You're an Animal: A Novel

(Hardback)

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A kaleidoscopic novel about a quartet of misfits on the run that interrogates trauma, healing, love, and what it means to truly belong-from the acclaimed author of White Fur It's springtime in Oklahoma and Ernie, an outcast in a group of outcasts, feels uneasy. The whole decrepit compound where Ernie and his fellow oddballs were crashing has been on edge ever since a teenager named Coral arrived, unceremoniously abandoned by her family one afternoon. Adding to the mystery, Coral doesn't say a word. Ever. When a drug lab explosion burns the compound to the ground, Ernie, Coral, and adrenaline-fueled biker couple Staci and Ray escape on a pair of motorcycles. Shaky with fear, the four strangers find a rundown house in rural Texas- a place to stay, they tell themselves, for now. Yet to their surprise, each takes steps towards new beginnings- planting seeds and slowly, uncertainly, over the course of months, forming a quirky but genuine family. At the heart of their new home is Coral, whose silence only amplifies her strange, undefinable power. But when the law bears down on them in the fire's terrible aftermath, the group must confront the consequences of such unlikely love--the sort found between lonely, eccentric people-and their haven becomes a suddenly dangerous place where yet again the only choice looks like metamorphosis. A gentle, cautiously hopeful ode to the other, You're an Animal is a startling story that brings tenderness and grace to those who are left out, to those who opt out, and to the animal in us all.

Reviews

A spellbinding novelthat cracks open the carapaces people build in defense of a grinding existence in order to plunge, withdazzling insight, into the gooey, frail, and lonely human interior. Youre an Animal gorgeously weaves the indispensable bonds of a misfit family as they findrespite in one another against a world determined to crush them.Funny, smart, and heart-wrenchingly tender, Libaire creates a delicious universe at a constant brink of collapse,a universe I never wanted to see end.Gerardo Smano Crdova, author of Monstrilio

Jardine Libaire writes with a dark and magical style that brings to mind the work of Denis Johnson and Mary Gaitskill. . . . Her novel Youre an Animal is a rich and luminous story of love, yearning, motorcycles, and a cheetah named Slash. . . .Completely original, utterly unforgettable . . . I loved this book.Amanda Eyre Ward, author of The Jetsetters

Youre an Animal isa fast and perilous ride towardthe center of what makes us humanin the most desperate of circumstances. . . . Jardine Libaire has delivered four characters on a quest for belonging that I will never forget, brimming over with unexpected intimacies, adventures, and most of all, the wild desires of the heart.. . . Roving and mysterious, this novel is hot to the touch.Chelsea Bieker, author of Godshot and Heartbroke

Absolutely freaking breathtaking . . . Libaires Youre an Animal is the compelling story of four misfits in a gritty Texas landscape. . . . This will be the best love story you read this year, trust me!Elin Hilderbrand, author of The Five-Star Weekend

Youre an Animal is shaped like a scimitar, like a scythe: a long, exquisitely curved blade, polished and carefully honed, and with a tip so sharp itll take you apart. . . .It swings through its story swiftly and surely,unsentimental without being gratuitously bleak, thoughtful and empathetic about lives which are usually overromanticized or ignored. . . .Its stranger than you expect it to be, too, sudden in its turns, shocking in its progression, and yet, not just plausible, but seemingly inevitable. Let it be inevitable, too, that you read it.Jim Lewis, author of Ghosts of New York

For fans of Mary Gaitskill and Ocean Vuong, a novel which is intimate, poetic. and raw . . .Libaireswriting shimmers off the page. . . . Youre an Animal takes you on a journey you wont soon forget, remindingus of the bonds that can both break and restore us.Alyson Richman, co-author of The Thread Collectors

Author Bio

Jardine Libaire is the author of White Fur and Here Kitty Kitty. She is a graduate of the University of Michigan MFA program and lives between Austin, Texas and Joshua Tree, California.