When We Were Animals by Joshua Gaylord
My rating: 5/5 cats
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 pristine and unfolded, and all the things i wanted to remember to quote or reference are lost to the world forever. #nerdworldproblems*
all i can say is that this is one of the best and most original coming-of-age novels i have ever read. it is told from the perspective of an adult woman named lumen looking back on her past – on the bizarre and violent rituals of her hometown that she’s left behind in order to become what she is now – a responsible, devoted wife and mother, now going by “ann,” surrounded by the banal and comfortable routine of american suburbia. but still waters run deep and bloody, and her secrets are atypical.
lumen comes from a small and isolated community in which teenagers succumb to something known as the “breach.” it can strike at any time during puberty, and its duration fluctuates with the individual, but it happens during every full moon. under the effects of the breach, adolescents run wild, committing shameless, gleeful riots of violence, vandalism, and wild sexual activities. more than simple high-spirited abandon, these are episodes of irresistible compulsion and an unavoidable rite of passage. during the full moon’s cycle, doors are locked and streets are emptied except for the wilding teens, who frequently stumble home after their nocturnal adventures naked, bruised, trailing clouds of excess and conquest.
and lumen wants no part of it.
lumen is a good girl – devoted to her father and the mythology of her deceased mother. she has been told that her mother is the only person to never have gone through the breach, and she is stubbornly resisting her own transition and its accompanying unseemly behaviors. gaylord’s depiction of female adolescence is eerily spot-on in its treatment of menarche, sexuality, and lumen’s attraction to two different boys, who represent two different paths. and the broader depiction of the adolescent experience is also handled beautifully. here, the typical teenage impulses of rebellion, self-destructiveness and selfishness are amplified in glorious gothic fabulism – a howling and wild-eyed rumspringa, both sanctioned and feared by the older residents, who have been there and remember both the freedom and the taste of its blood.
this is more than mere allegory. it is much broader than the “chaos that manifests when rules are suspended” theme of Lord of the Flies and much more than the simplistic sexual symbolism in things like Twilight, with its tides of temptation and repression and control. and if all that weren’t enough, he slaps a whole other layer on top of this in the shape of family/town history filled with seeeecrets and an explosive ending that will compel lumen to flee her town and her past and eventually land her in the carefully domestic good housekeeping stage of her life.
it’s so much, but it reads effortlessly, as though it’s easy to create an entirely new mythos illuminating the darkness of adolescent development.
i recently learned that he is no longer married to Megan Abbott, which makes me very sad, even though it’s not like i know them or anything. but it just made sense to me. their books do the same kinds of things very well – they both write lyrically gritty evocations of adolescence, particularly female adolescence, that celebrate all the dark emotional tides and turbulence in a way that few other authors manage to pull off convincingly. i hope their books can remain friends, at least. this book would also be really good friends with Bones & All – both are sort of coming-of-age novels with a dark fantasy bent, although this one has sharper teeth. which is ironic considering that one is about cannibalism, but it’s not handled with the same kind of ferocity on display here. you and this book in a dark alley?? this book would cut you.
i wish i had quotes for you here; there were so many excellent, poignant moments i had prepared to share, but i’m too dispirited to try to track them down again, although i will definitely reread this book. for now, you want quotes, you gotta find them yourself. read this book, and check out his zombie-but-not-really books under his Alden Bell pen name: The Reapers Are the Angels and Exit Kingdom.
i love love love this book
*hashtag shamelessly stolen from kelly
