Taddeo shows restraint in this respect, and the slow reveal of Joan’s complex family history – ‘My mother was too much for me and she didn’t even live past my tenth year’ – makes a fascinating parallel with her damaged attitude toward men. The trope of the animal is extended to explore our instinctual needs and behaviours. We move back and forth between the past and the present, and the two story lines gradually twine together, to give the reader a sense of closing in on the prey – ‘… we are all monsters, we are all capable of monstrosity’. Joan left New York after a violent end to a relationship, and settles in Los Angeles, the reason for which is revealed as the book progresses. It was simply women’s pain that manifested as madness.
The world had set me up to believe that it was women who went mad. The title sets the tone, and from the outset it is unclear whether the narrator, Joan, is the hunter, or the hunted. Can’t recall the last time I felt terrified while reading but Animal by Lisa Taddeo had me terrified for the first 200 pages and uneasy for the remainder.
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