clear rating

1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

Open Preview

Animals

Emma Jane Unsworth

3.49 · Rating details · 1,502 Ratings · 174 Reviews

It is the moment every twenty-something must confront: the time to grow up. Adulthood looms, with all it's numbing tranquility and stifling complacency. The end of prolonged adolescence is near.

Laura and Tyler are two women whose twenties have been a blur of overstayed parties, a fondness for drugs that has shifted from cautious experimentation to catholic indulgence, and ...more

Get A Copy

Or buy for

Paperback, 256 pages

Published October 6th 2015 by Europa Editions (first published May 1st 2014)

More Details... edit details

Friend Reviews

To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up.

Reader Q&A

To ask other readers questions about Animals, please sign up.

Lists with This Book

Did You Ever Have a Family by Bill Clegg

The Story of the Lost Child by Elena Ferrante

Book Expo America 2015

103 books — 92 voters

More lists with this book...

Community Reviews

(showing 1-30)

Rating details

Sort: Default

Filter

May 18, 2014 Paul Bryant rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: novels

This unexpectedly wonderful (and please note extremely vulgar) novel is being bandied around as “Withnail with girls”. That’s the quote on the front. For those who do not know the cult 1987 British movie Withnail and I you should know that Withnail, a skeletal out of work actor, exists in only three conditions; first is drunk, in which he says things like

We've gone on holiday by mistake.

Or (whilst driving)

Look at this : accident blackspot! These aren't accidents, they're throwing themselves into ...more

flag 37 likes · Like · see review

Dec 08, 2015 Oriana rated it liked it

Shelves: the-new-new-new-new-thing, read-2016

It is 4º in Brooklyn right now—record-breaking, life-threatening (sez the mayor!), tooth-rattlingly cold. When I walk my poor little pups, the pee arcs out of them already in icicles. I'm a big fan of winter, but this is preposterous.

So I did the only sensible thing: I canceled all my fabulous Saturday-night pre-Valentine's party plans, laid in provisions, roasted a giant panful of veggies, and read a whole book, cover to cover, while eating too much chocolate. It was kind of a fabulously decad ...more

flag 24 likes · Like · see review

Jan 02, 2014 Blair rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: 2014-release, contemporary, read-on-kindle, read-abroad, recent-favourites, favourites

So, I finally read this, after two years of it hovering near the top of my to-read list. It's hard to explain why I didn't make a stab at it before now - something to do with the weight of expectation, I suppose, and perhaps something to do with feeling I needed to be in the right mood or frame of mind. In any case, a holiday seemed like perfect timing. I thought, after all this waiting, I might merely like it, which was in itself a dismaying prospect, but no, I loved it. Here's what I wrote in ...more

flag 15 likes · Like · see review

May 01, 2014 Thom rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

‘You know how it is. Saturday afternoon. You wake up and you can’t move’

Laura is caught between two worlds. One the one hand, she is engaged to Jim, a concert pianist with a budding international career, and a nice flat in the centre of town; on the other, her best friend and housemate Tyler is an uninhibited force of nature, ‘by turns many things: nemesis, ally, co-conspirator, master of persuasion’. Laura is working on a novel, Bacon, about a priest who falls in love with a talking pig, but pr ‘You know how it is. Saturday afternoon. You wake up and you can’t move’

Laura is caught between two worlds. One the one hand, she is engaged to Jim, a concert pianist with a budding international career, and a nice flat in the centre of town; on the other, her best friend and housemate Tyler is an uninhibited force of nature, ‘by turns many things: nemesis, ally, co-conspirator, master of persuasion’. Laura is working on a novel, Bacon, about a priest who falls in love with a talking pig, but progress is slow – the rest of the time she works in a call centre, and drinks. Her life is a battle between the urge to create and the siren call of ‘The Night’, with its ‘deals, promises and gauntlets’. Tyler is The Night’s greatest advocate, and much of the novel follows the women’s hazy adventures through Manchester after dark. Periodically, Jim returns from whichever exotic location he has been performing in to try to restore some balance to the situation.

Animals comes with a cover quote from Caitlin Moran, calling it ‘Withnail with girls’. There are plenty of similarities between the book and Bruce Robinson’s film: both focus on close, same-sex friendships which veer between symbiosis and mutually-assured destruction, both feature would-be creatives who do a lot more drinking than creating, and both even include disastrous trips to Cumbria. But take a minute to think about what life would be like for a female Withnail.

During a recent talk at the International Anthony Burgess Foundation, the critic Olivia Laing argued that there is a double standard in play when we discuss male and female alcoholism in literature. There is, she said, a large audience which wants to hear anecdotes about Hemingway and Scott Fitzgerald in their boozy heydays, even if they tend to gloss over the terrible later years; on the other hand if you try to talk about Jean Rhys, drinking herself to death at home, no-one wants to hear about it. Female drinkers are censured, not celebrated (maybe Dorothy Parker is an exception, dispensing withering put downs with a glass in her hand). This disparity is reflected throughout the wider culture. Articles on public drinking are frequently illustrated with images of women, suggesting a greater degree of shame - an approach which has become a cliché, mocked by the BBC website’s paper monitor.

Unsworth is aware of this double standard; while Withnail is allowed to carry on boozing without censure, Laura is subjected to the judgements of the newly sober Jim, who frequently reminds her that ‘you have more chance of conceiving’ if she stops drinking, that booze doesn’t fit ‘with what I want for our future’. This is just the latest version of what Laura has internalised from an early age. She remembers going to a psychiatrist, aged 12, and discussing how she felt ‘pressured’ by the expectations placed on her. The pressure she feels seeps into her narrative, as she feels a need to justify herself to an unseen audience: ‘I sipped. Give me credit for that, will you?’ Her drinking is, in part, a reaction to this, a way of escaping the constant sense of being monitored. ‘The point of intoxication,’ she says at one point, ‘was not to create but to destroy the part of me that cared whether or not I created’. Of course, this is a vicious circle – each bout of drinking is prelude to an attack of ‘the existentials’, which have to be managed with a strict set of protocols: ‘no news, no parental phone calls, some fresh air of you could tolerate the vertical plane’.

While it makes a serious point, though, Animals is also very, very funny. It is probably dangerous to go drinking with Emma Jane Unsworth, as it seems like she has harvested years of night-out anecdotes to include here. The novel opens with Laura passed out on her bed, her half-removed tights caught over the frame; Tyler walks in, surveys the scene, and drawls, ‘Way I see it, girls are tied to beds for two reasons: sex and exorcisms. So, which was it with you?’ Laura’s brain flicks through random, fractured images from their night out: ‘fizzy wine, flat wine, city streets, cubicles, highly experimental burlesque moves on bar stools’.

Sometimes the laughs come from Laura’s outrageous behaviour (the time ‘we dressed up as Paula Yates and John Leslie for a Dead Celebrities party… the time we swam in a loch at lunchtime and had sex beneath a war memorial, causing a group of hikers to call the police’), sometimes from killer one-liners (‘I’m going to do what any rational person should do when they find their days are numbered. Move to Stoke. It’ll seem like longer’). Elsewhere, Unsworth’s blend of smart prose and comic observation leads to such memorable images as ‘a discarded Peperami sheath like an anteater’s condom’.

The structure of Animals is more straightforward than her innovative debut, Hungry, The Stars and Everything, and the pace is much faster, but even as the narrative races along it is clear that Unsworth has spent time crafting her prose. She picks over the ‘shabby tragedy’ of a run-down hotel, ‘its background fizzling bleakness’. A seduction becomes ‘an autopsy with cutlery’. Anyone who knows Manchester will appreciate descriptions of ‘the monstrous blade-phallus of the Hilton Tower’, or the space around Victoria Station, ‘sullen with redundancy… the Green Quarter where To Let signs prickled the front lawns of artless tower blocks’.

Events become increasingly surreal as the novel progresses, reflecting Laura’s fraying psyche. The women find themselves getting chased out of an underground Spanish speakeasy after their friend insults a dwarf; at some point Laura’s work not-in-progress Bacon becomes Killing the Changes, ‘because that’s more mysterious and I want the book to be mysterious and complex even though its about the simplest thing really and that’s love’, her retreat into abstraction reflecting her difficulty in engaging with the reality of her life. A traditional narrative would have Laura hitting rock bottom before getting on to the business of redemption. The nearest Animals comes to this is a confrontation in the toilets at Manchester Town Hall, but this is more a coming of age than a cautionary tale. There is a strand of hope in Laura’s story courtesy of a subplot involving her father, who is diagnosed with cancer but finds solace in the progress of the Mars Rover.

Critics like Sarah Hughes in The Guardian have identified a new trend for ‘literary bad girls’, novels with female anti-heroes ‘happy to live outside society’s boundaries’, including Emma Jane Unsworth and Zoe Pilger as prime examples of the genre, along with the Guardian’s obligatory Lena Dunham mention. Partly, Hughes says that these novels are a rejection of ‘the comfortable romantic lies’ and ‘the petty stuff of domestic life’ which comprise a clichéd view of female literature (I think this is a bit of a straw woman argument – throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries women have been writing dark and intelligent novels - whether they have been heralded or not is a different matter).

I wonder if these recent novels are influenced on some level by a shift in the relationship between power and gender in the internet age. Laurie Penny’s recent essay Cybersexism argued that while many women of her generation had found a voice through online forums, the rise of digital communication had also allowed for a renewed public scrutiny of women’s behaviour – the recent controversy over Women Who Eat on the Tube being the latest example. By creating female protagonists who break taboos and assert control over their own existences, they are rejecting the idea that they should alter their behaviour to suit pre-conceived norms.

Animals recognises the difficulties of this process, but Unsworth is careful not to moralise or censure her characters. Laura’s journey is both realistic and also extremely entertaining. After all, it’s well and good to read Tao Lin detailing the minutiae of post-moral twenty-first century youth culture, and the drug and drink count in Taipei is pretty similar to that of Animals, but sometimes you need a novel to come along with this amount of outrageous energy and élan. I would caution, though, against trying a Withnail-style drinking game with this novel. You might not make it past chapter 1. ...more

flag 12 likes · Like · see review

Feb 15, 2015 Sheila rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2015, library

Originally posted at www.bookertease.blogspot.ca

Let me start off with a bit of a warning. Animals by Emma Jane Unsworth) is not for everyone, and it is definitely not for the faint of heart. (Mom – you’re not going to like this book…..) Honestly, I am not even sure how much I like it. I mean I do like it, I really like it… but it’s kind of terrifying. It’s like someone took my early 20s and put them on crack and ecstasy and then flipped it all around til all I want to do is vomit. And that’s lit Originally posted at www.bookertease.blogspot.ca

Let me start off with a bit of a warning. Animals by Emma Jane Unsworth) is not for everyone, and it is definitely not for the faint of heart. (Mom – you’re not going to like this book…..) Honestly, I am not even sure how much I like it. I mean I do like it, I really like it… but it’s kind of terrifying. It’s like someone took my early 20s and put them on crack and ecstasy and then flipped it all around til all I want to do is vomit. And that’s literally what is happening in this book – with all of the drugs and all of the vomiting. A lot. Like over and over again. But still. I do like it.

Tyler and Laura are both girls in their late 20s/early 30s living together in Manchester, who haven’t really gotten it all figured out just yet. Instead of trying, they get drunk a lot (like every day) do a ton of drugs and then just lay about hungover the rest of the time. I think that occasionally they may go to their dead-end jobs. But everything is not as cheery as it seems on the surface. Laura is engaged to be married and her fiancé, Jim, has recently quit alcohol and she is also trying to write a novel, Bacon, about a priest falling in love with a talking pig. Tyler is having some separation anxiety and is trying to get Laura in to some crazier and crazier situations. Laura describes her friendship with Tyler as “kinship, or une affinité profonde; that doppelganger effect that can go either way: to mutual understanding or mutual destruction. Someone sees right to your backbone and simultaneously feels their backbone acknowledged” It sounds beautiful, right? Too bad Tyler is the queen bee of hot messes. She is constantly drunk or high or hungover, she is loud and crass and has no problem yelling at anyone to get what she wants, or just for the fun of it; oh and then there is the vomiting in public. Laura is almost as bad. Now to be fair we are being told the story from Laura’s point of view, but she seems to be a little more aware that maybe things have gotten out of control. The problem is, when Tyler says jump Laura says how high (heh… see what I did there…) and so all of Laura’s good intentions go running out the door.

The thing is, as dirty and raunchy as this book is, it is really good. It is really well written, it’s poignant and relevant and Unsworth does a brilliant job of showing the complexities of relationships and the pain of feeling like you are losing your best friend. She also has done a brilliant job with Laura’s character. While I am pretty sure Laura is a reliable narrator, she’s not necessarily a reliable person. She talks a lot about being a kid and trying to fit in, even if it meant pretending to be a different religion depending on that of her current friends. She talks about how she felt so much internal pressure that she would throw up and had to go see a therapist. I don’t really care for Tyler that much, but I can see how Laura would be totally taken in with her. Tyler is beautiful and charismatic, and doesn’t really give you the opportunity to say no. She’s one of those girls, who even though you aren’t sure that you really like them, you really want to be in their orbit. That’s kind of the situation here; when the story first started Tyler and Laura were soulmates, but as Laura continues the narrative we can start to see the chinks in the armour. Laura is caught between two worlds – the sensational Tyler and calm and collected Jim. Jim is stable and responsible and he really wants to settle down but his job keeps him overseas a lot, out of sight out of mind. Luckily, and most importantly Laura is head over heels for him but the distance is hard on her. “Jim. I missed him in a physical way, like a thirst. Missed his mouth and his composure and his steady loving eyes. I didn’t buy the whole ‘absence makes the heart grow fonder’ spiel. I was with Rochester on the matter: a cord was tied to my ribcage on one end and tied at the other end to Jim’s, and the further away he got, the thinner the cord stretched” I totally relate to Laura, besides the extreme drinking and drugs of course. When you don’t have a lot of confidence in yourself it’s so easy to get swept up with someone who makes you feel like you are part of something huge. Laura is starting to get pressure from Jim to tone things down a little though, and the stress of living in two worlds is starting to wear on her. Besides dealing with all of this, her father is dying from cancer and Laura has no idea how to deal. She’s starting to come apart at the seams, and I don’t think that it’s going to end very well. Jim is the only one who keeps her even semi stable “What was it he said to me the other day? We are not defined by how we are but by how we try to be. What if you try too hard to be everything? I countered. Lie down, he said. Lie still”. But Jim is gone a lot and things just keep escalating and I am slightly worried that Laura is going to end up dead or in jail.

Unsworth has definitely taken the traditional perceptions and roles of females and thrown them out the window. Women in their early 30s are supposed to be ready to settle down, get married, have babies and live in single family homes in the suburbs; and of course, if that’s what they want than all the power to them. But being pigeon holed like that doesn’t work for everyone, some woman are not ready to settle down, some women will never want babies or husbands or houses; being a woman in my early 30s without these things I can commiserate. I am constantly asked when my boyfriend and I are going to get married and have babies. It’s incredibly refreshing to read a story where women are going through the same things and are pushing back. I’m not sure that it’s necessary to go as far as she does with it, but it’s interesting seeing girls behave in ways that we traditionally assign to boys. And since I am only half way through, although I’m worried about Laura, I really don’t know where this story will go. I guess it’s also the way to get your point across – go big or go home, right?
...more

flag 9 likes · Like · see review

Apr 11, 2017 Julie Poulain rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: reto-estantería-a-cero, in-my-bookshelves

En realidad sería 3,5/5.
Creo que el libro habría ganado mucho si hubiera tenido menos de "alcohol/drogas non stop" y más de autodescubrimiento. Tyler y Laura son dos buenos personajes, pero el punto de inmadurez que alcanzan es tan alto que se me ha hecho muy difícil empatizar con ellas. Por poner un ejemplo, la actitud que mantiene Laura respecto a su delicada situación familiar no la veo justificable excepto si viene de una adolescente de 14 años.
De cualquier forma, el estilo me ha gustado muc ...more

flag 5 likes · Like · see review

Feb 17, 2017 Miryam Artigas | www.sweetparanoia.com rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Me ha gustado el libro aunque en líneas generales me ha parecido un tanto superficial. El libro en si se centra en la búsqueda, el encontrarse a uno mismo. Eso me ha gustado mucho aunque me ha preocupado mucho la adición al alcohol (y otras sustancias) de allá protagonista.

flag 4 likes · Like · see review

Jun 07, 2014 Katie Ward rated it it was ok · review of another edition

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

flag 4 likes · Like · see review

Mar 28, 2018 Mekhala Pande rated it it was amazing

"Way I see it, girls are tied to beds for two reasons: sex and exorcisms. So, which was it with you?"

The coming-of-age tale of our two anti-heroines opens with this wonderfully strange scene and you're hooked.

Laura and Tyler are two women immersed in a mutually-assured-destructive and highly co-dependent relationship with each other fuelled by a zealous love for alcohol, hard drugs and late-night raucous adventures.

However, our narrator, Laura is at a crossroad in her life now, as she tries to j "Way I see it, girls are tied to beds for two reasons: sex and exorcisms. So, which was it with you?"

The coming-of-age tale of our two anti-heroines opens with this wonderfully strange scene and you're hooked.

Laura and Tyler are two women immersed in a mutually-assured-destructive and highly co-dependent relationship with each other fuelled by a zealous love for alcohol, hard drugs and late-night raucous adventures.

However, our narrator, Laura is at a crossroad in her life now, as she tries to juggle her impending nuptials and her love of 'the Night'. (pretty much heralded by the siren call of Tyler).

Laura is torn.Between two people.two ideas.The Past and the Future. Between being mired in her escapist hedonism(with Tyler) or getting trapped in another person's dream-life trajectory(Jim).
Taking responsibility for one's own life and actions is scary.The Narrator is faced with the truly frightening situation of living her life on her own terms, mostly sober.

Should she 'settle down' into domestic and stable bliss with Jim? Give up her independence and wild nights?

A note on the two protagonists-they are real, full-blooded, in-control women not afraid to break taboos or be bogged down by what society demands of them.The novel never veers into moralistic or predictable domain and the self discovery of the Narrator is brought about refreshingly and seamlessly.

At a basic level 'Animals' is a book about soulmates, albeit very, very damaged and destructive ones.The ones which crash into each other but make the other feel alive.There is a psychic recognition and understanding between the two characters which plays off its own energy and carries the book smoothly.They do not make good decisions together, but they are in it together for the rush and the crash.

I absolutely LOVED reading this book. It's smart, laugh out loud funny, vulgar, surprisingly tender when it comes to love and quite thought provoking in moments of our Yeats-spouting narrator's drug and alcohol fuelled epiphanies.

It's also a very good pick-me-up for when you're feeling a bit blue and need something surreal and fresh. Oh your life can be bad but never wretching-in-a-new-place-everyday or locked-up-in-your-drug-dealers-place or being-chased-from-a-shady-spanish-bar or underemployed-and-struggling-with-writing-a-book-about-the-love-between-a-talking-pig-and-priest bad. ...more

flag 3 likes · Like · see review

Aug 03, 2014 Amanda Gegg rated it liked it · review of another edition

Having found myself in many a situation not too dissimilar to Tyler and Laura - albeit notably less extreme - I found that 'Animals' was everything I expected it to be but in some ways a complete surprise.

I was absolutely blown away by the artistic yet abstract prose, which was clearly thought out with the utmost strategy to define these characters' personalities despite the whirlwind of their drink and drug-fuelled lives. This is definitely a book that makes you want to put pen to paper and rec ...more

flag 3 likes · Like · see review

Jul 27, 2015 Tom rated it really liked it · review of another edition

This book features some really funny moments and was generally a great read. Its humour didn't take anything away from its emotional depth and dealings with conflicting relationships. Also, as a Manchester resident, I really enjoyed its references to the city and nightlife.

My only real criticism would be Unsworth's writing style. Whilst the book is a generally laid-back read and Unsworth is a good writer, the writing seems a bit 'try hard'. I feel Unsworth should have allowed the characters and ...more

flag 3 likes · Like · see review

Jan 03, 2016 Melissa rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Nailed it. "It"= that crazy insidious friend dynamic between young, unattached women who've become, essentially, life partners who enable each other's fuckups even as they're getting way too old for it. And then one becomes attached, and the shiz hits the fan. On top of all the prurient interest of reading about two codependent train wrecks, the writing is beautiful. Can't wait to read more from Unsworth.

flag 3 likes · Like · see review

Oct 02, 2015 Pickle Farmer rated it liked it · review of another edition

A fun cathartic read. I like that the protagonist was still drinking in the end and that her journey as a character didn't necessarily equal complete 100% sobriety. The shameless energy and unabashed drive in this book was very refreshing to me.

flag 4 likes · Like · see review

Nov 05, 2015 Ashley rated it did not like it · review of another edition

I have no idea what this book was about.

flag 3 likes · Like · see review

Mar 25, 2017 Norae Lebowski rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: mi-colección, escritos-por-mujeres

En la misma línea de «Dulceagrio» (Stephanie Danler), la trama me parece un poco tonta y simple, pero los personajes son arrolladores y tienen personalidades muy definidas. Además, es un libro muy divertido, con pequeños repuntes amargos, que acaban calándote. No es un libro que vaya a cambiarte la vida, pero sí que se disfruta leyendo en los ratos libres.
Lo mejor, sin duda, es cómo está representada la amistad entre las chicas. El sentimiento de hermandad, la sororidad ante todo. Me gusta, tamb ...more

flag 2 likes · Like · see review

Jan 29, 2018 Sarah rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, library

Really enjoyed the style of writing, and found parts of it incredibly relatable (in a bad way). If you have been a teenager/university student in the UK then the drinking culture and relentless going out portrayed here along with the things Tyler and Lo get up to may hit a bit close to home, albeit a bit more extreme than my own experience.

I have to say it did take a while to feel like all of this was going anywhere when probably around 3/4 of the book was spent following Tyler and Lo either get ...more

flag 2 likes · Like · see review

Oct 05, 2015 J. rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: lush-life, little-girl-lost

'Shall we get another drink?' I said.
'Yes, more drink. More everything. There's a party going on not too far away if you fancy it. New friend of mine. An artist. I've got something in my pocket.' I looked at her. Of course: the whole conversation had been an elaborate preamble. Tyler was good: talking about parties made you want to party. I felt like it by then--I felt as though (oh, the justifications, they come like flying monkeys through the window) getting lost somewhere together might be go

'Shall we get another drink?' I said.
'Yes, more drink. More everything. There's a party going on not too far away if you fancy it. New friend of mine. An artist. I've got something in my pocket.' I looked at her. Of course: the whole conversation had been an elaborate preamble. Tyler was good: talking about parties made you want to party. I felt like it by then--I felt as though (oh, the justifications, they come like flying monkeys through the window) getting lost somewhere together might be good for us.
I said: "I need at least ten hours' sleep in the next forty-eight hours.'
'Baby, that's so feasible that it's verging on Logic...'

Now, just one minute, you girls. Hold it right there. How would you like your mothers to be reading what you've written? How would I like to do what? Isn't it a little early in the review for the fuck-yourself advice..?

Well, maybe not. Emma Jane Unsworth's "Animals" lays out a few post-millennial lines, tells a story over a few dozen cocktails, and looks to the grand tapestry of binge-misbehavior sagas. "All The Sad Young Men" morphs into "Absolutely Fabulous" and even still, it's pretty funny. The author is looking to bridge the raging-girl-rebel to the raw-nerve tragic girl with plenty of acting-out along the continuum.

Parody, satire, farce, blunt-force pratfall, any humor at all will do once the party is on. Comedy, though-- repeatable, sustained, effective--is famously hard to do. And a white-hot streak of consciousness comedy, is, well, born to crash and burn.

Mostly as planned. But narrative transitions, hinges, book-ends and brackets to the binge are difficult; hitting the wall in nearly every chapter is a tough act to wind up unnoticeably. Occasionally, the mayhem wraps itself neatly:

Outside the club, I took off my mask and cape and threw them into the gutter. Hailed a cab. Got in. At a red light I saw two teenaged girls sitting in a shop doorway, having one of those conversations, smoking their jaws square. They had long mullet hairstyles dyed platinum and pink, brightest at the ends, glam-rock style, dyed over the same sink. As my cab pulled away I felt the smallness of myself and everyone I knew, even the city... These mundane things we do to each other, these miniscule effects we mistake for epic at the time.

Part of the equation for this sort of Days Of Wine & Roses tale is that the center cannot hold, and so of course it does not.

But Unsworth's grasp of the allure, the rapture of the unpredictable is what gets the right bloodflow going, the right synapses set for an evening on the town:

And there it was, as always, swinging my way: The Night. With its deals, promises and gauntlets, by turns many things: nemesis, ally co-conspirator, master of persuasion. It tosses its promises before you like scraps on the road, crumbs leading into the forest: pubs, parties, booze, drugs, dancing, karaoke ... Here, kitty. Here, kitty kitty. Whatever your peccadilloes, the Night knows.

It's about 1oo% certain that first novelists like Unsworth recoil and spit nails when they hear this-- but it can still be said: this is a first novel that shows a lot of potential; and future work will only benefit by this kind of fearless, high-wire first outing. Notable for daring and the very smoothness that can be brought to near-chaos in the proceedings. Pretty funny, too. ...more

flag 2 likes · Like · see review

Jan 31, 2016 Yashoda Sampath rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: contemporary-lit, feminist-fiction

Excuse me while I take a minute to let out a long breath. I first picked this one up after hearing an interview on NPR. The way Unsworth described the book - two young women with a complex, destructive friendship, tearing each other apart as one of them grows past the incessant drugs and partying - just sounded like a great time.

It was fantastic and funny, but then it got real. The book transforms from a sort of fun party romp into a sort of cautionary tale for how my life could have gone if I h ...more

flag 2 likes · Like · see review

May 31, 2015 Kristina rated it it was ok

Shelves: bookcon-2015, owned

It took me awhile to get into this book, almost half the book. I don't usually give up on books but I was tempted to quit until the story started picking up in the middle. I found the first half to be disjointed and it was difficult for me to get engaged with the story. Also, there were often references to things that I either didn't understand or were just not explained well, which was a little frustrating. The second half of the book was more cohesive and the story flowed better. I liked how t ...more

flag 2 likes · Like · see review

Dec 17, 2016 Maria Teresa rated it liked it · review of another edition

La reseña completa en http://inthenevernever.blogspot.com.e...

“Para mí, el fin de la embriaguez no era crear sino destruir esa parte de mí misma a la que le importaba si creaba o no”.

¿En qué momento nos volvemos adultos? ¿Cuándo es tiempo de dejar las fiestas, con sus resacas y el arrepentimiento del día después? En Animales de Emma Jane Unsworth, Laura, nuestra protagonista, se planteará éstas y muchas preguntas más. Al fin y al cabo, nadie dijo que la vida venía con instrucciones.

flag 2 likes · Like · see review

May 26, 2017 Colleen C rated it really liked it

This novel came into my life through a clever marketing scheme from Kramerbooks in DC. As part of their "blind date book" project, the book was neatly wrapped in plain brown paper with a short sentence description to entice a reader into buying the book sight unseen. I'm really pleased with my purchase! While the book flap might suggest a chick lit plot, Unsworth's solid writing and clear-sighted wisdom make this small British novel a worthwhile read. Would definitely recommend to a friend, espe ...more

flag 1 like · Like · see review

Apr 03, 2018 Sarah rated it it was ok

I put this on my list after reading in the New York Times that it was fresh and funny. I should know by now not to trust those book reviews written by randoms. Sometimes I feel like they will let anyone review a book. Well, I fell for it again.

Boring prose, boring/uncompelling narrator, annoying characters it's very difficult to care for...I'm just waiting for this one to fade out of my memory.

1.5 inebriated stars.

flag 1 like · Like · see review

May 17, 2015 Sam Still Reading rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Recommends it for: everyone

Recommended to Sam Still Reading by: UK bloggers

I’m really not sure where to start with this review. Animals for me was an incredibly brilliant read and I’m certain my musings on it will not do it justice. I’ve had this book on my radar since a number of my favourite UK bloggers read and recommended it on release last year and then I saw that the book has been longlisted for the Jerwood Fiction Uncovered prize. I think this was a good cue to read it, even though I’m in Australia (I feel like I’m in the UK sometimes though because the time dif I’m really not sure where to start with this review. Animals for me was an incredibly brilliant read and I’m certain my musings on it will not do it justice. I’ve had this book on my radar since a number of my favourite UK bloggers read and recommended it on release last year and then I saw that the book has been longlisted for the Jerwood Fiction Uncovered prize. I think this was a good cue to read it, even though I’m in Australia (I feel like I’m in the UK sometimes though because the time difference means I get to read all the morning tweets, plus I ‘attend’ university in the UK virtually). Anyway, I’m dithering. Just go and read the book. Yes, it is that good and I wanted to savour every moment of reading it. People might be fooled that because it’s relatively slim, it might be light-weight. It’s not – it’s thought provoking on a number of different fronts from friendship, love and working out what to do with your life.

The first thing is the cover. I love it. At first glance, it looks kind of hipster but you think that the girls on the front could just be your friends. I mean, they look relatively normal but fun – is that an old school camera? And then you read the awesome quote from Caitlin Moran that references Withnail and I and then you flick to the back where the first paragraph quote about being tied up has you in fits. There’s a reference to Girls and a mention of humour. Plus the book has book flaps. I’m in love.

Then I started reading. So many things to love about this book! The chapters have names and cool, funny names too like ‘The Cowpat and the Psychiatrist’. We immediately fall into (or should that be stumble into) the world of Laura and Tyler. Best friends, they live together and party together. Even though they’re beyond the ‘traditional’ age of hard-partying (29 and 32), these girls go HARD. Not just with alcohol but drugs too – wraps are casually swapped under the table and sometimes banknotes need to be washed after a long night. Drugs are mentioned casually as though they’re perfectly normal – which they are to Laura and Tyler. Laura’s fiancé, Jim isn’t keen on the heavy drinking (the kind where you’re unconscious for Sunday in its entirety) or the drugs. Laura’s parents don’t really seem to know and Tyler’s sister has given them up.

The rest of Laura’s life isn’t that interesting. Work in a call centre and living for nights out. She’s writing a novel about a priest who falls in love with a talking pig, but it’s more of a conversation piece. Her life is just waiting for the next text from Tyler – which bar and where. You might think that this sounds monotonous, but it’s not. Through the girls’ adventures and mishaps, we learn more about Laura and her previous friendships that fell away as she got to know Tyler. Her anxiety. Her working class girl done well school life and university success. Where did it all go wrong? The friendship which seemed light hearted at first starts to turn darker – is Tyler trying to break up Laura and Jim? Who is pulling the strings? Where will it stop? Will it stop?

Emma Jane Unsworth’s prose is a delight to read. It’s conversational, but loaded with deeper imagery and meanings. (It’s kind of like Mad Men depth in a book). Laura felt like a friend, who plonked herself down on the couch and started talking. I didn’t want her to leave; I couldn’t get enough of the writing and the story. (Plus, I liked that Laura did crazy stuff that I’ve never done – I got to live through her). Laura’s thoughts and feelings were all mixed up, kind of like we all feel from time to time. The finale was also well done, it stayed true to Laura’s nature, yet it was subtly uplifting.

Funny, crazy and an insta-love read, Animals is bluntly honest and realistic. Definitely worth reading – I’m hoping it makes the Fiction Uncovered short list!

http://samstillreading.wordpress.com ...more

flag 2 likes · Like · see review

Jun 01, 2014 Lisa Bentley rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Imagine what it would be like to have to constantly choose between your fiancé and your soul mate. This is the ever present predicament for Laura Joyce. She is engaged to Jim, dependable, clever and creative yet her best friend (and resident wild child) Tyler keeps pulling her to the dark (and arguably more fun) side.

The lifestyles chosen by Tyler and Jim couldn’t be more different and whilst Laura should be a natural balance between the both of them things just do not work out that way. When La Imagine what it would be like to have to constantly choose between your fiancé and your soul mate. This is the ever present predicament for Laura Joyce. She is engaged to Jim, dependable, clever and creative yet her best friend (and resident wild child) Tyler keeps pulling her to the dark (and arguably more fun) side.

The lifestyles chosen by Tyler and Jim couldn’t be more different and whilst Laura should be a natural balance between the both of them things just do not work out that way. When Laura is with Tyler she becomes party to a lifestyle of decadence; a Valhalla of drama, drink and drugs – all of which she overindulges in.

Then there is her life with Jim. She almost becomes a different person; Laura enjoys his stability and his assuredness; all the kind of things that Tyler despises, and she makes her feelings known.

You do get the sense that Laura feels that she is dependent on Tyler that she needs her yet as the story reaches its conclusion you realise it is the complete opposite. Tyler needs somebody, anybody really, just justify her antics. Animals shows us how friendships, even the closest say-things-with-a-look-and-finish-each-others-sentences friendships are not always the healthiest things. It also reminds us that growing up is not the harshest thing to ever happen.

Personally, I felt that Animals is a story about choices. I found myself urging Laura to make the right choice, to not go to another reckless party with Tyler or to not take any of the emotional blackmail that Jim threw her way and as the story develops we watch Laura unfold in front of us and grow into the most rational of the characters. She takes the better elements of Jim and Tyler and forms a better version of herself.

Overall, I would say this is one of the funniest books that I have read all year. I do feel that the translation of the humour comes from the fact that I identified with both Laura and Tyler due to their station in life. They both are growing older but aren’t quite sure how to actually grow up…gracefully at least. It is another literary triumph from Unsworth.

...more

flag 1 like · Like · see review

Jan 04, 2015 Clay rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Do we really grow up at the age of 18? Or maybe 21? I don't think so.

This book deals with two women around the age of thirty who are going to lots of partys, drinking a lot of booze and taking all kinds of drugs. They are not what you may consider a mature grownup person. I thought that the topic was really interesting and those Goodreads studies from last year showed me that I hardly read any books by female authors so I ordered Animals by Emma Jane Unsworth.

Now I am not sure how to review th ...more

flag 1 like · Like · see review

Apr 15, 2014 Kate Brown rated it really liked it · review of another edition

That difficult second novel proves to be anything but - Unsworth's 'Animals' has been hailed as girls behaving badly but this is more than a superficial booze and drug fuelled romp.

Yes, there is enough alcohol to give you a sympathetic hangover just reading the novel, (if this tale reaches the screen, good luck to anyone trying to keep pace drink for drink with Laura and Tyler as people do with 'Withnail'), but these self-charming women have depth and truth to them. Laura's a sympathetic narrat ...more

flag 1 like · Like · see review

Dec 15, 2015 Kristin rated it it was ok

Shelves: friendship, read-in-2016, girls, modern-life, relationships

Slight. Wanted to be like Girls or perhaps NW by Zadie Smith but lacked subtlety. I didn't quite buy Tyler or Laura, who were more or less just alcoholics who couldn't get it together. In a predictable fashion Laura eventually sees how bad all that journeying to the end of the night can be via Tyler and punishes herself by living a solitary and Spartan existence, but with her wine glass not too far from her hand. Tyler merely finds another patsy to lead around. She was an utter nihilist, but of ...more

flag 1 like · Like · see review

Mar 09, 2016 Freesiab (Bookish Review) rated it really liked it · review of another edition

I listened on audiobook and its narrated by Caitlin Moran and its brilliant! According to the back of the book I got a lot more than I was expecting! It's not just a story of best friend party girls, even if they are. It turns into a complex story about new stages in life (marriage, death and new beginnings) and how that can effect everything, it tap dances around addiction issues but it's fairly obvious it's there. It's about damaged women. This is NSFW or if you offend easily. Quite explicit. ...more

flag 1 like · Like · see review

Feb 21, 2016 Jaclyn Crupi rated it liked it · review of another edition

Bit of a heartbreaker. This book is completely up my alley: female friendship as the greatest love story. But these women are also toxic and complicated and real. They could also drink me under the table. So much drinking, so many drugs. Great writing, truly great. Young British and Irish authors are killing it at the moment. I loved reading a 30-something book instead of all the 20-something books that are around at the moment.

flag 1 like · Like · see review

Mar 28, 2015 Kwaku Osei-Afrifa rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Not my kind of book, they said. What do 'they' know? This book is incredibly well-written, funny, poetic in places, heartbreaking and accessible despite my not being the target audience. I defy anyone not to be swept along with Unsworth's protagonist Laura; to find parallels, have mental disagreements, and laugh with her.

flag 1 like · Like · see review

« previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 … next »

new topic
Discuss This Book

There are no discussion topics on this book yet. Be the first to start one »

Recommend It | Stats | Recent Status Updates

Readers Also Enjoyed

Genres

Fiction

61 users

Contemporary

15 users

Novels

8 users

Womens

7 users

European Literature > British Literature

6 users

See top shelves…

About Emma Jane Unsworth

Emma Jane Unsworth

48 followers

Lives in Manchester, England.

Books by Emma Jane Unsworth

Murmurations: An Anthology of Uncanny Stories about Birds

Congregation of Innocents: Five Curious Tales

More…

Fiction Deals

$14.99 $1.99
$9.99 $1.99
$4.49 $1.99
$4.99 $1.99
$4.99 $1.99
$3.49 $0.99
$4.99 $1.99
$3.99 $1.99
$11.95 $2.99
$3.99 $0.99
$3.49 $0.99
$12.99 $2.99
$11.49 $3.99
$4.99 $1.99
$13.99 $2.99
$7.99 $1.99
$3.99 $1.99
$4.99 $1.99
$4.99 $1.99
$4.99 $2.49
$9.99 $2.99
$7.99 $1.99
$4.99 $1.99
$4.99 $1.99
$3.74 $0.99
$4.99 $1.99
$7.99 $2.99
$4.99 $1.99
$4.99 $1.99
$10.74 $1.99
$9.99 $2.99
$5.67 $2.99
$9.99 $2.99
$6.99 $1.99
$4.99 $1.49
$4.99 $1.99
$4.99 $1.99
$8.99 $2.99
$8.99 $1.99
$4.49 $1.99
$8.99 $1.99
$8.74 $1.99
$1.99 $0.99
$5.99 $1.99
$3.99 $0.99
$4.99 $1.99
$11.99 $2.99
$9.99 $2.99
$3.99 $1.99
$7.99 $3.99
$9.99 $2.99
$11.99 $2.99

See All Goodreads Deals…

Trivia About Animals

No trivia or quizzes yet. Add some now »

Quotes from Animals

“These things you treasure, how often they're somebody else's trash.” — 7 likes

“Big cities comforted me: the cover, the chaos, the hollow sympathy of the architecture, the Tube lines snaking underground. London could swallow you up, in a good way. There were times when I'd been broken and being subsumed into a city had made me feel part of a whole again.” — 5 likes

More quotes…

See a Problem?

Preview — Animals by Emma Jane Unsworth

Animals

Get A Copy

Friend Reviews

Reader Q&A

Lists with This Book

Community Reviews

new topic
Discuss This Book

Readers Also Enjoyed

Genres

About Emma Jane Unsworth

Books by Emma Jane Unsworth

Fiction Deals

Trivia About Animals

Quotes from Animals