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Large Animals
A Buzzfeed Best Fiction Book of 2017 • An Entropy magazine Best Book of 2017
“Jess Arndt’s Large Animals is 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 Award–winning author of The 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.
Arndt’s subjects are canny observers even while they remain dangerously blind to their own truest impulses. Often unnamed, these narrators challenge the limits of language―collectively, 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 Animals pitches toward the heart, pushing at all our most tender parts―our sex organs, our geography, our words, and the tendons and nerves of our culture.
“Jess Arndt’s Large Animals is 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 Award–winning author of The 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.
Arndt’s subjects are canny observers even while they remain dangerously blind to their own truest impulses. Often unnamed, these narrators challenge the limits of language―collectively, 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 Animals pitches toward the heart, pushing at all our most tender parts―our sex organs, our geography, our words, and the tendons and nerves of our culture.
144 pages, Paperback
First published May 9, 2017
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2102 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 76 reviews
July 28, 2017
Full disclosure: I won a copy of this book in a Goodreads giveaway.
This was ... interesting. It's pretty straight up literary fiction, which is usually not my reading material of choice. So there are probably all kinds of subtleties and whatnot that escaped me. This is a short story collection, more character studies and mood pieces than tightly-plotted thrillers. It kept reminding me of William S. Burroughs, not necessarily in terms of subject matter, but just that sense of reading jewel-like fragments and hallucinatory colors. There's a sense of heat and humidity to these stories. Arndt's characters seem restless, outsiders, uncomfortable in their own skins--at least some of them are transgender, in fact. Reading these stories felt like poking my brain with a stick, but not in a bad way. Whether you like this book or not, it will mess with your perception of reality. Don't say I didn't warn you ...
This was ... interesting. It's pretty straight up literary fiction, which is usually not my reading material of choice. So there are probably all kinds of subtleties and whatnot that escaped me. This is a short story collection, more character studies and mood pieces than tightly-plotted thrillers. It kept reminding me of William S. Burroughs, not necessarily in terms of subject matter, but just that sense of reading jewel-like fragments and hallucinatory colors. There's a sense of heat and humidity to these stories. Arndt's characters seem restless, outsiders, uncomfortable in their own skins--at least some of them are transgender, in fact. Reading these stories felt like poking my brain with a stick, but not in a bad way. Whether you like this book or not, it will mess with your perception of reality. Don't say I didn't warn you ...
January 21, 2018
I really expected to like this more than I did, with central topics like identity, gender, bodies. There are blurbs on the back from many authors I like - Maggie Nelson, Michelle Tea, Justin Torres. I do struggle with short stories, so your mileage may vary. I'd like to read the next work by this author and see where it goes.
But hooray, I read a book on my shelves!
But hooray, I read a book on my shelves!
October 22, 2017
I heard a lot of hype about Jess Arndt’s collection of short stories, Large Animals, that centers the body, and was excited for its arrival. It did everything that was promised—but turned out just not to really be my thing.
Arndt’s collection confronts the weirdness of having a body. Arndt digs into gender dysphoria, into illness and parasites, into transness, queerness, and the struggles of being a biological being in our world. The characters speak with an ambiguity that allows queerness to flourish in a formal way, in a way that refuses to be binary and avoids labels. All those are good things, and they’re why I pushed through this collection to the end. In some of her stories, that ambiguity and centering of the body results in absurd and darkly almost-funny tales. My favorite was “Together,” where a parasite haunting a couple mirrors their slow falling apart, the main character’s self-destructive tendencies flowing to the front of their struggles. But I also really appreciated “Moon Colonies,” where a gambler hits it big in Atlantic City; “Containers,” a short story that packed tons of great social commentary into just a few short pages; and “Large Animals,” where the main character sees “walri” in their room at night.
This collection was an “It’s not you, it’s me,” problem. From the first few pages, I knew I’d delved into a kind of story that I recognized and didn’t personally like: the semi-vulgar bodily tale of sex and failings where the main tone is some sort of shame or confusion, and where the language is heavily pretentious (not necessarily in a bad way). There’s nothing wrong with those, and I would also say that Large Animals was obviously going to have the explicit descriptions and bodily absurdity, and I was ready for that—but I find stories with that heavy secondhand embarrassment, that physical and emotional shame, difficult and unenjoyable to read. Maybe the point is for me to feel uncomfortable, but it’s never been a kind of story that I’ve wanted to read, and so I found some of these stories hard to get through and enjoy.
Arndt’s collection confronts the weirdness of having a body. Arndt digs into gender dysphoria, into illness and parasites, into transness, queerness, and the struggles of being a biological being in our world. The characters speak with an ambiguity that allows queerness to flourish in a formal way, in a way that refuses to be binary and avoids labels. All those are good things, and they’re why I pushed through this collection to the end. In some of her stories, that ambiguity and centering of the body results in absurd and darkly almost-funny tales. My favorite was “Together,” where a parasite haunting a couple mirrors their slow falling apart, the main character’s self-destructive tendencies flowing to the front of their struggles. But I also really appreciated “Moon Colonies,” where a gambler hits it big in Atlantic City; “Containers,” a short story that packed tons of great social commentary into just a few short pages; and “Large Animals,” where the main character sees “walri” in their room at night.
This collection was an “It’s not you, it’s me,” problem. From the first few pages, I knew I’d delved into a kind of story that I recognized and didn’t personally like: the semi-vulgar bodily tale of sex and failings where the main tone is some sort of shame or confusion, and where the language is heavily pretentious (not necessarily in a bad way). There’s nothing wrong with those, and I would also say that Large Animals was obviously going to have the explicit descriptions and bodily absurdity, and I was ready for that—but I find stories with that heavy secondhand embarrassment, that physical and emotional shame, difficult and unenjoyable to read. Maybe the point is for me to feel uncomfortable, but it’s never been a kind of story that I’ve wanted to read, and so I found some of these stories hard to get through and enjoy.
August 15, 2017
I loved this. It was so funny and so strange and so brilliant and intense. Highly recommend.
October 14, 2017
there's this kind of overblown awkward/itchy/inherently uncomfortable with being alive narrator that i associate with some 19th c ppl i dunno like dostoevsky's underground man or some gogol or like some french guys too and then again a mid-20th c donald barthelme type thing that has just recently been revived in a particular timely/queer way, and i really got that in these stories! god i love that amy sillman cover and honestly the acknowledgments were just like a collective of all my favorite people. i really felt for these narrators, and their extreme desire to connect combined with maybe even more extreme revulsion and fear of connecting. there was a kind of pervasive body hatred/horror that sometimes spilled over into feeling actually misogynistic to me in a way i couldn't quite put my finger on? but honestly i think that feeling was just misreading on my part and something that might be fruitful for me to revisit because there was also a kind of overall narrative empathy or gentleness even holding these self-shaming narrators.
June 10, 2021
DNF page 65. This is a book written by someone more concerned about indulging their own weirdness than making art or statements about gender, sex, and bodies. Large Animals is esoteric in the worst way. The stories are inscrutable and aren't pleasurable to read. Any writer who uses adjectives like olympically and shittily needs to work on their craft, and the fact that prominent queer writers blurbed this book says more about the author's ability to network and make connections than the care and consideration she gives her writing. Skip this book.
January 23, 2022
I almost didn't finish, but the completist in me pushed on. It often felt like more of a challenge to read than an enjoyable experience.
May 7, 2018
I wanted to really like this book but a lot of the content escaped me. I found this along with a laundry list of must read books and while I enjoyed the writing, a lot of the short stories didn't connect. I'll read a novel by Jess Arndt but a short story collection is not the ideal showcase for an author. One or two short stories might connect but others will be wasted on readers. I have this pegged at 3.5 which seems to be the current tracking on Goodreads. I hope Jess Arndt brings out a novel worthy of her talents as this book only touches the tip of the iceberg, there is talent to be found here but not enough to recommend this as one of the must read books of its year.
May 30, 2017
So good! A lot of flowing through forms of physicality, but it always felt rooted, I dunno, very "wakeful." Also extremely funny.
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September 3, 2020I did not vibe with this at all so I'm not going to rate it. I wanna support queer voices and, if the stories are written chronologically, then Arndt's potential could possibly grow into something quite great which is hopeful (I can still be hopeful when writing reviews). If they're not, er, some speak to me more than others.
The writing felt somewhat rookie, in the (annoying) way that there was a mediocre adjective attached to every verb. I felt a difference in how comfortable the stories were unfolding, between the first, middle and last piece in this collection. The adjectives being used caught a certain flare that felt deliberate and effective in working with the tone of the scene. The tone of which usually involved alcohol and probably good haircuts too. I got tired of that quick.
The writing was very unclear to me. There wasn't much clarity in the line between fiction and/or if it was a personal. This line can be worked with of course but the voices felt repetitive in all the stories, and I didn't connect with them at any point.
There was one occasion where the queerness and the sense of bodies having such an important role in the stories, linked up really nicely. I'm not sure what kind of queerness I felt it was (or I was in response to this). Perhaps something about how bodies are held in queer spaces (or in each individual or relevant queer mind) as more than just holding us up, but filled with tales, traumas, hopes, expression, so much self being upheld in these forms of ours.
Someone said something about Kafka in a review somewhere and I don't recall being that into Kafka either. But if this was because of a large animal in the title story and said insect showing up, then i guess they were spot on.
Glad to have read it. Curious how to constructively write poor reviews or read constructively despite not liking it. Review coins to be gained here. Queer book club appreciation regardless.
The writing felt somewhat rookie, in the (annoying) way that there was a mediocre adjective attached to every verb. I felt a difference in how comfortable the stories were unfolding, between the first, middle and last piece in this collection. The adjectives being used caught a certain flare that felt deliberate and effective in working with the tone of the scene. The tone of which usually involved alcohol and probably good haircuts too. I got tired of that quick.
The writing was very unclear to me. There wasn't much clarity in the line between fiction and/or if it was a personal. This line can be worked with of course but the voices felt repetitive in all the stories, and I didn't connect with them at any point.
There was one occasion where the queerness and the sense of bodies having such an important role in the stories, linked up really nicely. I'm not sure what kind of queerness I felt it was (or I was in response to this). Perhaps something about how bodies are held in queer spaces (or in each individual or relevant queer mind) as more than just holding us up, but filled with tales, traumas, hopes, expression, so much self being upheld in these forms of ours.
Someone said something about Kafka in a review somewhere and I don't recall being that into Kafka either. But if this was because of a large animal in the title story and said insect showing up, then i guess they were spot on.
Glad to have read it. Curious how to constructively write poor reviews or read constructively despite not liking it. Review coins to be gained here. Queer book club appreciation regardless.
June 25, 2022
3/5
At moments, this book is so excellent. Jess Arndt has some of the wildest turns of phrases and the most bold, bizarre imagery. The way they use metaphor to describe even simple moments is just delightful. But here lies the problem for me. Sometimes, the heavy metaphor and descriptions that are so detached from reality left me scrabbling for any grasp of sense and narrative. At times I felt unmoored. I really struggled to stay in the book because I just couldn’t anchor myself to anything. Perhaps these whispy, dream-like stupor of short stories were intentionally so, but if that’s true, I don’t think it worked.
I’ll definitely come back to this book, as a writer, to revel in the way Jess Arndt uses language. But I doubt I’ll be coming back for the stories.
At moments, this book is so excellent. Jess Arndt has some of the wildest turns of phrases and the most bold, bizarre imagery. The way they use metaphor to describe even simple moments is just delightful. But here lies the problem for me. Sometimes, the heavy metaphor and descriptions that are so detached from reality left me scrabbling for any grasp of sense and narrative. At times I felt unmoored. I really struggled to stay in the book because I just couldn’t anchor myself to anything. Perhaps these whispy, dream-like stupor of short stories were intentionally so, but if that’s true, I don’t think it worked.
I’ll definitely come back to this book, as a writer, to revel in the way Jess Arndt uses language. But I doubt I’ll be coming back for the stories.
February 2, 2021
A strange collection. I liked the poetry of it but as short stories they felt too restless and unreconciled for me. I was reminded of Julio Cortazar and Carmen Maria Machado, and I think if you like them, you'd like this !
September 29, 2017
Physical and brashly queer embodied. Totally strange and a trip, but also relatable and funny. Some stories I felt more strongly than others.
April 24, 2021
Sometimes I liked it, sometimes I thought it might be trying a little too hard. Something about it felt a little Bukowski-like.
August 25, 2022
"Wine fermentation," the expert says, "happens when all of the individual grapes explode against the walls of their bodies."
How nice, I think, for them.'
How nice, I think, for them.'
January 9, 2025
(2.5) first two stories are really solid but after that point it started to feel like i was reading the same story over and over 💔 each narrator just felt like the same person in slightly different situations with almost identical themes, and maybe that was intentional but i just felt a bit bored by the end. however there are some really beautiful passages and i wouldn’t rule out reading more of arndt’s work in future!
May 10, 2017
I was struck by how relentlessly honest 'Large Animals' was. With every new story, I learned more about the author based on her experiences and settings. The world building was so well done that the surroundings often felt like characters themselves. Everything just felt so real, from secret confessions to a passerby on the street. The collection's strength lies in Arndt's voice and ability to share her raw emotions with the reader. While the words were coarse at time, they were necessary to push the narrative forward. Some lines really stuck with me, so I'd gladly read another book of Jess'.
August 30, 2020
I did not enjoy this book.
I felt ostracized all the way through my reading, like I was being punished for something the characters couldn’t have. The discussion around their bodies was the only aspect I actually liked, with phrases that really stuck with me (”the wasteland of nothing” in Jeff being a particular one, but there were more), and in general the feeling of slipping away from oneself, of not knowing who you are, of not understanding the messages you were getting from and giving at the same time to other people; the disembowelment of the self is the only clear aspect of all the short stories, and the best part of them.
I’m ok with not clear, I’m more than ok with metaphorical, ambivalent messages, but most of the time I felt no substance behind it, and I began feeling more frustrated with each story. And maybe it’s brilliant, because after all it’s about people who want but did not know what exactly, so the frustration is written in them in a way, and the fact that I’m feeling this way is a kudos to the author, but honestly? At the end of my reading I don’t really care, because I had stopped caring halfway through and really, it is the last thing I want from a book.
I felt ostracized all the way through my reading, like I was being punished for something the characters couldn’t have. The discussion around their bodies was the only aspect I actually liked, with phrases that really stuck with me (”the wasteland of nothing” in Jeff being a particular one, but there were more), and in general the feeling of slipping away from oneself, of not knowing who you are, of not understanding the messages you were getting from and giving at the same time to other people; the disembowelment of the self is the only clear aspect of all the short stories, and the best part of them.
I’m ok with not clear, I’m more than ok with metaphorical, ambivalent messages, but most of the time I felt no substance behind it, and I began feeling more frustrated with each story. And maybe it’s brilliant, because after all it’s about people who want but did not know what exactly, so the frustration is written in them in a way, and the fact that I’m feeling this way is a kudos to the author, but honestly? At the end of my reading I don’t really care, because I had stopped caring halfway through and really, it is the last thing I want from a book.
April 15, 2017
This was a book of short stories of which I did manage to read most of them. Personally I found this book difficult to read. The main character in each story was confused about his/her surroundings and what was going on and as such so was the reader. There seemed to be no beginning or end to the stories, you were just dumped into the middle of a confusing story and just as abruptly it would end. I ended up abandoning this book at a veterans hospital and hoped the next reader could make better sense of it than I did.
July 26, 2021
These stories are like cubist prose poem renditions of stories, in which feelings are loose associates of facts, presented in no particular order. I believe this is an interesting, well-written, and important (experimental) work. I read every page and did my best with it, like taking the full course of antibiotics. I cannot recommend it, though, because it was so not for me as to be infuriating. You get through a story and the mystery is never revealed so many times that it's clear the purpose is this feeling of wondering if you missed the important part. It's like a punishment.
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May 5, 2021This wasn't really for me, which sucks since I'd been looking forward to reading it for a really long time. While I loved everything the blurb promised this book was about, the stories themselves failed to elaborate on those themes for me.
There are definitely people out there who'd enjoy this but alas the stories were a little too disjointed even for me.
There are definitely people out there who'd enjoy this but alas the stories were a little too disjointed even for me.
November 26, 2017
I won this through Goodreads Giveaways.
This was more of a 2.5 rating.
I really couldn't get into this book. I was so confused for a lot of it. Maybe I'll like it if I read it again when I'm older.
This was more of a 2.5 rating.
I really couldn't get into this book. I was so confused for a lot of it. Maybe I'll like it if I read it again when I'm older.
March 27, 2018
A lot of good lines, but the stories didn't feel fully realized.
July 25, 2018
Confusing, pretentious and hard to read. As soon as I thought I'd gotten a slight grip onto a story, it would slip away from me. Call me old-fashioned, but I like to read books that I can understand.
May 17, 2019
The stories all started out like they would be interesting but then devolved into babble that you can’t comprehend. No direction in the stories. I almost didn’t finish the book altogether.
July 28, 2020
2,5 stars
This was so weird, I think I missed a lot of hidden meanings. I still don't know what most of them were about.
Weird weird.
This was so weird, I think I missed a lot of hidden meanings. I still don't know what most of them were about.
Weird weird.
October 1, 2020
My queer, nonbinary self just did not enjoy this book. Far too much "isn't it weird having a body?" shit; not enough actual plot in any of the stories. Disappointing.
April 24, 2018
For the first time in my life I paid extra to have legroom in an airplane. I was getting over a cold, but also I wanted to stretch out and fully enjoy Large Animals by Jess Arndt. You see, Jess Arndt is like a queer Kafka who perambulates the surreal container of the body by dealing almost wholly in non-sequiturs.
Many a great story in Large Animals, Arndt's debut collection, has a strong resemblance to Kafka’s shorter fiction -- which, unlike his longer work that deals with bureaucracy, are rather works of gorgeously, painfully strange portraiture in which one is irredeemably ill-made for the world. Arndt is fond of creating a constellation of small desires for her characters that are hilariously specific, and as with Kafka’s shorter work, her stories turn on the heel of making one seemingly insignificant obsession lie in wait and then ambush the biggest questions of selfhood.
However.
There is no question Jess Arndt would have made Kafka blush.
To wit: in "Third Arm," an English Professor drives around touching herself while avoiding her love life and pretending to be largely endowed. “I only liked jerking off while driving -- otherwise the sincerity of the act completely killed me,” she quips. This unnamed character sees healers at the Authentic Process Healing Institute, and also, she carries a bit of unspecified gore in alcohol in a jar.
Arndt’s stories are built like this—in as many compelling directions as possible. But invariably, one direction rises above the others. The bit of gore -- described as apricot-sized, mostly made of fat, and with darker globs -- finally turns allegorical. As you are busy ticking off options for what the jar could possibly contain (an amygdala? definitely an organ?), Arndt continues breathlessly: “It made me think of a bar I’d been to near Joshua Tree.” It is here where you get an answer of a different kind as the unnamed character recounts what she told the bartender: “Scientists have proven that matter doesn’t exist. You see a foot but when you get past all that skin bone squishy stuff et cetera, nothing’s really there,” which is a subterfuge lobbed at the mysterious jar, but also to the feeling of being mismatched with your body which artfully haunts this entire collection.
Arndt’s imagination is amusing and far-flung. Her characters are amorphous and refusing of a gender binary, and the construct of each story is a delight. In Together, two lovers share an STD, in Jeff a misheard name introduction (Jess to Jeff) drives a low-key identity crisis. In the title story, Large Animals, a man who is perceived to be a lesbian whiles away his time in the desert where Walruses seemingly materialize by his bed at night. (Only one story in this collection was a miss for me, Shadow of an Ape, which details the rather confusing ordeal of a man in 1860’s San Francisco gold rush.)
There are some eerily stunning sentences in this collection, nonetheless, foremost of all in Moon Colonies, the opening story where a threesome haunt the Vegas strip chasing after myriad temporary playthings:
In the morning the waves glowed like uranium, a deep sweat coming up off the seafloor. It was beautiful but it was nerve-racking too, being that close to the future.
The great unresolved discomfort of perception and body punctuates the landscape in all the stories in Large Animals, and each character finds themselves at the mercy of a conniving version of the self that is overpowering, stacks the deck, and ruins the possibility of what is precisely most desired. In this sense, Large Animals is a collection of humanity reaching toward what might be graspable but remains painfully out of reach. At one point, Arndt writes:
Then it’s spring break. I go on a wine tour. We stare into the big sweaty vats of red. “Wine fermentation,” the expert says, “happens when all of the individual grapes explode against the walls of their bodies.” How nice, I think, for them.
This is a delightful read, perfect for the burgeoning summer, where the fact of the body is always at odds with the life of the mind.
Many a great story in Large Animals, Arndt's debut collection, has a strong resemblance to Kafka’s shorter fiction -- which, unlike his longer work that deals with bureaucracy, are rather works of gorgeously, painfully strange portraiture in which one is irredeemably ill-made for the world. Arndt is fond of creating a constellation of small desires for her characters that are hilariously specific, and as with Kafka’s shorter work, her stories turn on the heel of making one seemingly insignificant obsession lie in wait and then ambush the biggest questions of selfhood.
However.
There is no question Jess Arndt would have made Kafka blush.
To wit: in "Third Arm," an English Professor drives around touching herself while avoiding her love life and pretending to be largely endowed. “I only liked jerking off while driving -- otherwise the sincerity of the act completely killed me,” she quips. This unnamed character sees healers at the Authentic Process Healing Institute, and also, she carries a bit of unspecified gore in alcohol in a jar.
Arndt’s stories are built like this—in as many compelling directions as possible. But invariably, one direction rises above the others. The bit of gore -- described as apricot-sized, mostly made of fat, and with darker globs -- finally turns allegorical. As you are busy ticking off options for what the jar could possibly contain (an amygdala? definitely an organ?), Arndt continues breathlessly: “It made me think of a bar I’d been to near Joshua Tree.” It is here where you get an answer of a different kind as the unnamed character recounts what she told the bartender: “Scientists have proven that matter doesn’t exist. You see a foot but when you get past all that skin bone squishy stuff et cetera, nothing’s really there,” which is a subterfuge lobbed at the mysterious jar, but also to the feeling of being mismatched with your body which artfully haunts this entire collection.
Arndt’s imagination is amusing and far-flung. Her characters are amorphous and refusing of a gender binary, and the construct of each story is a delight. In Together, two lovers share an STD, in Jeff a misheard name introduction (Jess to Jeff) drives a low-key identity crisis. In the title story, Large Animals, a man who is perceived to be a lesbian whiles away his time in the desert where Walruses seemingly materialize by his bed at night. (Only one story in this collection was a miss for me, Shadow of an Ape, which details the rather confusing ordeal of a man in 1860’s San Francisco gold rush.)
There are some eerily stunning sentences in this collection, nonetheless, foremost of all in Moon Colonies, the opening story where a threesome haunt the Vegas strip chasing after myriad temporary playthings:
In the morning the waves glowed like uranium, a deep sweat coming up off the seafloor. It was beautiful but it was nerve-racking too, being that close to the future.
The great unresolved discomfort of perception and body punctuates the landscape in all the stories in Large Animals, and each character finds themselves at the mercy of a conniving version of the self that is overpowering, stacks the deck, and ruins the possibility of what is precisely most desired. In this sense, Large Animals is a collection of humanity reaching toward what might be graspable but remains painfully out of reach. At one point, Arndt writes:
Then it’s spring break. I go on a wine tour. We stare into the big sweaty vats of red. “Wine fermentation,” the expert says, “happens when all of the individual grapes explode against the walls of their bodies.” How nice, I think, for them.
This is a delightful read, perfect for the burgeoning summer, where the fact of the body is always at odds with the life of the mind.
August 24, 2020
I always find it harder to review short story collections as each individual one can differ so greatly. Large Animals is the same, which isn't a reflection on the author whatsoever, it's just a feature of short story collections I think!
My own favourite was the first story (I've forgotten the name!)- I would looove a whole novel based around the same characters and setting, but equally felt it was perfect in itself. There were some other particularly fantastic stories, but that one was my stand-out!
Regardless of my personal interest or enjoyment of each story, every single one was incredibly well-written, a massive testament to Arendt's skill. In addition, I found all of the characters to be really compelling, and I wanted to know more about all of them.
Given the nature of the work as a whole, being about bodies, and particularly about queer/trans bodies, I kind of liked that not all of them felt relevant or understandable to me. I think twelve people could really easily read this and each connect with a different story, and see their particular favourite as being highly important to them. It feels like an apt metaphor for bodies as a whole, in it's own way, which feels highly fitting for the themes.
Large Animals draws heavily on metaphor and imagery, which was great in itself, and particularly good in relation to the theme of bodies. I also really liked that almost all (if not all?) were portrayed as queer in some way, it was great to read a collection of stories like that!
I think what Arendt does, more than anything, is queers the short story form. This is a new and exciting collection, and it's made me eager to go out and seek more queer fiction that queers fiction. I'm super excited to see what else Arendt writes!!
My own favourite was the first story (I've forgotten the name!)- I would looove a whole novel based around the same characters and setting, but equally felt it was perfect in itself. There were some other particularly fantastic stories, but that one was my stand-out!
Regardless of my personal interest or enjoyment of each story, every single one was incredibly well-written, a massive testament to Arendt's skill. In addition, I found all of the characters to be really compelling, and I wanted to know more about all of them.
Given the nature of the work as a whole, being about bodies, and particularly about queer/trans bodies, I kind of liked that not all of them felt relevant or understandable to me. I think twelve people could really easily read this and each connect with a different story, and see their particular favourite as being highly important to them. It feels like an apt metaphor for bodies as a whole, in it's own way, which feels highly fitting for the themes.
Large Animals draws heavily on metaphor and imagery, which was great in itself, and particularly good in relation to the theme of bodies. I also really liked that almost all (if not all?) were portrayed as queer in some way, it was great to read a collection of stories like that!
I think what Arendt does, more than anything, is queers the short story form. This is a new and exciting collection, and it's made me eager to go out and seek more queer fiction that queers fiction. I'm super excited to see what else Arendt writes!!
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