Filthy Animals
CBC Books | | Posted: October 1, 2021 7:16 PM | Last Updated: October 1, 2021
Brandon Taylor
In the series of linked stories at the heart of Filthy Animals, set among young creatives in the American Midwest, a young man treads delicate emotional waters as he navigates a series of sexually fraught encounters with two dancers in an open relationship, forcing him to weigh his vulnerabilities against his loneliness. In other stories, a young woman battles with the cancers draining her body and her family; menacing undercurrents among a group of teenagers explode in violence on a winter night; a little girl tears through a house like a tornado, driving her babysitter to the brink; and couples feel out the jagged edges of connection, comfort and cruelty. (From Riverhead Books)
From the book
Lionel had been out of the hospital for only a few days when the potluck invitation came.
The host lived in the first-floor apartment of a Near East Side duplex separated by a tiny cul-de-sac from the wide-bottomed cottages that fronted Lake Monona.
Noise of an undifferentiated party variety drifted out into the deep blue cold, meeting Lionel under the sunroom window, where he had stopped to peer inside. He felt powerfully anonymous out there in the dark, looking in on all of them. That he did not recognize anyone, apart from the host, was at once a comfort and a warning.
A rectangle of pale light unfurled down the stairs as the host pressed the door open on screeching hinges.
"S--t, it's cold out here. You walk all this way?"
Lionel climbed the stairs and tried to arrange his stiff face into a friendly expression, the effort of which made his scalp tingle. He had walked only part of the way, about ten minutes in all. The bus had dropped him on the other side of Orton Park. When the host realized that Lionel wasn't going to answer, he said, "Well, you're right on time."
From Potluck in Filthy Animals by Brandon Taylor ©2021. Published by Riverhead Books.