Animal People
Charlotte Wood

Animal People
Charlotte Wood
The hilarious, tender and heartbreaking story of a watershed day in the life of Stephen - aimless, unhappy and unfulfilled, this stiflingly hot December day is the day he has decided to dump his girlfriend. A sharply observed, 24-hour urban love story.
Review
by Jo Case, editor of Readings Monthly
Charlotte Wood’s The Children is among my favourite Australian novels: she’s just so good at the dynamics of relationships and minute social observations that give worlds of information about the people and places she captures. Woods’ writing reminds me of Helen Garner’s, in that it’s easy to read, but deceptively so: it’s rich with ideas and absolutely distinctive in its voice.
So, I was pretty excited to receive Animal People, which follows one (monumentally bad) day in the life of middle-aged man-child Stephen, as he prepares to break up with his girlfriend. Stephen was a character in The Children, and others moonlight here too, but you don’t need to have read that novel to thoroughly enjoy this one. This is at once a novel about Stephen, and his relationship with girlfriend Fiona and her two girls; and about urban life, with our relationships with animals (and all the absurdities those relationships often entail) as a recurrent theme. Stephen works at a zoo kiosk; he is determinedly unambitious and a bit hopeless. He often says the wrong thing in social situations, he unwittingly wears chef’s pants (because they’re comfy), and must duck the exasperated attentions and expectations of his eternally disappointed mother and sister. Yet, he’s an utterly lovable character – gauche and irritating, but big-hearted. The mystery at the core of this novel is why Stephen wants to break up with Fiona: their relationship is imperfect, yes, but it’s also affectionate, genuine and touching. The answer seems to lie in Stephen’s palpably human insecurities.
Animal People may centre on a pending break-up, but it’s a romantic comedy of sorts, with some wonderful observational humour – particularly at the children’s birthday party in the final third of the novel. Thoroughly recommended; it made me laugh and cry. What more could you ask for?
Jo Case is the editor of Readings Monthly and associate editor of Kill Your Darlings journal. You can follow her on Twiiter - @jocaseau.
This item is in-stock and will ship in 2-3 business days
Sign in or become a Readings Member to add this title to a wishlist.

Love and Hunger: Thoughts on the gift of food
'What's important is the fact of eating together - the gathering at the table, the conviviality.' Love & Hunger is a distillation of everything Charlotte Wood has learned over more than twenty years about cooking and the pleasures...
$29.99Buy now
Finding stock availability...

Animal People
Charlotte Wood takes a character from her bestselling book The Children and turns her unflinching gaze on him and his world in her extraordinary novel, Animal People. Set in Sydney over a single day, Animal People traces a...
$23.99Buy now
Finding stock availability...

Brothers and Sisters
Love, envy, resentment, regret, tenderness - established, bestselling and award-winning writers explore the tensions, alliances and affections between siblings in this dazzling collection of stories with contributions from Robert...
$23.99Buy now
Finding stock availability...

The Children
You bring your children up to escape sorrow. You spend your best years trying to stop them witnessing it on television, in you, in your neighbours' faces. Then you realise, slowly, that there is no escape, that they must steer...
$22.99Buy now
Finding stock availability...

The Submerged Cathedral
Spanning many years, travelling across Australia's vast continent and through some of Europe's great cities, this book is a beguiling, heartbreaking story of paradise and the fall, of sacrifice and atonement and of sisterly love...
$19.99Buy now
Finding stock availability...